Journal of Film Preservation - FIAF

Tbilisi: The Georgian Film Heritage
Protection and Archive Department
Nino Dzandzava
News from the
Archives
The Film Heritage Protection and Archive Department was founded at the
end of 2005 by the Georgian National Film Center, which was itself established
in 2001 on the model of the Centre National de la Cinématographie (CNC)
of France, and aims to provide State support and co-ordination for the
development of Georgian cinema.
Nouvelles des
archives
Noticias de los
archivos
The activity of the Department involves the study of old Georgian cinema,
the development of a database, and the elaboration of the film archive
project.
Following the collapse of Soviet rule, Georgia has undergone numerous
convulsions: civil wars, economic devastation, and a state of anarchy. By the
end of the 20th century the vaults of films and film-related materials, as well
as film equipment, had been depleted and plundered. In 2005 fire destroyed
the most important vault of feature films in Georgia at the Georgian Film
Studio, which kept the films’ magnetic and optical negatives.
When our Department started to operate it turned out that there was no
data concerning the stored films, nor their whereabouts, to say nothing of
their state. It took a lot of time and effort to find the data, which as yet has
not been completely analyzed.
Today, if we wanted to hold a serious retrospective show of Georgian cinema
(which turns 100 this year), we would be unable to do that with the existing
materials in our country. One of the reasons is the fact that all negatives up
to 1990 are stored at Gosfilmofond near Moscow. Gosfilmofond produces
for us copies of Georgian films only according to the international price list,
and we are unable to control the quality of the process. On top of that, after
the war of 2008 the relationship with Moscow, which had not been warm
before, was terminated, and no travel to and from Moscow is possible.
At first sight, the situation with documentaries seems even worse than
the situation with feature films. The documentaries’ negatives (including
the nitrate films) are stored at the film, photo and audio archive of the
64 Journal of Film Preservation / 81 / 2009