Journal of Film Preservation - FIAF

David Francis identifie les difficultés
que devront affronter les archives du
film du 21ème siècle et décrit la
manière dont la FIAF pourra aider les
archives à résoudre ces problèmes.
Les grands changements du siècle
dernier, l’apparition du son, l’abandon
du nitrate et l’adoption de la couleur
par soustraction, ont modifié le visage
des archives. Le problème du futur à
court et à long terme, ne s’y posait
pas encore.
Ce nouveau siècle a considérablement
changé les données du problème.
Plusieurs approches sont à envisager
aujourd’hui. La première approche est
la limitation des acquisitions, de la
conservation et des projections de
films en cellulose et du matériel
papier s’y rapportant. Les exemples de
collections de périodes limitées ne
manquent pas dans l’histoire des
musées et des galeries d’art. Dans le
cas des archives du film, cela équivaut
à accepter que seuls les films d’une
période donnée seront conservés, de
1895 à 2025 par exemple. Passée cette
date, seule un petit nombre de films
seront ajouté à la collection. Cette
approche a ses avantages et ses
inconvénients. L’expérience du cinéma
serait sauvegardée, mais les pouvoirs
publics se lasseraient de financer la
préservation d’un art passé de mode.
Une autre approche est la supposition
que les archives ne pourront
continuer à maintenir l’expérience
originale du cinéma à cause des
avancées technologiques et que la
conversion au format digital
permettra au public un accès
immédiat aux patrimoines
cinématographiques nationaux. Cette
possibilité attirerait des capitaux
publics et privés.
On pourrait également envisager une
solution issue des deux précédentes.
Les archives du film pourraient
continuer à conserver et à projeter
des pellicules, et, dans un même
temps, acquérraient des films au
format digital original, les
conserveraient et les projetteraient
dans ce format. On pourrait digitaliser
les films et les diffuser sur internet,
sous forme de cassettes, de DVDs, et
en même temps, maintenir
l’expérience du cinéma dans une salle
spécialement équipée.
Le laboratoire du futur sera
manufacture it’s own black and white and colour raw stocks. The hybrid
laboratory will be an expensive place to operate. It will have to work on
a round-the-clock basis if it is to offer a service that archives can afford.
This means cooperation between archives in a given country or
continent and therefore probably a decline in the importance of FIAF
and an increase in the importance of regional film archive federations. I
only envision a dozen such laboratories in the world. The richer regions
will have to assist the poorer ones.
For a period of time the archival preservation laboratory of the future
may also have to undertake work for the national film industry. The
initial move to the digital environment may be swift but the final
demise of the cinema, as we know it today, may be painfully slow. We
must not be afraid of charging commercial rates for such services and
ploughing income back into film preservation. We don’t know exactly
when film stocks will no longer be available and whether it will be
duplicating or print stocks that will disappear first. This will depend
largely on what the film industry does and how fast it embraces change.
Already in Scandinavia many feature films shot on film are scanned
into the digital environment and transferred back to film. The latest
generation of datacines have a resolution of 4000 pixels. If you accept
Kodak’s claim that their current 35mm film stocks have a resolution of
6000 pixels, you can appreciate that the time will soon come when one
can reasonably claim that the use of digital intermediates does not
degrade image quality. Many people in the film industry would say that
you cannot detect degradation today if you use the best digital
technology now available. The next step will be the use of digital media
for shooting features and then we will see digital restoration costs that
will be comparable with the photochemical methods used now.
We will see similar changes in projection. As soon as the industry feels
confidant that digital moving images beamed via satellite are as
reliable as those originating from celluloid and that the cost of
equipment to receive those digital images is competitive, they will
make such a change. This in turn will impact the stock manufacturers –
Kodak is already promoting itself as an “imaging” company rather than
a supplier of photographic materials. In this scenario print stock may be
the first to disappear. The film laboratories will then move more into
the digital environment and we will be left with a few boutique
operations that will continue to undertake photochemical duplication.
The film archivist of the future will also have to address some ethical
issues. In the past we have always insisted that anything we do to
preserve a film is recorded and reversible and that the original
materials are maintained at a level of temperature and humidity that
will ensure their long –term survival. Is it worth spending money on the
conservation of a nitrate negative if you can no longer make a film
print from it? I think not. We must also consider how reversible what
we plan to do is when we can no longer make a film copy from the bits
and bytes and metadata that represent a given film.
The preservation laboratory of the future will have a finite time to
duplicate the collections of the archives it serves. Deciding to restore a
film – make it appear on the screen as it did at a particular point in it’s
20 Journal of Film Preservation / 65 / 2002