Journal of Film Preservation - FIAF

Lindgren as a writer
Another of Ernest’s skills was his ability as a writer. He had a reputation
for preparing several handwritten drafts of letters before sending out
the final copy. They were always longer than necessary, but every word
was carefully chosen to imply a particular nuance. He was extremely
prolific during the war years, when he was confined to the Home Front
because of his withered arm. He obviously had a lot of time to think
about the future of the film archive.
In a pamphlet called Unless We Plan Now: The Cinema, written for the
Association for Education in Citizenship probably around 1945, Ernest
lists seven key reasons why the cinema is important:
(1) The Cinematograph is a new instrument of scientific research.
(2) The Cinematograph is a new and invaluable instrument of historical
record.
(3) It is a new educational aid for the teacher and lecturer.
(4) It can play an important part in democratic society by giving people
a fuller and more significant picture of the world in which they live
than they could get by direct experience.
(5) The cinema can do much to facilitate international understanding
and, similarly, if misused, it can equally foster international
misunderstanding.
(6) The cinema is a new art form, indeed the only new art form in our
time.
(7) The cinema is a new form of entertainment.
A few years later, with the war behind him, in the January 1948 Penguin
Film Review (No. 5), Ernest outlines his utopian archive:
“Through one side of the vestibule of a large and attractive building in
the heart of the metropolis, one passes into an exhibition hall occupying
an area of some 3,000 square feet. The exhibits illustrate every aspect
of film production and film history. … Attached to the exhibition hall,
and accessible through it, is a small cinema of some 500 seats. Here a
programme of film classics is shown three times a day. … [Topics might
include] The Foundations of Modern Technique, The Realist Trend in the
British Film, The Comedy of Chaplin or Films of Travel and Exploration. …
There is a modest charge to the public for admission … but bona fide
students are in certain circumstances admitted at a reduced fee….
“There is a well-equipped book library and reading room….There is a large
library of stills … for the use of the student, the author, the journalist, the
lecturer and the compiler of film-strips and exhibitions. The originals
never leave the Library, but … copies can be made in an hour or two.
There is a large and representative store of film scripts, and virtually all
the scripts of British films, and the most important foreign ones…. The
Library also has a music department, where important film-music scores
are kept, … and a collection of discs of recorded film music … which the
student can play in a sound-proof cubicle adjoining. Elsewhere in the
building are other cubicles where individual students may examine
films, either on a 16-mm. projector, or on a … Moviola. Finally, there is
Journal of Film Preservation / 71 / 2006