Film History & Archiving

In the past couple of decades technology in the scanning of film has developed rapidly and opened doors to the digitisation of archival films. The century old motion picture films can now be resurrected in their former glory but with this wide array of options available, users are in constant inevitable dilemma: which scanner technology to use? What is a telecine and a film scanner?

This paper will present the different scanning technologies, its benefits and limitations as a crucial process in the digitisation of motion picture film. Some history on the development of the technology and essential technical specifications will also be explained to aid in selecting the best technology in archival film scanning as well as some film basics to fully understand the medium used for this process.

The Routledge Handbook of Japanese Cinema provides a timely and expansive overview of Japanese cinema today, through cutting-edge scholarship that reflects the hybridity of approaches defining the field.
    The volume’s twenty-one chapters represent work by authors with diverse backgrounds and expertise, recasting traditional questions of authorship, genre, and industry in broad conceptual frameworks such as gender, media theory, archive studies, and neoliberalism. The volume is divided into four sections, each representing an emergent area of inquiry:

"Decentring Classical Cinema"
"Questions of Industry"
"Intermedia as an Approach"
"The Object Life of Film"

This is the first anthology of Japanese cinema scholarship to span the temporal framework of two hundred years, from the vibrant magic lantern culture of the nineteenth century, through to the formation of the film industry in the twentieth century, and culminating in cinema’s migration to gaming, surveillance video, and other new media platforms of the twenty first century.
    This handbook will prove a useful resource to students and scholars of Japanese studies, film studies and cultural studies more broadly.

Published August 2020
Copyright 2021

The Digital Repository Project, initiated by the National Film Archive in 2010, is just finishing its fifth year. The project’s aims were to digitize, archive, catalogue and make available the Polish cinema to a broader audience. The digitization for the project The National Film Archive’s Digital Repository was possible due to the support of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage and its programs: the Digitalizacja materiałów audiowizualnych (2010) and the Wieloletni Program Rządowy KULTURA+ (2011-2014) directed by the National Audiovisual Institute.

Film Museum Practice and Film Historiography is a meticulously researched work and a welcome addition to the already growing body of work related to film archiving practices. Lameris’ book is not only about engaging with the history of the Nederlands Filmmuseum but also about situating this case study within the larger context of film history and film archiving practices throughout the world. Indeed, students and scholars of cinema studies along with archival and museum studies will find Lameris’ approach particularly useful." - Rahul Kumar, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 2018, Vol. 38, No. 2

Resumen: Este artículo recoge la experiencia del hallazgo, restauración y digitalización del film de Carlos Endara De Guayaquil a Quito (1929). Endara (Ibarra 1865-Panamá 1954) fue un pintor y fotógrafo ecuatoriano que se radicó a la edad de 20 años en Panamá, en donde años más tarde abrió el conocido estudio Fotografía Endara Hermanos. Aunque Endara se especializó en la fotografía, también realizó un film con el afán de mostrar los procesos de modernización en Ecuador. Rodada durante dos viajes a Ecuador entre 1925 y 1926, la cinta de Endara es una de las primeras en retratar las ciudades de Guayaquil y Quito, así como el ferrocarril ecuatoriano que unía estos dos centros urbanos, uno en la costa y el otro en los Andes. Las copias de la película terminada, proyectada en Quito pocos años después de ser editada, se perdieron en las décadas subsiguientes. En 2016, un equipo de investigadores de la Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar en Quito, Ecuador, recuperó los rollos originales en un archivo privado en Panamá. Abstract: This article summarizes the process of identification, recovery and digitization of Carlos Endara's film De Guayaquil a Quito (1929). Endara (Ibarra 1865-Panamá 1954) was an Ecuadorian painter and photographer who settled at the age of 20 in Panama where he would later open the well-known studio Fotografía Endara Hermanos. Even though Endara concentrated his work on photography, he made a film in Ecuador in order to show the country's modernization process. Shot during two trips to Ecuador between 1925 and 1926, Endara's film is one of the first to portray the cities of Guayaquil and Quito, as well as the Ecuadorian railway that connected these two urban centres, one on the coast and the other in the Andes. The copies of the finished film, screened in Quito a few years after being edited, disappeared in the following decades. In 2016, researchers from the Universidad Andina in Quito, Ecuador, discovered the original reels in a private archive in Panama. Resumo: Este artigo transmite a experiência de descoberta, restauração e digitalização do filme de Carlos Endara De Guayaquil a Quito (60 min.). Endara (Ibarra 1865-Panamá 1954) foi um pintor e fotógrafo equatoriano radicado na idade de 20 anos no Panamá onde, anos mais tarde, abriria o reconhecido estúdio fotográfico Fotografía Endara Hermanos. Embora Endara se tenha concentrado na fotografia, realizou um filme com o afã de mostrar os processos de modernização no Equador. Rodado em duas viagens ao Equador entre 1925 e 1926, a fita de Endara é uma das primeiras a retratar as cidades de Guayaquil e Quito, assim como a ferrovia equatoriana que conectava essas duas cidades, uma na costa e outra nos Andes. As cópias do filme finalizado, projetado em Quito poucos anos depois de ter sido editada, perderam-se nas décadas seguintes. Em 2016, uma equipe de pesquisadores da Universidade Andina Simón Bolívar em Quito, Equador, recuperou os rolos originais de um arquivo privado no Panamá. Palavras chave: Equador, década de 1920, Guayaquil, Quito.

This article emerges out of my ongoing research into the historical developments of cinematic sound from the analogue eras to the digital realm, and conceptualises the specific practices of designing ambient sounds (or a lack thereof) in the ‘dubbing era’ of Indian cinema (1960s to 1990s). The basic argument that I will develop is that the creative practice of designing sound in Indian films of this period inculcated a technologically informed approach using analogue sound processing with expressionistic and melodramatic overtones that led the spectator to imagine the pro-filmic space instead of bodily experiencing it in cinematic sound. In this article, following film analysis and finding actual evidence in the interviews of sound practitioners, I will demonstrate that magnetic recording and dubbing rendered the cinematic imagination of this period as something spectacular, with extravagant songs and dances in foreign locations and actions packed with studio-manipulated and synthetic sound effects. Add to this a deliberate lack of ambience, and this practice triggered a cinematic experience of emotive tension and affective stimulation.

Après une interruption de sa carrière sous l’Occupation, Danielle Darrieux qui est restée une star pour le public, est propulsée après-guerre vers une nouvelle série de succès. Ceux-ci l’éloignent progressivement de son personnage de jeune fille pétillante pour révéler des facettes plus sombres – mais aussi plus complexes – de sa persona. Nous nous proposons d’interroger les caractéristiques genrées de celles-ci à la lumière des archives de production contenues dans le fonds Claude Autant-Lara (Cinémathèque suisse) avec lequel elle tourne trois films à cette époque : "Occupe-toi d’Amélie" (1949), "Le Bon Dieu sans confession" (1953) et "Le Rouge et le Noir" (1954).

This essay describes the workings of the Films Division of India (FD) in the first two decades since its establishment in 1948. It brings together a variety of writings—various Film Enquiry Committee reports and writings by Indian and international documentaryfilmmakers, technicians, scriptwriters, film critics, directors, and officers in the FD along with filmmakers from the Bombay and other film industries. It uses these materials to consider the role that postcolonial exigencies, colonial lineage, and international aspirations played in the genesis and practices of the FD between the 1940s and the 1960s. Locating the state’s mission of producing documentary film at the intersection of these discourses and currents, the essay not only points to the complex origins and workings of the FD and calls into question our only summarization of it as a statist tool but also interrogates what constitutes an appropriate historical method of engaging with an institution like the FD that did not evolve from decolonization in uncomplicated ways.

Film archiving and local exploitation films, let alone the trashy film archive, are marginal in the discourses of film journalism, scholarship, policies, and criticism in Indonesia (Imanjaya, 2009c; Imanjaya, 2012a; Imanjaya, 2014). However, this paper will demonstrate the importance of Indonesian exploitation cinema, alternative film archives, and exploitation film preservation. It will focus on the output of Mondo Macabro, a transnational DVD label that consistently preserves world trashy films, including Indonesian films produced from the 1970s to the 1990s. By focusing on its DVD paratexts, that is, its DVD covers, special features, and online promotional materials, and applying the Chaperone archiving model also applied by Criterion Collection, this paper will also argue that Mondo Macabro gives trashy or cult films a new lease on life, and more importantly, treats them as collector’s items.

This article examines the history and curatorial strategies of the George Eastman Museum of Photography and Film in Rochester, NY. It reads the museum’s exhibition of rare nitrate films in the post-industrial context of Rochester, through Walter Benjamin’s and Gadamer’s concept of allegory.

Targeting an international readership beyond academia and addressing questions around film theory and the politics of film curatorship, this piece was Screen's most-read 2019 article, recently defined “Article with Impact.” The British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies awarded it an Honourable Mention.

Among the historical writings that address the concept of ‘Visual Esperanto’, numerous texts have focused on Chaplin’s films and the character he portrayed: the tramp. The tramp has become emblematic of the international language of film. It maybe that this emblem’s ubiquity has lent it a commonsensical armor that has averted critical questions, as no research has focused on this central topic.
Yet the fact that the tramp has come to symbolize universality and the international language of film raises questions: Chaplin’s tramp has been repeatedly inked to migration and foreignness. Siegfried Kracauer, for example, regarded him as the personification of the outcast, the pariah. The image of the other, the stranger, is often used to delineate the social body from the outside, i.e. the group defines itself in contrast to the outcast. Therefore, the question arises as to how the character of the stranger helped define the boundaries of universality, not from without, but precisely from within? Through an examination of writings from the silent era and the years of transition to sound film, this paper will trace the paradox that lies at the heart of the concept of the universality of ‘Visual Esperanto’. An analysis of the tramp’s character traits against the backdrop of the formation of the Hollywood star system will shed new light on the deep connections between the esthetics of abstraction and the historical role of the masses at the beginning of the twentieth century.

This important and first-of-its-kind collection addresses the emerging challenges in the field of media art preservation and exhibition, providing an outline for the training of professionals in this field. Since the emergence of time-based media such as film, video and digital technology, artists have used them to experiment with their potential. The resulting artworks, with their basis in rapidly developing technologies that cross over into other domains such as broadcasting and social media, have challenged the traditional infrastructures for the collection, preservation and exhibition of art. Addressing these challenges, the authors provide a historical and theoretical survey of the field, and introduce students to the challenges and difficulties of preserving and exhibiting media art through a series of first-hand case studies. Situated at the threshold between archival practices and film and media theory, it also makes a strong contribution to the growing literature on archive...

This article argues that despite their inherent illegality, forms of media piracy are an essential part of the
memory of Bombay cinema. While Bombay cinema’s history is replete with its encounter with myriad
pirate forms—cheaply published film dialogs and lyrics, locally produced posters, illegal music tapes,
video cassettes, VCDs and DVDs—the activity of viewing, sharing, and storing cinematic objects sees
a new order of proliferation online, leading to the creation of a network of private and indeed pirate
archives of cinema.
Built largely of illegal material (downloaded, ripped, and copied) and the “poor image” (Steyerl,
2009), the pirate archive is at odds with the official state archive of cinema that is all too aware of its
role in preserving the “heritage of Indian cinema.” The pirate archive unpacks the carefully constructed
and preserved hierarchy of “meaningful cinema” by including more derided forms like porn and “trash,”
bringing them into the fold of history. I argue that its illicit, often incomplete, sometimes erroneous and
ephemeral material then poses a challenge to the state archive’s performance of stability and its attempt
to control cinematic history.

My research focusses on decentering narratives from the Stanley Kubrick Archive (SKA) to challenge the hegemonic white, heterosexual, cis gendered male centric history of film production. I am considering how intersectional methods, defined by Kimberly Crenshaw (1989) can be used to recover marginalised voices from within the SKA and to explore these stories. By seeking out the histories of women, LGBTQ+ people and people of colour, the process of decentering the history contained within the archive can begin.

Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999) was an American film producer and director who made many of his blockbuster films in the UK, including 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), The Shining (1980) and Eyes Wide Shut (1999). The SKA, housed in the Archives and Special Collections Centre at University of Arts London, exists as a record of the development and production of his films, made and unmade, with material spanning his entire career from the 1940s to the 2000s, beyond his death in 1999. The SKA is a monolithic monument to Stanley Kubrick.

However, within this “identity archive” are documents and work created by other contributors. People such as Joy Cuff, who built the moon models for 2001: A Space Odyssey, Chris Baker, who produced concept drawings for Eyes Wide Shut, Wendy Carlos who composed the memorable score for The Shining, and Arthur Jafa who took hundreds of photographs of New York streets for the preproduction of Eyes Wide Shut. Evidence of their work is housed in the SKA, often unattributed and unseen. These examples, and many others, demonstrate ‘below the line workers’ who were employed because of their skills and expertise. They worked with the director’s vision in mind, but creatively expressed themselves and developed their careers before, through and beyond their work with Stanley Kubrick. 
   
My aim is to research and repurpose narratives from marginalised voices within the SKA, looking mainly at these below the line film workers.

My main objectives are:
1. To use the Stanley Kubrick Archive to uncover the histories of marginalised people who contributed creative labour to films directed by Stanley Kubrick
2. To collect, preserve and investigate the histories of under-represented people in the UK film industry
3. To challenge the hegemonic auteur-based history of film production by highlighting the hidden labour and collaborative practices of filmmaking 
                                                                               
This original contribution to knowledge will impact the narrative of Kubrick studies and film studies more widely. It will contribute to a developing paradigm shift in the teaching of film history and production studies making it more accessible and inclusive. This work also presents an example of ways that researchers and archivists can work together to address gaps and silences in identity archives, to challenge dominant narratives and to present multiple ways of viewing the past. It is my hope that this learning will allow the film workers of the future to see themselves in film history and that it will empower them to address the inequalities that still exist and begin to redress the balance of the dominant historical narrative.

This article looks at three iconic Assamese films, Joymoti (1935), Runumi (1953) and Maniram Dewan (1964), which have been restored in the last two decades. Using a broad definition of the term restoration, this article argues that these three restorations give us an opportunity to read against the grain of the prescriptive account of Assamese cinema produced through local film societies and critics as well as national-level film journals. The restored versions of the three films provide us with a way to deconstruct the myths of purity associated with such pioneering films and enable a critical look at the politics of language and region that are so deeply inscribed within the act of restoration.

This thesis is an applied project aimed at setting up a digitization workflow for 16mm film prints held at CFMDC and prioritized for scanning and access provision. The prototypical base for the workflow was derived from the standards, guidelines, and initiatives promoted by leading organizations like FADGI, FIAF, and Library and Archives Canada (LAC). The Ryerson University IMA scanning room provided the technical facilities for scanning. The objective was to customize this workflow according to generic specificities of experimental film prints, archivist’s and technician’s commentary and advice, and integrated case studies reflecting on specific issues in that regard. The first four chapters reflect on the digitization history in the host institution, methodology, scanning systems, and the analysis of digital parameters. Chapter five expands specific case studies, and finally, chapter six presents an orderly detailed digitization workflow.

Historia de los archivos cinematográficos en España desde las primeras tentativas hasta la creación de Filmoteca Española, su consolidación como organismo oficial para la preservación y restauración de fondos fílmicos, y la aparición de otras filmotecas dentro del Estado español.

This article studies the representation of modern space and the evolution of cinematic narration within the narrow context of feature films produced in Greece in the 1920s and 1930s, in order to examine the construction of filmic narrative space and the influences, affinities and imitations between the Greek films and their international models. The purpose of this study is to describe and interpret the unstable, uneven, fragmented and sporadic expressions of cinematic depictions of modern urban space in Greece. This examination will focus on the mapping of the locations and the implications of urban space in the organisation of the narration in order to propose a typology of depictions of the Athenian modernity in the 1920s and 1930s, providing an introduction on the Athenian urbanism and describing the radical architectural and social mutations and the ideological reorientations that transformed the Athenian cityscape in terms of class, ethnicity, social mobility and geography. In this context, this essay attempts to answer the following questions: which of these transformations are visible in the feature films of the 1920s and 1930s? How specific film genres generate urban iconographies in this corpus? How do all these urban themes or spatial motifs reflect the passage from the amateur and non-professional production of the 1920s to the more canonical, stereotyped and, more or less, 'classical' narration, that follows the examples of mainstream cinema regarding city representations?

The Evolution of Rap Style and fashion tells us about how Rap fashion emerged up to where it has reached. The video was directed, and it tells us that Kanye West, a black American, started this fashion. The black people were marginalized and against drugs that were expected and had negative implications for society. Reggie Casual says that, in those early days, any style that arose from someone could be termed a rap style (Fresh Dressed). Moreover, Reggie adds that Adidas fashion rose from this old fashion and its description was a three-striped line from a trouser to the shoe and mostly was black and white. Additionally, Rap style was also characterized by basketball and Nike fashion where the

Istnieje w historii kinematogra i nisza, niedoceniana i w du- żej mierze zapomniana akademicko, za to ciesząca się statusem kino lskiej kultowości. Blaxploitation był rozwijającym się przez niespełna dekadę gatunkiem w amerykańskim kinie eksploatacji, który wybuchł wraz z oszałamiającym sukcesem grindhouse’ów oraz intensy kacją działań polityczno-społecznych Ruchu na rzecz Praw Obywatelskich w drugiej połowie lat sześćdziesiątych.
Histeria blaxploitation rozpoczęła się wraz z eksperymentalnym formalnie i narracyjnie obrazem Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song Melvina Van Peeblesa z 1971 roku, a rozpętała się na dobre wraz z premierą Shafta Gordona Parksa z tego samego roku. Pomiędzy 1971 a 1978 rokiem powstało, wedle różnych szacunków, od kilkudziesięciu do 200  filmów przynależących do tego nurtu. Tworzyli je zarówno biali, jak i czarni reżyserzy, zawsze jednak obsadzali je czarnoskórymi aktorami. Warto powrócić do ciasnych sal kinowych w tanich iluzjonach, by zrozumieć, co dziś cennego ma do zaoferowania retrospektywna analiza blaxploitation i tego, jak gatunek ukształtował amerykańską kulturę.

The Amateur Movie Database (AMDB) project marks the first systematic effort to trace the scope and extent of amateur moviemaking in North America. The project combines conventional textual research with digital research methods, drawing in particular on a variety of textual sources, including amateur movie magazines and articles from the 1920s to the 1970s, in order to create film records in a database. Further information has been gathered from national and regional archives, and from academics with relevant expertise. The database currently includes information on more than 2000 films, and provides a valuable web-based tool for researchers and archivists.