Joining - Text 1
Joining two pieces of film together is the action underlying film editing. For it came before the action cutting, because the first “cuts” in the strip of film took place quite accidentally: the strip of film would often tear or break because of the tension under which it was placed by the development, printing and projection equipment. Hence the necessity of the action of joining in order to repair the strips of films one had to mend by putting back together the pieces which had broken apart. Nevertheless, the action of cutting was never far behind that of joining, because the joining operation could involve the elimination of photograms which had been damaged by the break.
Until the 1920s, this operation was often carried out “by hand,” using scissors, a specific kind of binding agent (amyl acetate, which dissolved the celluloid and made it possible to autogenously weld it) and a brush. Given the frequency of these mending operations, film manufacturers quickly designed very simple tools to facilitate their operations. Hence the film repairer, also called a film mender, which Siegmund Lubin put on the market in 1898 and which made it possible to make robust mends in the film in tandem with a film cement capable of holding up to multiple screenings.