The Archival Life of Film - Text 1
The film apparatus in the archive[1]
The archival life of film needs to be opened to academic discussion, as it defines the film (artifact) that will be available in the future, especially now that it is dramatically changing with the advent of new digital resources.[2]
An object-driven approach to the study of apparatuses held in film archives, strengthened by a close dialogue between archivists and scholars is important. In the world of film archives, many changes are taking place due to the shift to digital technologies (as means of production, distribution, and access and as instruments for research). Therefore, the questions about the role of the equipment in the history and development of film and cinema are ever more relevant. As not only the technologies but also the practices of use and their conceptualizations are rapidly changing, exploring the significance of the past and present of the media apparatuses becomes essential to reflections on how to preserve, restore, exhibit, and research them.
It is particularly important to bear in mind that apparatuses, and all film-related or special collections, have commonly had a peripheral role in the tradition of film studies and archival practice. In the study of film as well as in the practices of collecting and archiving film, the moving image (what is often referred to as “content”) has been central, in as far as the focus was mainly on film aesthetics and textual analysis. Less attention, however, was given to film artifacts and lesser still to film-related artifacts, which, as the name suggests, consisted of nearly everything that was related to the film experience (think of cinema posters, decors, stills) as well as that which made the production and projection of films possible (cameras, laboratory equipment, projectors, sound systems, etc.). There were, of course, exceptions to this approach to film study, in particular in the stream of research that has focused on the history of film technology.
The position of film-related collections—and particularly apparatus collections— within film studies and film archiving has changed over the years. With disciplines such as media archaeology becoming an integral part of media studies programs, and film museums displaying their collections in new forms of exhibitions, the shifting role of apparatus collections, from the periphery to the center, is quite palpable.
Additionally, today’s general public has a much closer and more physical relationship with the technological devices for filmmaking than ever before in history, because we now all make, edit, and distribute films, simply because most of us carry such technologies with us in the shape of the extraordinary invention called the smartphone, in which the integration of film apparatus and moving image archive is realized.
Besides the various collection mechanisms that could determine what item or device should be included in an apparatus collection or film (reel) collection, it should be noted that in practice, apparatuses have more often than not reached archives by chance, as a donation of passionate collectors and their families. In other cases, the personal interests of curators were a driving force for the acquisition of a device or collection. Apparatus collections have rarely been determined by a canon, nor have they been strictly driven by explicit policies. By contrast, films have been, and still are, often collected and preserved based on cultural canons (a well-known example being the Anthology Film Archive’s Essential Cinema) and/or institutional collection policies often related to implicit or explicit frameworks of reference. In the worst case, the film apparatus collections were removed, either due to the lack of a policy or for practical reasons such as lack of storage space or budget for professional, technical, and curatorial support.
Film as a material artifact – the material turn[3]
It seems to us that in order to understand the future rewards of the new technologies which are currently and rapidly flooding the market, we must study the archival collections of technological objects in context, as the historical apparatuses may provide insight not only into unexpected past media experiences but also, when properly contextualized, into past media practices and unexpected and forgotten forms of use.[4]
A development that is taking place in the larger landscape of film and is affecting the film heritage discourse is the so-called “material turn”, which is a renewed longing for the experience of the materiality of the film medium. This can be found in work by filmmakers and artists alike, including Peter Delpeut, Gustav Deutsch, Bill Morrison, and Tacita Dean, and, more recently, also Hollywood filmmakers such as Christopher Nolan, Paul Thomas Anderson and Quentin Tarantino.
The “material turn” in film could be interpreted as a reaction to the digital turn, emphasizing the haptic interaction with the material as opposed to the experience of the perceived immateriality of digital access. In a broader sense, this turn to materiality is reminiscent of the idea of mining audio-visual archives for matter and, literally metals, as recently discussed by Patricia Pisters in her paper “The Filmmaker as Metallurgist”.[5]
There is a nostalgia to the here-and-now of the physical, material experience as opposed to the deferred possibility of ubiquitous online access. Intrinsically related to the digital turn, the material turn is however not in opposition to it. It is rather its companion. In fact, there is no such thing as immaterial digital film. A digital film is as material as any other object. It is carried on a material carrier, it is projected through a material digital projector and screened on a material screen or viewed through a device (computer, tablet or smartphone). And it is immersed in a material cultural environment, that of its makers, users and caretakers, like analog film, before. In this line of reasoning, digital films are the result of a tradition of a century of analog films and as such they bear the same material and cultural traces, and digitization is not a replacement but the latest technological shift.
