Death of Cinema

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THE DEATH OF CINEMA History, Cultural Memory and the Digital Dark Age

PAOLO CI-IE RCHI USAI

The Rosetta Stone. Grey and pink gra nodio rite stela , issued March 27 , 00196 Be . BritishMuseum.

Publish ing


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INTRODUCTION

I had never seen a book torn to shreds in public until two years ago, whenFrancesco Cas etti , a distingu ished film theo ri st who happens to be a dear friend,and h ad v olunteered to present an earlier version of thi s volume at the CinetecaItaliana in Milan on October 11 ,01999 stu nned the audience (an d the publisher)by ripping off its pages, addin g that 'there's no better way of reading thiswo rk'. He perfectly understood what this book is abou t. All the same , 1 can' tthink of a more appropriate way to summarise how some of the thou ghts con tained in it hav e been received ove r the years in their various incarna tions - firstas ajeu d'esprit for a jour nal of film theory, then as a more ser ious piece of business for the movi ng image prese rvati on fi eld, and finally as an attempt to explainwhy tbe argumen t at th eir core uses the term 'digital' as littl e mor e than a pre-text fo r bringing tbe pleasures of contro versy to a bro ader se t of issues.

Back in 01977, at tbe time of my first experience in a film archive, 1 rea lisedbow little had been dOlle to save the mo tion pi cture ber itage, and was eager toente r the fray of repairing th at neg lec t. Ten year s later, I was at the peak ofenthusiasm at the p rospect of a co llective effor t to restore the cinema of the pastto its or ig inal glory through the endeavour s of film preservation. Anotherde cade ha s passed, and the mu ch touted benefits of the Digital Re vo lution havequickly shifted towards a subtle yet per vasive ideology. Th ere s some thinginhere ntl y reactionary in ho w wo rldwide consensus has been ga there d aroundthis new myth of scientific progres s. What's worse, denouncing its excesses willmake yo u feel like the latest anti- techno logist on th e block. Th e subtitle of thisbook deriv es from Stewart Brand 's The Clock o f the Long Now (0 1999), themost effective attempt at ques tioning thi s self-perpe tuating wave of cu lturalfundament alism; however, much of the argument addressed in the pages thatfollow has differe nt roots, and comes from a va riety of directions, not n ecessaril y linked to the digital persuasion. Wh y are we prod ucing so many imagesthat move and speak? Wh y do we try to preserve them? What do we think weare doing by pr ese nting them as pristine reproductions of ou r visual heritage ?Wh y is our cu lture so keen in accepting the questionable benefits of digi tal technology as the vehicle for a new sense of history?

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An indirect proof of how unsettling these questions can be is g iven by rhemultiple titles this book has had in its previous printings. It began as A ModelImage, and it seemed obscure to most readers, but digital was not quite ye t thetalk of the town; it turned into Decay Cinema and then The L ast Spectator, thusraising the suspicion that the wh ole point of the book was some sor t of Remem-brance of Cinematic Things Pas t; it finally became The Dea th of Cinema, aconcept we had been hear ing of for a long time but dreaded to mentio n. Th eac id -free pap er should make it slightly more difficult to tear the book apart inthe future , but as far as I'm co ncern ed the option still exists for those who haveread it a l1 the way th rough.

So wh y is it that a te xt wr itten over fifteen year s ago has not on ly refused tod ie, bm has actually grow n up on itself like a plant, into a wealth of amend-I11cnb , rew rites and rethinkings? Th e fact is that I was unable to abandon it,and for tun ately there were those who felt I should persist. Michele Lag ny mad eit all happen in 01986, and is too modest to claim credit for it; Mi chel e Canosabrough t it to its fir st Italian tra nslation in 01989, no t without so me persona l risk.Ro land Cos and ey und ers tood the project well enou gh to bring to my a ttentionall 0 1897 notice from La N ature , know ing I could no t resist the temptation ofplacing it at the head of this work, and I th ank him for that. Simonetta Bortoloz2.i had no cultural age nda at stake, a for tunate co incidence that mad e herremarks and suggestions the mos t u seful I've had in relation to the essay in itsprcsent fo rm. The diag rams in Sections IX and XXIX are adapted from d raw ings by Stewart Brand and Brian Eno for the 01998 website of the Lon g NowInu ndation (www.longnow.org ).

T he latest stages of the proj ect have been blessed by two rem arkableg uardian angels. Ren ata Gorgani, dir ecto r of the publishing company II Castoro, of Milan, has beJieved in this project since she first read the manuscript,and it is thanks to her that it ha s now eme rged exac tly as it was int ended. Fo rthis English (an d rev ised) ed ition, Martin Sopoc y has generously given histim e, patience and edi tor ial skills in helping me express what I wanted to saymo re effec tively than I could eve r ha ve hop ed . They have bot h und ers tood thatif I had to throwaway everything I have wr itten so far, and save only one thingfro m the bonfire, it wou ld be thi s bo ok . No w it belongs to them.

Rochester, N ew York, September 02000

THE DEATH OF CINEMA

T he g reat crea tor is the great eraser.Stewart Brand
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Edison Kinetophon e, 01895- 01900. Geo rge Eastman Hou se .

THE DEATH OF CINEM A 4

It is not generally appreciated fLOW mud research and labour is sometimes expended,in tile industrial sector, to produce results that are often quite ephemeral. We find a newinstance of this (following that o f rapid-fire weaponry, which we cited about twO yearsago) in the in divid ual photographs of the kinetoscope and the cinematographe. In thekinetoscope, each tiny pfLOtograph tltat is paraded past the onlooker's view was exposedand subsequentlypu t to use for only 1/7000of a second. Now before being retired romactive service these bands can scarcely be run 4000 or 5000 times. As a result, the realand active life-span o f each u'ny image is somewhat less titan a second. In the case ofthe cin ematograph, the dllration of expOSllre is longer: it lasts as long as 2/45 o f a second, 151'mages being exposed every second, each o f them appearing for 2/3 of a 15thof a second. In contrast, by virtue of tile jerky movement to wltich the strip o f filin issubjected, it can survive its passage tlzrougfz the apparatus scarcely more th an 300 timesbefore being retired from active service. A s a result o f all this, its efJective life is in itstotality one-and-one-third seconds. One knows, a priori, that a pie ce of fir eworks isephemeral. Its has, even so, an effective life incomparably longer than aprojectile firedby a me chanical weapon or the cinematographe's projected pfLOtograph, because it lastsseveral seconds. How ever paradoxical it may seem, this conclusion is qllite rigo rous; it canbe confirmed by a simple bit of aritil/ne tic, and is ye t another instance o f fLOW dangerollsIt L) to trust appearances.

Anon. , 'La vie util e des vues cinematographiques' , La Nature (Paris), 01897,2eme semestre, pp. 302- 3. Translated by Paolo Cherchi Usa i and Martin Sopocy.

PAOLO CHE RC HI USA ] 5


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1Cinema is the ar t of moving image destruction

Without the images of dr ama, adventure, comedy, natural and artificialevents imprinted on motion picture film there would be no cinema; therewould be n othing to make histo ry ou t of; filmology wo uld have nowhere togo. In its place wou ld be either still images (photography) or fleeting ones(e lectronics) . Th e point is confirmed by video: a civiliza tion that is prey tothe nightmare of its visual memory has no further need of cinema. For cin-ema is the art of destro y ing moving images.

Lo l io til Brooklyn (Daniele C ipri and Franco Maresco, It aly 01 995) . Frame enlargementsfr o m a 35 mm acetate print.

THE DEATH OF CINEMA 6 PAO LO CHERCHI US A] 7


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11Is cinema the object of history?

Tize Bombing of Shang/wi SOUlIz Slation by the j apane.


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IVThe moving image disgraced

Persona (Jngmar Be rgman , 0 1960). Frame enlargements fr om a 35mm pr in t. C ourtesy ofHarvard Film A rchive.

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In addition to the factors which can preven t its coming into being (mal-function of th e ap paratu s, inadequate pr ocessing of the negati ve or itsaccidental exposur e to lig ht , huma n interfere nce of various kind s) there isthe ho st of ph ys ical and chemical age nts affecting the ima ge carrier:scra tches o r tears on th e print ca used by the pro jecting machine or its oper-ator, curling of th e film base as the result of a too inte nse ex po sur e to thelig ht source, colour altera tions ar ising out of the film stock itself, environ-mental va r iabl es such as temp erature and humidity. As soon as it isdepos ited o n a matrix, the di g ital image is subject to a similar d estin y; itscauses may be different , bu t the effec ts a re the sam e. Ch ronicles a lso men -tio n catastr oph es and ex tr ao rdin ary eve nts suc h as fires, wars, floo d s, anddes tructi ve int erventi o ns from the make rs themselves or the peop le whofin ance the ir ac tiv ities.

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VIThe unfortunate spectator

f' _

..

" \ ~ ' " ~ ~ ~ . : ~ ~ ; . . . , . c . .Un identified decomposed film , ca . 01925. Ree l 4. Frame enlargement from a 35mm nitr ateprint. George Eastm an House .

Given the physical and chemical phenomena at the heart of the process o fdecay [IV] , a process that can be contained o r decelerated but not altogetheravoid ed, the view er is an un consciou s (so metim es res igned, in any caseimp o tent ) witness to the ex tin ction o f moving images that nobody c ares toprese rve, either b ecause they are dee med unworthy [XXXVIII] or un suit-able fo r th e purposes o f further co mmercial expl oitation. This is con sideredas no rm al as the co rruption of an o ral tradition, o r the vani shin g o f o thereph emeral form s of human expre ssion.

THE DEATH OF ClN.E MA 16 PADI D CH8RCHI LH:i A I 17


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VIIIt is the destruction of moving images thatmakes film history possible

A nit rate film sto rage roo m after a fire. Un identified location, United States, ca. 01920.Academy of Mo tion Picture Arts and Sciences.

18DEATH OF CINEMA

That is to say, the Pr esent is indi visibl e and overwhelming, while the Pastpre sents us with a limited set of cho ices o n which to exercise such knowl-edge as we are abl e to glean from the range of perspectives that remain[XLIV]. If all moving images were avai lable, the massive fact of their pres-ence would impede any effor t to establish criter ia of releva nce - mo re so,indeed, than if they had all been obliterated, for then, at leas t, selective com-prehe nsion would be replaced by pure conj ecture.

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VInThe iconoclasts

An em ployee of the Doug las Fai rbanks Studi o chopping up ' use les s' fi lm (01 922) .Cou rtesy of the Na tional Center for Film and Video Preservati on.

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Th e axiom presented in [VII] is also applicable to film taken as a singleentity, usually perceived as a to tality even when s ome of its parts are fo r-eve r unknown to the viewer' s ex perience o f it. Film history proceeds by aneffort to explain the loss of cultural ambience that has evaporated fr om themov ing image in the c ontex t of a g iven time and place . T he diverse con-ditions determining this loss create the need to establish periodisations inthe histo ry of moving image destruction and in the human effort to destroyimages a ltogethe r. I f all mov ing images could be experienced as a Mod elImage (that is, in their intended state, in an intention visible in every pa rtof them even before their actual consumption ), no such thing as film his-tory w ould be needed or possible.

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IXThe moving image in history

In August 0 1999 the estate of Abraham Zapruder received the sum o f $16,000,000 for the8mm film depicting the assassinat io n of John F. Kennedy in Da llas, T exas, November 22,01963 - the larges t amount ev er paid for a motion picture artifac t. JFl< (Oliver StOne,0 199 1) makes use o f thi s footage in a fi ctiona l account of the inves tigation on the eve nt bymu ltipl y ing Zapruder' s 486 frames in a pletho ra o f duplica tes, slow -mo ti on enlargementsand re-e nac ted vers ions. Jro nica lly, this a nal ytica l approac h r esult s in a fragmented catalogue of ambi guit ies, making the o rigina l document all the mo re e lusive.

22OF CINEMA

CINEMA < 100 YEARS~ ___A IVI?02 In? 191> I'it.r. 19J(1 '\j

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XPrimary goal of film history

M aci.rle (Romano L. Borg netto, 01 9 15) . Frame e nl argement from a 35mm nitrate print.Ne derlands Fil mmuseum.

Th e subject of fi lm histo ry being the destructi on of the moving ima ge, itsprimary goa l is to recapture the experience of its first viewe rs, an empiricalimp oss ibility. If put into practice such reco nstruction wo uld lead to theobliteration of fi lm history. Its obj ec tives are thu s as abstract as any politi-cal ut opia: neith er would have any interest whatsoever if th eir go als we rerea lised .

THE DE AT H OF CINEM A 24 JU EADr.JLGREJlG Hl US A' ?'f)


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XIIIThe moving image is no evidence

A victim of Bergen-Belsen, filmed on April 16,01945, following the liberation of the concentrat ion camp. (Cameraman: Sgt Mike Lew is, British Army Film and PhotographicUnit.) Imperial War Mu seum, London. Negative number IWM FLM 3272.

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Nature and soc ial life are perceived by cinema as a sequence of events thatcan be remembered. Mov ing images produced out side the world of fictiongive id entity to th e viewing experi ence as fragment s of empirical ev idence,but they can pro ve nothing unless there is so me explanation of what theyare. Be it ever so eloquent, the moving image is like a witness who is un ableto describe an event without an intermediary. The ability to transform itinto ev idence, true or false [XL], is inhere ntly linked to a deci sion to preserve, alter or suppress the memory of the circumstances under which theimage was produced. Th e loss of the moving image is the o utcome of anid eo logy expressed by the very obj ect that made it poss ible.

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XIVThe urge to create visions

A rotating silhouette drifts acr oss tb e ri g bt eye of Kim Novak in tbe main cre dit s of V e r t L ~ g o(A lfred Hit cbcock, 01958). Reticular entities in motio n endowed wi th sbiftin g colour s a reperceived wben the ey elid s are close d; it can tberefo re be sa id that humans never cease tosee mov ing images in tbe course o f their li ves. Th ese ' mental' images, kn own asp bospb enes, are des cribed in so me detail by tbe Ger man vis ion ary , musician, writ er andtheologican Hildegard von Bingen (0 109 8- 0 1179 ) in her my stical writings. Saul Bass'sopening seq uen ce has ofte n bee n interpreted as a sym bolic reference to the emoti onaltwist s experienced by tbe c ha racte rs in the film. Stri c tl y defin ed, th e term ' ve rtigo' refersto a n illusion or a hallucin at io n o f mov em ent. Wh en the symptom complex is of spin ningor rotation, th e cau se is almos t always the inner ear o r its peripheral ves tibular sys tem .Al thou gh it is tru e that peop le affected b y vert igo experi ence a defi nite sense of enviro nmental spin o r se lf-ro tatio n, tbe majority are not subjec t to true spinning ve rti go.

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Visionar y cinem a has no other subjec t matter than the transformati on ofthe image itself , for otherwise it would have nothing to exercise itself upon.Wh ether the outcome is cheerful or tragic (but al so in the lack of a narrati ve pattern), the event that result s is a self-obliterating illusion that isdoo med sooner or later to fade into the realm of memory.

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XVHow do moving images come to exist?

[fCnJertenlOonste!!ing1(probably Concona Ji be!!eaa jia bambini a Torino , Aqui la Film s,Turin 01909). Fram e n l ~ r g e m e n t fro m a 35mm nitrate print. Nede rlands Filmmu se um .

Experience teaches us that loss of memory is as inevitable as anxiety for thefuture. In the hop es of avoiding both , the maker of moving images fabri-ca tes mem ories or visions of what is to come in the cherished belief thatthey will exist forever in an eternal present of the spec tator's wi ll. Expos-ing the spectator to a single viewing of tha t moving image is enough toreveal the futility of sllch ambition.

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XVIIIThe Golden Age: the Model Image

Such an hy po thes is is ba sed upon th e e xi stence of moving images wh ichare immune from decay. By definiti o n, such images can have no histo ry.

35mm SMPTE leader, designed in the 01960s by the Soc iety of Mo t.ion Pi cture and Tele-vision En g inee rs. The countd own footage which precedes the beginning of a film (from 810 2 second s before th e im age or its so undtrack) wa s first introduced in the United Stateson Novemb er 01931 (,Academy ' co untdown leader), and it is used wo rldwide in a varietyof des igns.


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XXVIWherein film history is finally established

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In order to become the object of film hi sto ry, perceived moving imagesmust also be interpreted in relation to the physical [XXI] and psychologi-cal [XXIII] conditions surrounding their appearance. In fact, spectators arebound to perform their role within a context they themselves authorise andendorse, one in which they demand to be entertained according to theexpectations (length of the film, day and time of its exhibition), the prac-ti ces and the customs that accrue to it (a hall where moving images aredisplayed, a fiat or curved scree n, a sound system) established by theexperience of those who have preceded th em.

Countdown leader for unidentified Vitaphone film. Frame enlargement from a 35mmaceta te print. George Ea stman House.

THE DEATH OF' CINEMA 56 PAOLO CJ-lERCHl USA! 57


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XXVIIIRepetit ion as a catalyst of change

Th is establishes a direct link between the eph emera l natur e of th e image[IV] and its exhibition in a number n of showings (wherein 1) mistak-enl y perceived by th e viewe r as event s which are identical to each other[XXVII] . Such definiti on holds tru e both for th e moving image and for theemission of sound s associated with its display.

Melropufis (Fritz Lang, 01927) . Frame enlargement from a 35m m aceta te print. GeorgeEastm an House.

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XXXIThe human being as a consumer of images

Tn February, 01 95 4, th e C h ~ p l i n Studio on b Brea Boulevard in Holl ywood was handedover to its new owners, who planned to outfit it for TV production. Th e faithful HollieTo theroh had shipped many negative s and prints over to Switzerland , but much st illremained. Th e new owners threw out the contents of th e prop room, where, am ong hundreds of o th er items, the giant woodell gears fro III Modern Times (01936) were stored, andthey empti ed out the film vaults, where the outtakes fro lll nearly forty ye a rs were stored.Some of the materd was saved by Raymond Rohauer and used by Kevin Brownlow andDavid Gill in th eir documentary Unknown Clzaf!in (01983); some wa s nor. In the ba ckground stands the house that Chaplin built on the property for hi s brother Sydney. Agrocery store now stands on that spor. Scott Eyman Collect.ion.

Wh en moving images were first experienced, human beings feasted onvisions of extremely short duration, mor e o r les s equal to the attention spanthat could be a ss igned to an event who se very existence was in itself a sur-prise [XXI] . For a brief period , such a dur a tion (corresponding to a limitednumber of times t along a clearly defined time frame) had to be consideredas constant. Howe ver, these moving images, apparently thought of asdur abl e [X X VTT] even while experienced in the course of being prog ressively dissolved, were rep eatedly shown in different locations and at differenttimes until they were completely destroyed at last - that is, when the physical condition of the carrier was in a state so disastrous as to make its furth erexhibition virtually impossibl e. Th ese moving images, therefore, had a fatesimilar to that of other ephemeral fo rms of expression such as operetta andth e various Universal Expositions. Exploited to the utmost, their carriershad no further reason to exist; their destruction was not only inevitable butdesirable insofar as new carriers and new images bad to be created for com-mercial reasons [XT X]. Despite all the claims to justify it in the light of agiven cultur31pro gramme, any attempt to restore the moving image derivesfrom motivations which are at best alien, if not contrary, to the unstabl enature of the carrier. Th e main aim of each project of preservation of themoving image is therefore, strictu sensu, an impossible attempt to stabilise athing that is inherently subject to endless mutation and irreversible destruction. Trying to impose a reversal of this process (a goal incoherent in itself,as no reconstructi on of the moving image can be accomplished without trying to imagine what the Model Image looked like, thus separating it stillfurther from a previous character which itse lf is unknown to the preservationist) is tantamount to a denial that the moving image has a history. Onthe contrary, becoming part of the pro cess and accepting it as the workingsof a natural phenomenon is to recognise the nature of the Model Image andto cultivate an intelligent awareness that each showing will hasten its demi se[L]. Conceived in those term s, the effort to preserve a mov ing image in thestate in which it was found (plus making it viewable to others, once the lossof information deriving from the pr ocess has be en acknowledged) has atleast some chance of being useful by fo stering the concept of durability, itspotential and its limitations. A vain effort it is, but also one that is fertile inits implication s. Prese rva tion of the mov ing image is a necessary mistake.

TH E DEATH OF CINEMA 66 ---,"J 67AO LO CHERCHT USAT


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XXXIIThe iconoclasts (continued)

Taliban stud ents burning film s in Kabu l, Afghanistan. sse broadcast, October 15,0 1996.

Th e confluen ce of a va riety of elements leadin g to the dest ruction of themoving image is also the outcome of climactic and geog raphic co mp o-nents. In addition to what has been mentioned in [I) co ncerningcommunities with no sense of mov ing image histo ry, one must add tho sederiving from adverse environmental conditions such as are referred to in[IV). Gi ven these circum stances, each histo rical period is charac terised bysocieties in which the creation of moving images is encourage d, and byother societies th at rega rd th em with such ignorance and fear as to resultin mistrea tment that hasten s thei r demise and radically modifies the pat-terns of periodisa tio n d esc rib ed in [IX) .

TUl j ' D l j 'ATH OF CINEMA 68 PAOLO CHERCH! USA! 6g


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XXXIIINo such thing as a Golden Age of themovIng Image

This Flfm / s Dangerous (Ronald Haines, Briti sh D ocum enta ry Films, 01948) d escrib es theeffec ts o f a nitra te fi re in a projec tio n booth. In an o ther educatio nal film on th e sam e subjec t, D as Ve rbalwl von brennendem Nilrofilm gegen iber loscizmiueln (Osterreichi sch esFilmJrchi v, 01978) , a fire squad demonstrates va ri ous unsuccessful attempt s at putting o utburnin g reels of nitrate stock in the outskirt s of Vienna. In hind sight, thi s is the snuffmov ie of cinema itse lf - people ga the ring in o rder to destr oy mov in g images and see ho wfas t the y ca n bum. Th e frame enl arge ment repr odu ced above is taken fro m a 35mm aceta teprint at the Film and Vid eo Ar chiv e, Imp erial W ar Museum , Lond on, co urtesy of RogerSmither.

A G olden Age o f the moving image - that is, its existence in a timeless stateof stability - wo uld be possible o nly if films had never been run throughprojectors, or if matrices had never been used fo r their duplica tion into

Su ch a Golden Age would be rendered still more imp ossible by thematrix itsel f being subject to a process of deg radation that i s identical tothe decay of th e images produced by it.

PAn ,n r.HRR.r.HT USAI
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XXXIVCreativity and the consumption of images

A cyclops character in X-Men (Bryan Singer, 02000) brings the y s s e y to the ofsc ience fi ction. Contr J ry to common beli ef, th e in abil ity to perceive the depth of fi eld doesnot affect onl y th ose who see thi ngs through a sin gle eye. Studies in ophta lm ology havereveal ed that a sur prisingly high percentage of viewers ca nn ot actua l y experience depthof fie ld , thus being unable, for ex ample, to observe it in a 3-D fi lm. Th e Auoresce nt eyesof some of the mutants in X-Men co nfirm an axi om of mo dern mythology, according towhi ch the su periority of artifici al in telligence is most often symb olised by th eir view ingapparatus.

Periodisa ti on in film hi sto ry [IX ] is the produc t of an es tim ate in which th erate of abso rptio n of movin g images is co mpare d with th e coefficient ofloss Or decay of images prev iously made, in addition to the rela ti onshipobtaining betwee n the above coe fficients and the technology designed topr odu ce these images. For eac h given group of spec tato rs it is poss ible toes tablish a rate of consumption of mov ing images and a ra te of crea tiv ityco rrespo nd ing to the ability of the im age maker to meet the viewer's expectations for surprise [XXX I] and attent ion [XXV]. Implicit in this is theunderstanding that th ese rates are depe ndent on the perm anence and fl exibility of the technique ad opted for the p urpose, and its cost.

72HE DEA TH OF CINEMA PAOL O CHE RC HI USAf 73


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XLIIThe ultimate goal of film history

I!'

,II

I i' \Advert ising poster for Das Ende (Deutsche Mutoscop- u. Biograph GmbH, Germany,01912). From FilmplakalC /908-- 1932. Aus den oeSliinden des Staatlichen Filmarchlvs derDDR (Potsdam: Ausste ll ung im F ilmmu seu m der DD R , 01986), p. 48.

Th e ultimate goal o f film history is an account of its own di sappearanceor its tran sformation int o another en tit y. In such a case, a narrating presence has the prerogative of resorting to the imagina tion to describe thphases leadin g fro m the hypothetical Model Im age to the complete oblivion of what the moving image once represented.

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XLIIIThe film historian must be a storyteller

l nte rtitl e from In unid entiri ed Mack Sennett comedy, ca. 0192 0. Cin eteca del Friu1i /Dav id H. Shepard.

THE DE ATH OF CINEMA 90

Fil m histo ry co mes to exist as such when mov ing image destru cti on isdesc ribed and explained in order to make clear the causes and pattern s o fdecay of the Model lmage. Contr ary to the for mal appr oac h outlined in[X XlI], such d esc ription is affec ted by so many unforeseeabl e fac tor s thattbe language of the exac t sciences is inadequate for the purpose. On theother hand , film hi stor y is quite com patible with a narrating pr ese nce[X LII] and with the goal of deciphe ring the traces left by eac h view ing onthe relics o f an entity recog nised as being no lon ger extant. Th e imag in aryobj ec t will then b e mirrored in an ima ginary account: an exercise in stor y-telling.

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XLIVThe unseen

Waiting rOom of the dormitory Oregon State Univers ity, Corvalis, Oregon , ca. 01966(Afjred Hile/,eod Presenl.f). Photo by Ken Deroux. Courtesy of Edith Kramer.

92THE DEATH OF CINEMA

Relatively few moving images can be seen in the course of a lifetime, a tinyfraction of those ac tually made. Given an average lifespan of seventy-fiveyears, the time spent viewing them rarely exceeds one hundred thousandhours, li ttle more than a decade. Th ose who live in communities wher emov ing images are mad e and experienced on a regular basis someti mes havean urge to watch as many of them as possible [XXXIV]. Th is urge is oftenreplaced by other impulses such as boredom, selec tivity, or flat refusal. Thedeath of cinema is primarily a mental phenomenon that will occur whetheror not the factor s mentioned in [IV] actyally take place, a nd w ill be sa nctioned by th e natura l tendency to forget the experience of pleasur e. Thesearch for its repetition, as represented by the practices refe rred to in[XX VII], is al so typical of humans.

PAOLO CHERCHI USA! 93


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XLVThe subj ecti ve image

BronenoseiS Potyomkin [Battleship Potemki n] (Se rgei M. Ei senstein , 01925). Frame en large-ment from a 35mm acetate print. George Eastman Hou se .

94HE DEATH OF C! NE MA

Which refer s to all the im ages that are corrupt ed by the viewer, eve n as theyare regarded as pristine [XX]. Images of great va lue to some spectato rs andquite irrelevant to others [VT] . Images experienced too ea rly in li fe (due todistrac tion lXXIV ], ignorance [XV] or inn oce nce [XXI . Images seen toomany times or too late in life, when curiosity [XLIV] has been ex haustedor jaded by experiences occurring before the v iewing has taken place.

PAOLO CHERCH f US A! 51 ,J


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XLVIIWhy do humans want to see things again?

Peeping Tom (Mi chael Pow ell , 01960) has been desc ribed as the fir st commercial feature filmdea ling wit h the phenomenon of 's nuff movies'. Th i s might explain the out rage d r eactionsto Pow ell's last film at the time of its release: 't he sickes t and fi lthiest film 1 remember see-in g' (lso bel Quigley in the Guardian) . 'T he onl y really sa tisfacrory way ro dispose ofPeeping Tom would be ro shovel it up and Rush it swi ftly down th e nea rest sewer. Even then,the stench would rem ain' (Derek Hill, Trzbune); 'wholly evil' (Nina Hibbin, the DailyWorker). T en yea rs later, unverified repo rts from the United States and South Am e ricareferred to the production of amateur films allege dly showing the act ual torture, mutilationand killing of peo pl e. An investigatio n co ndu cted by the FBI in 01971 fai led ro ascertainthe ex tent ro which these films were in fact circulating in the unde rground market.

Three motivations are certain: the pleasu re of repeating an experience ofpleasure [XLIV]. A desire to obtain a fuller perception of what has a lreadybeen seen. A change of opinion. Another catalyst - reali sing that one hasfailed to see Or was noticing the wrong things th e first time - may some-

appear after a further viewing has take n place for spec tators endowedwith the faculty of introspection.


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i I

"- "" ..

XLVIIIThe role of fiction in moving image preservatlon

Leonard Ze lig stands betw een US pres id ent H erbert Ho o ver (right) and Ca lvin Coo lidgein Ze/i{ (Woody Allen, 01980), a landmark pseud o-d ocum entar y o n fake, celebrity, andimage manipulation. Wh en th e creators of Toy 5lOry (John Lasse ter, 01995) went to m ake

, .a DV D ve rsion o f t h e film, twe lve percent of the digital masters had already vanished. Forthr ee months, Pixar Animation Stud ios staff scoured the system for th e toys' missing parts_ salvaging all but one percent of what had been lost in the computers. Th e renuinin gsce nes were reassembled. Fo r subsequ enc Pixar movies, Lasse ter said , 'w e have a betterbackup system'. Digital technology was still in its infancy when Zelig was mad e, but th eissues rai sed by A llen 's fictiona l biogra phy have bee n confirmed by tbe collapse of photo grapby as a docum ent o f the empirical wo rld.

I 00

Th e intention of bringing the moving image back to its supp ose d primordial sta te leads to the creation of fictive artifacts. Such a pr oceeding has theffect of wid ening the gap betwee n the im age as it is and its hypothetic;;cond ition as a Mode l Im age. Strictly speaking, the effects of doing so elridentical to the damage already su ffe red by the obj ec t being looked[X XX I]. Giving up the attempt altoge ther or opp osing it, on the othhand , is to fall prey to th e illusion that the moving image ca n be froze n itim e, as if it could no longer be affected by bistory. T he formal definiti o[XX IJl should therefore includ e a variable r for restorati on, to account fothe drifting of the o riginal viewin g eve nt in to a fiction [XLIII]. Th e notioof an 'a uth entic' restoration is a cu ltural oxymoron.

.II 1:\ L0 G.HERe H US A 1C


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LTowards an ethics of vision

A group of execu tives thr owing away Go ldberg shipp ing cans for 35 mm fi lm. Th e sy m-bo lic event too k place at a pr ess conference annou ncing the co nve rsio n to digital of theAMC Em pire 25 C inema in Tim es Square 2000, New York City, and was reported by theN ew York Times on November 26,02000. Ph oto courtesy of Paul P inner, Boe ing Company.

104

The pr opose d so lution [XLIX] t o the dil emm a referred to in [X XXI] is a tbes t inco mpl e te, as it doe s no t affec t the process of des truction of theModel Im age . In this respect , the ga p be twee n mov ing image des tru c tionand the effo rts to preve nt it is bo und to yawn w id er than ever. T he onlyalte rna tive poss ible is a radica l change of perspec tive: g iving up all claimto r esurr ec ting the Model Im age , as we ll as all the ambitions und erl ying theattempt (incl uding the technical t erm 'r esto ra tion' , whi ch is a bl a tant co ntr adi c tio n of the aim ) . Moving image prese rva tion will then be redefin edas the science of its g radu al loss and the art of copin g w ith th e conse-qu ences, ve ry mu ch like a ph ysician who has accepted the inev itability ofdea th eve n while he c ontinues to fi ght for the patient 's life. In moni to ringthe prog ress o f image decay, the co nserva to r assumes the responsibility offo llowin g the pr ocess until the image has va ni shed altoge the r, or ensuresits migration to another ki nd of visual expe ri ence, while int erp re ting themeanin g o f the loss for the benefit of future genera tions. In doing so, thecon serva tor - no less than the viewe r - pl ays a creative role th at is in someway comp arabl e to the wo rk of the image make r. Th e fin al outco me of thedea th of c in ema is the fo und a ti on of an e thics of v isio n and the tra nsfo rm a tion of the Model Im age int o the Moral Image, mi rro rin g theimp era tives and va lue s conn ec ted w ith the ac t of viewin g.

PAO LO CH8R CHI USA] 105

When does posterity end?


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[I Casanova di Federico Fellini (01976). Frame eniJrgemenr from a 35ml11 e t ~ t e print.Courtesy of Har va rd Film Archive.

THE DEATH OF CINEMA108

Th e criterion of passivity suggested in [Ll] is bound to clash with objec-tions of an economic nature [XIX] on those occasions when the imagemaker is asked to simulate Model Images of a character determined by thefutile yea rning for eternity [XXVII]. Hence the need to redefine the prin-ciple of the Model Image itself, transpos ing it out of the domain oftheoretical speculation and into the actual view ing experi ence . It does notmatter whether a given method of producing moving ima ges is likely toextend their life expectancy in accordance with the set of cultural values acommunity of viewers may happen to share. Th e real question is, are view-ers willing to accept the slow fading to nothing o f what the y are lookingat? Is it fair to encourage them to believe that they will neve r witness theinevi table, and that its actual experience will be left to someone else?

I il!)PAOLO CHER CH USAI


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A READER'S REPORT TO THEPUBLISHER

Mad am,

I return her ewith the manuscript of the work in pr ogress y ou were goo denough to pass along to me. I was already familiar with most of the ideasdescribed in thi s treatise and if I have di sag reements it is not because I findthem unacceptable in themselves but becau se they don' t go far enough inadd ressing wh at I consider the most important aspect of the matter heatt empt s to treat, namely, the al arming gr owth of prejudice against all mo v-ing images that exist, or have existed, bu t which have not been seen.

I wo n' t shed tears o ver the death of cinema. Th is might be its first realchance to be taken seriously. It is estimated that about one and a half billionviewin g hours of movin g images were produced in the year 0 J999, tw icethe number made just a decade before. If that rate of g rowth continues,thr ee billion v iewing hours of moving images will be mad e in 02006, andsix billion in 02011. By the year 02025 there will be some o ne hundred bil-lion hours of these images to be seen. In 01895, the ratio was just above fo rtyminutes, and most of it is now pre served. Th e meaning is clear. On e and ahalf billion hours is already we ll beyo nd the cap acity o f any s ingl e hum an:it translates into more than \71 ,000 viewing yea rs of movin g pictures in acalendar yea r. Some may say that a good deal of that figure is produced byvideo cam eras monitoring bank coun ters and parking lots, but I do not.W ith or without security monitors, the overall number of moving imageswe are pre se rving today is infi nitesimal compared with mainstream com-mercial production. In India al one several hundred films are made a year,

. . f h d ' h h' es Television in develolJ-and only a t1l1y portlOn 0 t em en 111 t e arc IV . .. .. d 'd h t are era sed eve ry few months.1I1g countnes IS produce on VI eotap es t a ... d go without our even hearing abulilIf so many 0 f those Im ages come anJ IPAOLO CHER CHI USA!

them, then how in the wo rld can we fo rm an idea of what cultural heri tage produ ction of acetate and replacing it with polyester, a ma tter on which


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is? Th e manuscript you are considering shows just the tip of the iceberg ofmoving image decay, and we mi ss the true proportions of it by not directing our attention to what lies below the water line. W e quake with fear at aco llision that has already taken pl ace, and congratulate ourselves that we stillhave a mission to accomplish. Save our mov ie heritage ! Rescue our histo ry!Wh en in fact we have already scrapped the notion of hi story, and are doingjust fin e without it. Wh at I di slike is the pretense that we still have one. Themost fictional fo rm of thi s fantasy is called mov ing image preserva tion, athing promoted by archivists to enhance their own importance. Well , theyare imp ortant, but not for the reasons they imagine. L et me illustrate withan example from my own experience.

Some fi fteen years ago, at the end of a meeting w ith the directo r of one ofthe major European film archi ves, the topic ca me up of the so-ca lled vinega r syndrome, the irreversible chemical process of d ecomposition affectingprints struck on cellulose diacetate and triacetate. The issue, I was told, transcended the fact that thousands of the films we thought we had alreadypreserved for posterity we re heading for th e same kind of decay we had witnessed before they w ere transferred from nitrate stock. What we thought ofas a recent discovery was something chemists had long been familiar with.It was suggested, however, that we not advertise the fac t. 'Imagine theimp ac t it would have on our preserva tion pro jects. Wh at reac tion could youexpect from donors and from sources of publi c funding if th ey we re to learnthat the money already invested in preserving Ollr co llections will keep themsafe for just a short while longe r? ' In a ca tchphrase dear to the archi vists o fthe 0 197 0s and reproduced on man y of their desks in the form of pop-artbadges, Nitrate Won' t Wait. Well, Acetate Won' t Eithe r.

Much has happened since then, but the vinega r syndrome is more thanever with us to knaw at our co llections , and no remedy w ill defeat italtoge ther. Th e best we can d o is to decelerate the process by ke eping thefilms in vaults where temperature and humidity are strictly contro lled.Polyester film - which i s apparently not subj ect to the sa me kind of decay- may or may not be a viabl e alternative (emulsion likewise carries its owndoom , rega rdless of the base) - but it's worth a try. As it is, we have verylittle choice in th e mat ter since manufactur ers are g radu ally phasing ou t theTH F. DF. ATH OF' r l N8 MA 11 2

they have certainly not asked for our advice. Dig ital technology offers theseductive promise of a real miracle: perfect vision, eternal mov ing imagesthat can be reproduced ad infini tum with no loss of visual info rmation - asblatant a lie as the claim that compact discs and cd-roms will last a lifetime. "Meanwhile we go on restoring film on fi lm - acetate o r polyester: why notnitrate? We spend vast amount s of money trying to improve on th emethods of our predecessors, then sit back and hope for the best.It may interest your author to know that there is no reason to take pride

in d emonstrating our defeat in such wealth of detail and with such outrageo us a rrogance. As an antidote to the disease of the ephemeral, he buriesth e ca use of film preserva tion in the graveyard of whi ch hi s collection ofapho ri sms consists. I hope he is satisfi ed. Has anyone ever been na"iveenough to b elieve that cinema col.dd be preserve d like th e cave paint ings ofLascaux? Did we rea lly fool ou rselves into thinking th at Citi{en K ane couldbe saved fo r future generations just as we claim to save th e Si stine C hape l,Moza rt 's Jupiter Symphony, the Taj Mahal and Nefertari 's jewel s? Well, it 'snot possibl e, and it never was.The fact ought t o be faced that the most stable medium known to hum an

civilization is not fi lm, whethe r nitrate cellulose, acetate, or (as far as any one ca n tell) polyester. Ceramics can last for millennia. Glass is reasonahlysafe too. Stone can be affected by climate a nd pollution. Canvas and woodhave probl ems of their own. Something can be done for paper and fr escoes,but gelatine emulsion is a thin laye r of organic matter. Gelatin e. A nimalbones crushed and melted into a semitransparent laye r intermixe d w ithcrystals of silver salts. It won' t last: it ca n' t. Then, wh at are we to do? Pretend it isn' t true? Avo id discussing it? Invoke the dig ital goddess to spa reus the guilty k nowledge of impending and irredeemable doom? Or shallwe just stand by and reinvent our selves as caretakers of a monum entalnecropolis of precious documents, for whom re sto ra tion means prolongingtheir expensive agony?Wh at pe rson in their right mind would wa nt to perform such a role. Per

sonally, I'd mu ch rather turn my attention to more rewarding ac ti vities suchas perfume making, sex and landscape gardening. Nostalgia in any formgives me the c reeps. Br ooding over the past bores me to death, and I prayPAOLO CHER C: HT 11 "A l II 3

for the patience to dea l with peopl e whose co ncern fo r cinema extend s no more th an a while, outliving thei r ace tate relatives and perhaps su rvivin


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1:

further than knowing who turned the crank, how many films were mad e,the number of missing frames, who has the most accura te lists, and who iscleverest at organising them. W ake up and look around you ! Th ese are justmov in g shadows! A mere century of histor y! A hundred years worth ofpatents, matinees and forgo tten celebrities! Other people's leisur e timeturned into the subject of academic pursuits! In terms of geo logy, what isa ce ntury? Less than nothing . In terms of aest hetics, what is a century? Afew pages of a book's chapter, not eve n that, co nsid eri ng film hasn' t ga ineda pl ace in art histo ry textbooks. Why trouble our se lves? Wh en told thatNe w Zealand was at last goi ng to have its own national film arc hive, experiment al filmmaker Len Lye s tared at its newly app oi nted dir ector and asked,'Will it fos te r creativi ty?'

As far as J can see, there is little real justificati on for what we do. And Ihave no patience fo r a di scipline that presume s to instru ct m e in what ar t is(th epolitique des auteurs, a lesson in film style, the hundred best mov ies evermade) or what has va lue as a docum ent (every th ing tha t isn' t art: industrial,edu cation al, scientific, promo tional , amateur, propaga nd a films; pornogra ph y, B-mov ies) . Documents of what? Of th e air, heavy with ind ifference,th at pervades the archives where these images are kept? Of the hyp ocrisyof governments who tell us a film isn ' t worth sav ing unl ess it's a masterpiece, and th en won't give us e nough money to save even those ? W e havemade a s helter fo r millions o f ree ls - anything, whateve r we could find and are now fo rced to go the o ther way around and abid e by the same lawswe have so proudl y defi ed. Th e tyrann y of selection, of choice, o f culturaldiscrimination. Consider it th is way. Th ere's a ph ysician , there are tenth ousand patient s, a nd there's enough medicine to cur e perh aps a hundred.Th e phys icia n is you. Consult yo ur feelings . Which patients will youchoose to treat? And what will you say to the ninety-nine hundred who aredenied trea tment while they wa tch the lucky mi no rit y exi t the hospital?Resto rin g one, ten, or a hundred films is a symbolic ges tu re of little consequence, no matter how import ant the films, unl ess it is matc hed by anawareness of the untreated su pplicant s.

As we discover when we inspect our vault s, nitrate images don't disso lveas quickly as we first be lieved . Quite the contrary. Some of them will last

even our selves. Nitrate ind eed o ften wi ll wa it. Wh ich means that with thsame amount of money needed to duplica te a hundred nitrate prints wcould perhaps prese rve twenty tim es th at many in a climatised vault wi tadequ ate co nditions of temperature a nd humidity. Th e est imated life ofprint can b e doubl ed jus t by bring ing down t he thermostat a few deg reesan interesting bi t of news for th ose who used t o insist that nitra te should bdes troyed after it 's been copied! (Gettin g rid of the original pr int s aftepreservation - officially, for security reasons - was not un co mm on till th01 970s, and the massac re is still goi ng on in so me countries.) Th e wo rk 0a mov ing image archive, therefore, is something more th an ru shing a nitratpr int to the lab and getting its repr odu ction to look as ne w as poss ible. Thmoral to be dr awn from this is that at the dawn o f an era where th e moving pi ctur e is g radually sufferin g the loss o f the object that carries it - ilthi s case, the photographi c film - the object itself is becomin g more va luabl e than ever. Th e season o f lase rdi scs was brief, it 's already historVideotapes will probably last a bit longe r by virtu e of being cheap aneasier to marke t in deve loping co unt ries, but their days too are numberedDV D may o r may not se t the standard for years to co me, but ou r g ran.-children are likely to see it as yet ano ther episode in th e archaeo logy of thmotion pic tur e. Consider the history of reco rded sound. Phonographrunning at 78 rpm lasted about half a centur y. Vin yl long- playing e c o renj oye d a heyday of thirty yea rs befo re heading for the fle a marke ts. Th(comp act disc is already ailing after less than twO decades. What nextSome thing new eve ry year, as in the fashion industry? Ti me will tell, buwhatever the ne xt new technological wo nder pro ves to be, the res ult s wibe the same. Whatever that may happen to be, you wi ll be told there' s n(need to kee p the old nitrate o r acetate jun k, because it is all digitised. La teo'n, they will take back that ad vice. Or pretend they neve r gave it; makeB-line to th e garbage bin (or to th e archive, which has been for them mo ror less th e same th ing until rece ntl y, but much cheaper th an a recyc ling progr amme) to so rt through th e debri s fo r wha t is sa lvageable and transferablto another n ewborn technology - in sho rt , come knock ing o n our doors ihopes we didn't follow th eir example or take thei r ad vice.

All of whi ch means th at an archive for mov ing images wi ll end as a kin


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of museum - in the sense we currently give that term of an asylum for cultural artifacts, notwithstanding the tendency to run th em like high-classamu sement parks. Museums themselves may finally be forced to give acoherent answer to a dilemma they have been living with for decade s. Arethey to be archives in the literal sense, or venues for permanent theme festivals? Are they to preserve or to show? Th e most logical course would beto separate those functions altogether: care for the artifacts in one place, andin another (close enough to the archive) develop strategies for intellectualaccess, but since when do developments foll ow a logical pattern? It is difficult enough to explain the need for the maintenance of collections and toattract funding for that purpose - especially when there is little more toshow than a fr os ted storage room. Showing on a big screen what has beencollected is no less important, but it requires the attention and the interestof the public , and the public is seldom enough willing to let the archiveshave their say.

What happens when there is a collision between the interests of the pro-grammer of fe stivals and those of the collection manager (as the Arti stformerly known as Curator is now called)? To dramatise the point, let usimagine that a consor tium of archives of the moving image has undertakena new reconstruction of wh at we shall call The Absolute Mastelpiece''' ' (Restoration No. 456 ), directed sometime during the 01920s by anUndisputed Genius of Cinema. Let us also assume that the film has b eenavailable for decades. And incidentally, wasn't there another highly toutedrestoration of th e same film just a few years ago? Yes, but some newl y discovered footage may bring us closer to the look the film had in the 01920s.In that case, good! Besides, because of recent improvements in laboratorytechniques , we can now be sure that the images w ill be sharper than ever.In that case, very good! It also seems that an incomplete nitrate negative ofa foreign language version has come to light. In that case, excellent! Andbesides, some tinted prints were unearthed a few years ago, and it may nowbe possible to inject some colour into the preserva tion copies. In that case,splendid! Th ere' s even an annotated script, censorship document s, and acompl ete set of pr eviously unpublished production stills. In th at case, whatare we waiting for ? Let us by all means restore The A bsolule M asterpiece'"for the upt eenth time. There are so many reasons why we should. A fellow

instituti on outside the consortium, the Faraway Film Archive, has also preserved a complete first generation print of another foreign language versionof it, whose footage could be helpful in bringing The Absolute Masterpiece(l1)back in all its pristine glory. For surely no r es toration is pointl ess as long asit does the job better than it' s eve r been don e before. Yet to what degreedoe s that remain true? Will the time ever come when we leave The AbsoluteMaSleTpiec/ 'oalone for a while and concentrate on some of the catastrophesthat are staring us in the face?

A ghost haunts the corridors of the film archives, the ghost of redundantrestoration, otherwise known as new re storation. Its pr esence is hardlyun expected, ye t it has now reached alarming proportions, affecting as itdo es all institutions whose raison d'etre is the preservation of th e movingimage. Th e rationale behind th e phenomenon of the archival remake iscomplex and often contradictory, but here are some of its recurring themes.

1) Audiences are eager to see these fil ms. Collectors would like to ow nthem in the form of viewing copies, whether photomechanic or digital.Before anything else, archivists would like to extend th em their pro tection.But not long after it had established itself as an art and a technique, filmpreserva tion bega n to take on the features of a bu sine ss operation.Ambitiou s terms such as 'r estored', 'reconstructed', or 'digitally remastered' are at times quite mi sleadingly used by corporate entities, byfe stivals, and even a by boisterous minority of film archives in order to pro-mote unpublicised age ndas o f their own, in which case it would be wise totake th eir testimony with a grain of salt. Given a negative or a print in goodshape plus a sufficiency of fund s, it' s all packed up and sent to the lab, wherethe trick is swiftly performed. In some cases all that has happened is aclean-up of the nega tive and the addition of some colour saturation to giveit a brighter look. Which is not exactly a restoration. However, you are forbidden to say so because they not you are the specialists, the prints you saww ere scratched and faded , and you obviously don't remember how bad th eylooked, so hold your tongue and pay close attention to the words of wisdom that are emanating from their publicity departments. Pr oductioncompanies - the very sa me which till 01960 were unfazed by the prospectof losing their older neg a tives through ruin because the y supposed therewas no more money to be made ou t of them - are largely responsible for

thi s, though th ey are now aw are that with just a little e ffort certain of these archives will continue their (not so peaceful) slumbers on our shelves.


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old films may be turned into breadwinners again.2) Th e public and private insti tutions who finance res to ration projec ts

are often moti va ted by a desire fo r pres tige that rend er s them indifferent tothe fate of thousands of interes ting but tot ally unprestigious titl es that willnever attr act the attention of ma ss aud iences. (Sales of the average v id eorelease of a silent film in the United States rarely exceed 1500 copies.) Th eprice to be paid for the dicta torship of public opinion i s leg itimate when itpromotes film preserva tion as a cause wo rthy in itself ra ther than a mereluxury for a privileged elite. But in some countries there is a perver se disposition to 'resto re ' films which are already prese rved elsewhere. There issomething downright immoral about a duplication of effort upon a classicfor no other reason than to assert a claim to prominence in the fi eld, whena hundred films of unknown origin but of real interest are left to ro t in thevaults.

3) After yea rs of ran sacking their holdings, the archives have few los tmas terwork s left to redisco ve r. A ge m here a nd there perhaps, but they getrarer all the time. Gone is the go lden age of the triumphant reemer gence ofthe 'lo st' film , an age that owed so much to the initiatives of institutions likethe N ederlands Filmmuseum and the N ational Film Center o f Tokyo, butby now the bottom of the barrel is all but naked to view. Film festivals ar eincreasingly agg ressive (' what unkn own treasure can we spring this time?' ),because archiv es have been spoiling them fo r year s. When the gold has beenmined to a fare-th ee-we ll , the Forty-niner packs up and goes hom e to countwhat was all alon g locked in the safe.

4) Restoring a badly damaged fi lm takes a lot o f time and money. Filmrestor ation worth the name requires va st amounts of pa tience and dedication. Howe ver grea t the benefits may be to future generat ion s, it m ay lackinstant gratification for the intelligentsia of the present. Few benefactors willg ive film preservation their unconditional supp ort. Th ey want to know whatis to be restored, and to be assured that, once restored , they will like it, orat least that it will appeal to large audiences. Non-fiction shorts o f the ea rlyyear s? No thanks, but how ab out some Gr eta G arb o? Incidentally, one thingour successor s are sure to inherit is the ability to show no more than a tinyfraction of what has been preserved. More than 95% of what is now in the

. . ...... . . . . . "y y ",...., r\ ' . T ", l.l , 11 il

Whether we like it or not, the grea test conservative in this game is the public. An d the public is always right when gove rnment o fficials regard it as apotential electorate. What answer can there be to that subtle form of blackmail , g iven the cost of the end eavour: several th ousand dollars per r eel offilm . For the sake of some highly visible (even though in the long run irrelevant) pr oject, don ors may be willing to th row money out the window forthe shee r con spicuousness of the gesture, but they dr aw the line at preserving obscure titles, worthy though they may be. Th e commercial laborato riesto which naive o r opportunistic profession als bring their copies sometimeswork in haste, o n the premise that few will kno w the difference between area lly good print and a mediocre dupe. A single negative is a less than idealoption for colour preservation. A separation negative (consisting as it doesof thr ee masters, on e fo r each primary colour ) is far more stabl e, but it coststhr ee times as much as a standard print and occupies three ti mes the spac ein the vault. In an enterprise so costly in eve ry way, no wonder so few co lourfilms have been restored with the most adequate technology. Nor is it anywonder that the ex isting preservation copies are fading away li ke any standard colour print , only more slowly. Curators are we ll aware of this, butdi slike mentioning it for fea r of jeopardising their funding.

5) As o ften happens when a valid principle is appli ed too literally, thenotion that each print is an original with its own historical identity can bean excuse for an unjustifiabl e ex penditure o f time, money and energy. I f acertain Am erican film survives in a sing le copy found in the N etherland s,and has Dutch intertitles, it is needl ess to say a good plan to restore it as is,lest w e o therwise be un abl e to see it at all. But if that sam e film is alreadyfully preserved in its Am er ican release version, and still another copy of itsurvives with titles in a different language but much shorter in length , I failto see the rationale of restoring it once aga in. It is so metimes argued thatsuch a res tora tion is justifi ed b ec ause the film w as originally seen by anotheraudience in a different fo rm . But a fter all , how far are we w iJling to ca rrythat principle? Apply ing it in an indiscriminate way can be wa steful andrid iculous. In the late 01990s there was an uproar over the duplica tion by theCinemathegue fran


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found at the UCLA Film and Television Archive in L os An geles. In replyto protests at the redundancy of the project the a rchive explained that theshort version of this Am e rican film was an artifact of French culture becauseof its original distribution in France in that form . And the reply is co rrectin the literal sense that the term 'national film heritage' should no t be limitedto the films actually produ ced within its distribution territory. In just thatway, the Jean D esmet co llec tion, a remarkable co rpus of 920 titles madebetween 01 906 and 01 936 consisting mainly of non-Dutch productions, isunquestionably part of the Du tch film heritage beca use of the role playedby these films in the histo ry of film distribution in the Netherlands plus itsstatus as a coherent , self-contained constellation of prints. W ell and good.But consider the 50-minute Am erican version of Cab iria held by theMuseum of Modern Ar t in Ne w York. MoMA does we ll to pro tect this dr astic abridgement of Pastrone 's histo rical epic, yet imag ine what the respon sewo uld be if it we re to announce a new restoration of it. Mos t people wouldprefer to see the ve rsion res tor ed by the Museo N azionale del Cinema inTurin at 183 minutes and 16 frames per second , and who could quarrel withthem. Yet is so happens that th e MoMA print contains a crucial shot (o f anaked child held by a p air of hands toward som e rag ing flames) missingfrom the standard version of Turin until the mid-O 1990s. Ind eed it was thediscovery of that shot that p ersuaded the Tu rin archive that a new restoration of Cabiria wa s in order.

All ve ry sensible and rational. In the meantime, while so me festivaladvertises the premiere of a new version of The A bsolute M as terp ieceO


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disca rd the originals. We've all heard them: 'Hey, I can watch them on mycomputer. Why don't you do likew ise ? What's the big deal? Wh y spend afortune on conserva tio n? Didn't you just say they'll decompose just thesame? Th ey 're not yours anyway. Th ey belong to the H o ll ywo od majo rs,so let th em do it.' There is an element of truth in thi s: the archives can seethe advantage of sparing their precious prints the wea r and tear of projection by making them ava il able in ot her forms, and it carries the additionalattractions of egalitar ianism (easy access for all) and cost-effectiveness(cheaper reference copies). But by yielding to it we lend oursel ves to thesituation of the touri sts wh o spend a day in line waiting to see Cezanne, follow it by a twen ty-minute stro ll thr ough the galleries, and cap it off bygo ing to the g ift shop to pick up a pos ter of th eir favorite painting. It is aritual that pays lip service to the dut y of edu cating the public, even whileencouraging to its Been There, D one That. An d who can bl ame them ?

Th e second point to be stressed is that a viable answer is yet to be foundto the obsolescence created by every new hardwa re system. Th e best solution we ve been able to arrive at so fa r is to duplicate all moving imagesfrom one sys tem to ano ther before the new technology has thoroughly killedits predecesso r. Th e very discussion of whether or not digital technology(for example) w ill allow us to transfer all the decaying film into di gital form,preserve it as such for an indefinite period of time, and then conve rt it backto film again is self-delu so ry. For even if it we re technically feasible - and,for the present at least, it is not eco nomically so - there are tech nologies o fthe mov ing image that will not lend themse lves to such a proceeding. Howto preserve artworks mad e on cd-rom? What techniques should be used torestore video ga mes? Will there eventu ally be a museum to preserve themoving and speaking images available through the wo rld wide web? (To thebest of my knowledge, the Library of Con gress is still alone among publicinstitutions in experimenting wi th that idea by saving all the wo rld's websites once a month. Th e dr awback that makes this preservation projectinaccessible to the user is that there is a goo d deal of pornography in it.) Itis not surprising that a good 80% of the films produced during the silentperiod are los t. Th e percentage of loss of motion pictures made within thelast ten yea rs will exceed even that. Th e futu re holds escala ting percen tagesTHE DEATH OF CI NEl\ 'IA 122

va tion will soo n be a dr op in the bucke t. We w ill be unable even to estimat(the number of mov ing images lost because there will be no way of knowin g how many there had been .

Amid all this confusion, lab technicians can only respond with a nervowgigg le to the la test cause to be unearthed for the imminent decay andof motion picture stock, one of the many deaths of cinema we hav e beerhearing about since 01920. Th ey are all aware that the entertainment industry won't risk its money on films it will be unabl e to exploit because 0ano ther hi-tech turnover. Their promises of new webs, lasers and t e l l i t eare mad e to a consumer who will she ll out hard cash to acquire them onc(the market research indicates the time is ripe. Film stock will co ntinue to b(produ ced for a while, if only for master elements such as camera nega ti vesTh e reasons for the survival of this nineteenth-century invention are easenough to find . Th e uses and potenti al of 35 mm are well-nigh infinite. YOlcan transfer it to wh ateve r you please, and yo u needn't concern yourselwith tech nological change for th e simple reason that photographic film isuch a simple object , so simple that is hasn't descended into obsolescencin ove r a hundred years and , better yet, yo u don't need much equipment;see its images. Computer programmes become hi eroglyphs within a shortime, but you'll always be able to build a projector and mak e a screen. Alyou need is a light source, a lens an d a shutter plus a large white surface.

But if you really want to know what the final chapter w ill be of youaphoristic author's unfini shed manuscript, let me tell you. Th e day wilcome (and soo ner than you think) w hen 35mm film w ill no lon ge r be mad!because H ollywood w ill no longer need it, and there w ill be absolute!nothing that anyone can do about it. What company would willingly maintain a complex and costly facility for a handful of in stitutions whosdema nd for archival film stock would not even meet the cost of its ope rations? Un abl e to preserve cinema by means of cinema, the arc hives (n(doubt after a few patheti c gestures such as propos ing to manufacture filfor their own use) will be forced to face up to reality and go for otheoptions. Projecting a film will become fir st a special circumstance, thenrare occur rence, and finall y a n exceptiona l event. Eventua lly no thing at awi ll be proj ected, either because all surviving copies wi ll be worn to a frazP A L0 CH E { CHI US1\ I

zle or d eco mposed, o r b eca use somebody dec id es to stop show ing them in (British Film In stitute). But they have a co mm on tendency towards a con


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o rder to save for future duplica tion onto another forma t th e few prints thatremain. Th ere wi ll be a final sc reenin g attended by a fin al audi ence, perhaps ind eed a lo nely spectato r. With that, ci nema will be talked about andwr itten about as so me remo te hallucin ation , a dre am that lasted a centuryor two. Future ge neration s wi ll be hard put to und erstand why so manypeop le s pent their lives in an effo rt to resuscitate that dream.

I f a ll this co mes to pass, our successo rs will have to face once agai n,though under diffe rent co nditi ons, the same dil em ma s that face u s. Shallth ey try to prese rve all mov ing images or onl y some of them? Th e answe rmay lie in ano ther question. Must a museum cover th e entire hi story of ar t,from prehi sto ric scratches on bones to Damien Hirst , to justi fy its existence? Museum s exist of the arts of ancient Gr eece, o f pre-C olumbianpottery, of French Impressionis ts, o f Medieva l scu lpture. Which most ofus accept. Th en why not accep t th e idea of one archive devoted exc lusivelyto cin ema, ano ther to video, and on and on? Still, the not ion of a Louvreof the movi ng image ho ld s a powe rful attracti o n for us, poss ibly beca usewe pretend th at mov ing images are too yo un g for a specialised hi sto ry.Whi ch is a g rea t pity. Befo re lo ng, circum stance s may force us to mod ifyou r ambiti ons and see how we ll we can operate th e eq ui va lent of a Museedu Jeu de Paume. A century of cinema is mo re than enough to co pe with.Th ere would be plenty o f work fo r everyone for yea rs to come.

In the sho rt run (in accordance with the tend ency to see film and videoas separa te fo rm s of express ion despit e thei r mutual influences) the distinc tions a mong the various co mponen ts of a museum mi g ht eve n reso lvethemse lves w ithin the sa me a rchiv al institution. It migh t pl ease us to thinkof it as a producer, a resea rch cen tre, a perm anen t encyclopedi a, a publi sher, a schoo l for profess ional training despite the ri sk implic it in aproli feration of goa ls, in doing a bit of eve ry thing while no thing ge ts done.But it shou ld be ack nowledged that t he discipline of mov in g image preserva tion has reso lved itsel f into at leas t two practica l philoso phies: theinstitution that features a sing le specialty, be it conserva tio n (Library ofCongress), prog rammin g (C in ematheque francraise), arch iva l tra ining(George Eastman Ho use) o r dev otion to a single theme (I mperi al Wa rMuseum ), and the one that aims at a sy nth esis of a va ri ety of functionsrp u r. n C 1\ rp U (\ 1:' ('- T1\Tt" 1\ ,[ ,

cept o f cinema as a spec ial eve nt. In stead of steadily declining as repertoryho uses o f permanent education , they mig ht ye t beco me institutions of thespecial a ttr ac tio n. Th e cult of the director's cut has a lready given us Touchof Evil as Orson W elles int ended it , and The Wild Bunch w ith the altern ateending; the ideo logy of the longe r ve rsion has already given us Nghts ofCabiria and Rocco and H is B ro th ers befo re the cuts; interest in bringingclass ic c in ema to new audiences has already given us Vertigo in its DolbyDi g ital vers ion . Th e filmgo ing experi ence has already assumed so methingof the mys tique surrounding an opera event. A yo unge r ge neration willcome to the thea tre becau se of its curi os ity abo ut the s treng ths of th e bigscreen, or beca use it has discovered that the pro mise o f a Global Ci nematheque in elec tronic fo rm is a delusion, for what would the dema nd befor the com plete wo rks o f Allan Dw an on their hom e computer ? Th enotion that a di g ital o r satellite library would make it poss ibl e to browseth rough an entire histo ry of c in ema o n our monitors is an astoni shin g m isconcepti on, failing as it does to recognise the rea lities of a mass of obscuremo tio n pictures that o nl y a hand ful of people wi ll eve r wa nt to see and eve nfe we r distribu to rs w ill bother maki ng accessible for cas h. And eve n if the ydid , too many films wou ld be kep t out of public co nsumption beca use ofthe ir uncerta in lega l status.

Copyr ight contro l was bo rn from th e int enti on of protecting and promoting righ ts of indi vidual crea tiv ity. Th at noble concern has nowdege nera ted into a n obscene lega l construct for the furtherance of eco nom icpower. Th e produ cers of a film are usua lly its owners, although in somecountries the moral claims of its o ther co ntributors - suc h as dir ec tors,writers, performe rs, c inematog raph ers, com pose rs - are also asserted andpro tected, a preroga tive that some tim es becomes hereditary, descending tofamilies and heirs. On ce upon a time films we re abandoned or des troye dafter th eir com mercial release. Now they are cu ltural treasur es. But who wasit after a ll who rescued them from ob livion and loss? An archive may own acopy of a fi lm with out enjoy ing the right to ex hibit it. As if the interve ntionthat preve nted its disappearance we re a theft to be forgi ven!A good ques tion for the owners and pr oprieto rs of mor al rights would be:

wher e were you when H enri Langlois and Jacques Ledo ux and James Card

were paying out of their own slim resources to avo id seeing ton s of nitrate Which is exac tly what our predecessor s did at a time when nobody wou


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.

film loaded into dumpsters? Would not mere justice have required that theybe reimbursed? Ha ve you no responsibility for the costs in curr ed in fiftyyea rs of preserva tion and storage? Is that not a moral right of no less weightthan your own? It was their choice to preserve films without seeking per-mi ss ion. Nobody fo rced th em to do it, and there is some leg itimacy in theirright to go on doing it without being treated like burglars. N o one will denythe legitimacy of copyright for the encour agement of cultural industry inthe 19th century, but today its une ven application is an obstruction to thatvery purpose, and th e una vailing struggle against the illegal duplication ofmoving images thr ough th e electroni c media shows how urgent is the needfo r some other framewo rk, some lega l control of crea tivity that doesn ' tinhibit crea tivity itself. Th e time must come when the ri ghts to movingimages made for commercial purposes must give w ay to the cl aims of his-tory. It is not a new idea that a pluralist society must be abl e to pr omoteculture as a driving force o f its economy, and not the o ther way around.

And so it happens that movin g image archives are keenest to preserve thefilms that have fallen into the public domain. Th ey existed long before theparanoia of copyri ght pre va iled over common sense. Other film s of recentmake go under the name of 'orphans' in the a rchives, either because theirprodu ction companies no longer exist Or because of an oversight of copy-right renewa l. Either the relatives of director s and p erformers are dead, orit never occurred to them to assert thei r claims. Should these films beallowed to crumbl e to du st b ecause they are of no monetary value? Howare the archives to und erstand their own reason for existing? Are theyresponsible for what should have been done by oth ers, or wait till the las tpossible minute to foll ow the dictates of consc ience? I f that 's a ll copyrightis good fo r, then let it be damn ed. What use and justice does it have? Futuregenerations may h ave to wait before seeing the film s, bu t their lega l owner sshould be forc ed to wait with them. Let them bring us to court. We are eagerfor an opportunity to publi cise th is mo nstrOus inequity. Let them prohibitpublic access. Patience is the archivi st 's first virtue, and the copyrightpredators will lea rn what patience is when they are confronted with the ta sko f exploiting moving images as lots of real estate. W e can wait, but mean-while shall we or shall we not preserve them?

listen to them. It may even be good for us to do it again for a while, prvided we remember that all our talk about bud ge ts and legal rights, abolthe digital age and the v inegar syndrome is meaningless if it does not pnser ve a thing that is no le ss precious than moving images themsel ves,right to see them. Seeing is an art unto itself. And absolutely nothing copels us to turn what is for us a passion into a business. We may s uccumbthat temptation now and then, wh en our goals require it. But let us putend to all this angs t ove r the end of cinema. I hav e no particular fondnefor Bru ce Chatwin's writings, but I do find there are some accurate hiabout museum s in his fictional work, and hi s idea of dismantling theeve ry fifty yea rs in o rder to restore life to the objects the y contain has sointerest and appea l. Li fe is short, and cinema won't last forever. But for noit 's s till here. It may beco me something else, but so what if it doe s? Th eare worse things. Physical pain. No t enough food, or none at all. Beinalone. Losing interest in the art of seeing . If we want cinema to exist a femOre years, let us first preserve the good things th at make it one of lifeenrichments. Th ere is a chance of succeeding as long as we can accept tparadox that a film screening in a museum, contrary to wh at it has beer: ,a popular art and entertainment for ove r a ce ntury, is a ga la so iree withboos ted price o f admi ssion and a certain amount of form ality. I d on' t weeneckties to them, except to the ones you attend .