Film Preservation: what has and has not been preserved

Since last class, my topic has changed from focusing on digital restoration to a focus on what films have been preserved and what has not, along with how this influences the film canon. 

Throughout my research, I have discovered which archives ended up with the silent films from 1912-1929. The major archives these films are housed include the Library of Congress, Museum of Modern Art, George Eastman House, and UCLA Film & Television Archive. There are a number of films that are lost or incomplete. Many lost films are ones that have decayed over time, have been misplaced, or are in private collections. Much of the focus during the 30’s-50’s was to save the most important films which caused less important films to decay and become lost. There is now a need to create a program to repatriate U.S. feature films from foreign archives due to the fact that many silent films only survive in foreign-release versions. I have also learned the basics of film preservation and how to identify films that do not have titles or unknown dates. 

I still need to gather information on specific case studies of films from the George Eastman Museum and assess their state of preservation. Of the surviving silent films, which ones or have all been digitally restored? Regarding the Library of Congress film registry, I want to do more research as to what is happening with the films not yet on the registry and what happens to the films once they do get put on the registry. Lastly, research into the preservation status of the films that do remain. 

Introduction

Hello everyone! My name is Claire Popoli, and I'm a 4th year Museum Studies student. I'm a Rochester native, but before coming to RIT in 2015 I went to college in San Francisco where I studied fashion design, and then cinamotgraphy. Neither of which courses of study really interested me. I moved back home in 2013 and essentially started over at Monroe Comunity College, where I fell in love with art history and decided to transfer to R.I.T. to study Museum Studies. As a second year at R.I.T. I got hired in the R.I.T. Archives Collections and the Vignelli Center for Design Studies and realized my passion for archival work.

This past summer I spent most of my time working on campus at the Vignelli Center, where I assisted with processing collections, exhibition work, and starting a new digitization project of the Design Vignelli exhibition in the gallery attached to the University Gallery on campus. I also had the opportunity to intern at the Heorge Eastman Museum in their Stills, Posters and Paper collections archive. During my internship, I catalogued, implemented metadata and rehoused many collection materials.

After graduation this Spring I am not entirely certain what I want to do next. I do know I want to go to grad school, but what to study is another question.

My coworker at the Vignelli Center, Emily Sharp, photographing a Design Vignelli collection item to be added to the online exhibition.

Nice To Meet...Me...

Hi everyone, my name is Lauren Hubbs, I am a fourth year in the Museum Studies program. Before I found this program I was majoring in Motion Picture Science where I quickly learned I was not cut out for coding. My interests lie with film, film preservation and film archiving; and Museum Studies was the perfect place to start to learn all the basics with museums and archiving. 

I didn't start falling in love with Rochester until my third year and I'm glad I fell in love because my plans for graduate school have me staying in Rochester. The Selznick School of Film Preservation is where I want to be after this year. Fingers crossed. 

This summer, 2017, I worked at the Visual Studies Workshop (VSW) in their film archive inspecting magnetic tape, digitizing tapes, and cataloging film. I also was beyond thrilled to get an internship at the George Eastman Museum working in the Moving Image Department working directly with the Collections Manager, Deborah Stoiber, and a couple of students from the graduate program. I did hands-on work with film, doing inspection and inspection reports, creating catalogue records, film labels, and viewing films on a Steenbeck flatbed. Overall, one of the best and most unforgettable summers I've ever had. I'm hoping my work at VSW and the Eastman Museum will help me produce a thesis idea...soon.

Below is a picture I took from a portion of the film "Garden of Allah", which you can tell is in rough shape. This is a film blister caused by a projector light. This is a rare shape for a film blister to look like a smiley face :) 

Wishing you all the best this semester!

Lauren