Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film
The first generation of film archivists were essentially
collectors interested in showing their treasures. Before
the age of television, old films were virtually impossible
to see, since producers had little interest in saving
material that had outlived its economic usefulness.
Furthermore, mainstream cultural institutions and governments considered the cinema a crass commercial
enterprise, a form of communication not worthy of serious intellectual consideration. Having what Roland
Barthes has called ‘‘bad object’’ status, the cinema was
mistreated by governments, institutions of education,
and commercial interests alike.
In the 1920s, a minority of intellectuals began championing the cinema as a new art form, advocating the
creation of noncommercial screening spaces and the
establishment of archives for the preservation of old
films. Once sound film was introduced between 1927
and 1931, however, the matter of the medium’s survival
became critical, since silent films were considered obsolete. Yet in that era many critics, historians, and cinephiles believed that silent film was a superior art form,
one that deserved to be preserved. The first film archive
in the world was established at the Museum of Modern
Art (MoMA, New York) in 1935 by Iris Barry and her
husband, John Abbott—both cinephiles who understood that the cinema was potentially a modern art. A
year later, two young Frenchmen, Henri Langlois
(1914–1977) and Georges Franju (1912–1987), founded
the Cine´mathe`que Franc¸aise in Paris as a private initiative. Before the decade was out, two more archives were
founded in London (the National Film Library) and
Berlin (Reichsfilmarchiv). While the latter two were
national in scope, the MoMA Film Library and the
Cine´mathe`que collected internationally. Together, these
archives established the Fe´de´ration Internationale des
Archives du Film (FIAF) in 1938. After World War II,
FIAF expanded considerably with the founding of film
archives in Switzerland, Prague, Amsterdam, Warsaw,
Rochester (New York), and Moscow. By 1959, FIAF
consisted of thirty-three members and by the turn of
the millennium had over 120 archives associated with
the organization.
The priority of the members of FIAF, then, was to
collect films. Not without some justification, it was
thought that the very act of collecting prints also contributed to their preservation. Just as important as collecting films was the act of screening them, making them
live again on the screen for a new generation of filmgoers.
Most of the first generation of film archivists, including
Henri Langlois (Paris), James Card (Rochester), Maria
Adriana Prolo (Turin), Jan de Vaal (Amsterdam), Jacques
Ledoux (Brussels), Einar Lauritzen (Stockholm), and
Freddy Buache (Lausanne), were indeed film collectors
rather than film archivists. Films were stored in vaults
that often did not meet standards for archival security,
and catalogs consisted more often than not of lists
printed in loose-leaf notebooks.
On the positive side, many films were indeed saved
from destruction because the mentality of the film collector precluded throwing anything away. In other words,
most of the first generation believed in saving every film
they could get their hands on, legally, semi-legally, or
illegally. Indeed, until quite recently film archives often
operated without the blessing of film companies and
rights holders; according to the strict letter of the law,
only the rights holders could acquire films, making the
very act of collecting illegal.
Finally, by the end of the 1960s, numerous countries around the world had established film and television archives, often funded by their governments. This
was the case in Canada, for example, where, after
numerous government and private initiatives, a national
film archive was established in 1969. In the United
States, however, moving image archives remained for
the most part private affairs. At the same time, film
companies soon realized that they had lost many films,
which now only existed in the archives—films that
could not be resold to television and later remarketed
as videos.