The
Moving Image
University of Minnesota Press
www.upress.umn.ed
ISBN 0-8166-3988-4
Reviewed by Michael R. (Mike) Mosher
mosher@svsu.edu, Saginaw Valley State
University, University Center MI 48710
USA.
The Moving Image is the the journal
of the Association of Moving Image Archivists
<www.amianet.org>, published twice
each year, in Spring and Fall. This group
is devoted to film, television, video
and digital image preservation.
This safekeeping of visual history centers
on cinematic preservation and restoration.
The latter process is often more ambitious,
in that it entails seeking lost parts
of movies that have been excised from
the print or prints at hand. Stories of
various archives around the world contacted
towards this end reads like an international
detective story.
The Spring 2003 issue contains "Documenting
the Process of Film Preservation"
by Karen F. Gracy. She discusses the multiple
steps in the preservation process, from
selecting and inspecting a film, procuring
funds for the work, obtaining and cataloguing
new elements sending it to the lab, and
providing access and exhibition to scholars
and enthusiasts. Her methodical and diagrammatic
essay is a chapter from her thesis, which
promises to be a helpful work in this
area.
Jennie Saxena writes on "Preserving
African American Cinema: The Emperor Jones
(1933)", an important work that the
author claims we know only in a diministhed
form. This movie made an impression on
this reviewer when viewed in college,
albeit in one of the incomplete, inconsistent
and murky 16 millimeter prints that were
all that was available prior to its recent
restoration.
Other essays recount the sad tale of the
Library of Congress' neglect of the Mary
Pickford collection, the ways fragmentation
and segmentation of a film was noted in
the archive of the Lumiere Brothers Animated
Views, and the impact of 1920s British
colonial trade policy upon the growth
of the Indian film industry in the time
of the Indian Cinematograph Committee.
There is also an interview with Museum
of Modern Art Film Library archivist Eileen
Bowser. Its reviews include a roundup
of the various projects assembled from
the archives of Shackleton's polar expidition,
a review of a relatively obscure Chris
Marker film, of Ralph Edgertons
book on documentarian Ken Burns, and more.
It has been estimated that only a tenth
of the films of the silent era still exist.
Preservationists and archivists have much,
and continual, work before them. Without
their craft and vigilance, even more of
the worlds filmed visual legacy
will turn to dust--or in some cases, combust.