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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 Edgerton’s 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 world’s filmed visual legacy will turn to dust--or in some cases, combust.

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Updated 1st May 2004


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