Tag: FIAF

FIAF FILM RESTORATION SUMMER SCHOOL

Film restoration online course: from April 27th to June 8th 2022 (on Wednesdays)
Restoration lectures and Il Cinema Ritrovato film festival: Bologna, Cineteca facilities, from June 25th to July 3rd 2022
Restoration workshops: Bologna, L’Immagine Ritrovata, July 4th-15th 2022

The Fédération Internationale des Archives du Film (FIAF), the Association des Cinémathèques Européennes (ACE), Cineteca di Bologna and L’Immagine Ritrovata are thrilled to announce that after the forced postponement of the 2020 edition, the ninth FIAF Film Restoration Summer School will finally take place in Bologna in summer 2022.

The Coronavirus-19 pandemic has had a big impact on our lives during the last two years, but the institutions behind the Summer School have come together once again in order to renew and strengthen their long lasting cooperation, a bond that aims to pursue the spread of film preservation and conservation through the international community. Specialists, film archive staff and students that are looking forward to experience the complete restoration workflow in our two-decade experienced film restoration laboratory are more than welcome to apply.

The program and further details will be available on January 2022.

Please contact frss@immagineritrovata.it if you wish to receive further information and subscribe to our mailing list.

Coordinator: Elena Tammaccaro

Secretariat: Charlotte Oddo

Archival Research in Print: Physical Characteristics of Early Films as Aids to Identification

On Friday the 23rd, editor Camille Blot-Wellens and executive publisher Christophe Dupin delivered a presentation at Il Cinema Ritrovato on the newly expanded edition of Harold Brown’s Physical Characteristics of Early Films as Aids to Identification, following its publication in November of 2020.

The project, which was first proposed by Blot-Wellens in 2014, remains true in content and spirit to Harold Brown’s original edition, published by FIAF in 1990. In addition to preserving and clarifying his work with the integration of more than 900 images into the body of the text, and the inclusion of updated information in footnotes and a comprehensive index, the second section of the new edition is comprised of additional research, with a wealth of contributions from archivists specialising in film-identification.

A particularly valuable feature of the expanded text concerns the dating of film from specific production companies: Blot-Wellens and collaborators from a range of archives and cinematheques provide critical findings which enable the precise identification of film stock from AGFA, Pathé, Fuji, and other production companies by year.

Dupin began with a tribute to Brown, sharing details from his extraordinary life as a pioneer in archival preservation and film identification with attendees at Auditorium DAMS lab. From his post as an office boy at the BFI at just 15 years old, Brown would go on to be at the forefront of the creation of scientific film identification methods, a key player in FIAF’s Technical and Preservation Commissions, and an active educator, continuing to teach and publish even after his retirement. The expanded work is an extension of this remarkable legacy.

Additional remarks were made by Martin Koerber, head archivist at the Deutsche Kinemathek and author of the volume’s foreword, as well as Peter Bagrov of the Eastman Museum, whose essay, ‘Preliminary Notes on Soviet Nitrate Film Stock and Other Aids to Identification of Russian and Soviet Films,’ is included in the new edition.

Harold Brown’s Physical Characteristics of Early Films as Aids to Identification is available for online order through FIAF and North American distributor Indiana University Press, as well as for purchase at the festival book fair in Bologna.