Category Archives: Documents

Cinematograph Films: Their National Value and Preservation

March 5, 2007 By in Archives and museums, Documents 2 Comments

We intend to have a series of posts on The Bioscope highlighting some key texts in our field which are being made freely available online, through transcription or digitisation. In particular we will be highlighting documents available from the Internet Archive. This is a superb source of downloadable documents, images, software, audio and video, as well as ‘archiving’ the Internet itself, to a degree, made accessible through its Wayback Machine.

Suitably following on from the recent posts we have had on the early history of film archives, the first text is Alex J. Philip, Cinematograph Films: Their National Value and Preservation (London: Stanley Paul & Co. 1912). This booklet is a call for the preservation of films as historical records. It argues the necessity of making visual records of our time for the benefit of future generations, not just of major historic events but of the arts, crafts and customs of the nation which one day must pass. After giving a short history of the development of the cinema, and in particular the Kinemacolor system devised by Charles Urban and G.A. Smith, Philip makes practical proposals for a National Cinematographic Library. He considers selection, preservation, film handling, classification, and cost (£20,000, “a mere bagatelle for a national institution”), and indicates that Urban had made a “munificent offer” to present his Kinemacolor films to the nation, were such a library to be created. There is something particularly tragic about this, given that the vast majority of Urban’s Kinemacolor films are now lost. Philip was a librarian, and his arguments are generally that looking after films will be little different to looking after books. There is no mention of the fire hazard presented by nitrate film. He also proposes matching motion picture records to sound recordings, with particular reference to a Voice Museum established at the Paris Opéra in 1907.

It is an idealistic document, well worth reading (it was originally published in the journal The Librarian). Philip makes mention of fiction films as a new phenomenon, but says he is not concerned with “the reproduction of enacted scenes”. It is curious, given the calls for the preservation of actuality films as historical records made at this time, that it was not until dramatic films came to be valued by the intelligensia that the first national film archives were seriously mooted, eventually appearing for the first time in the early 1930s.

The booklet is available in DjVu format (1.2MB), PDF (3.7MB) or plain text (29KB).

The camera as historian

February 24, 2007 By in Archives and museums, Documents, Non-fiction

More on Louis Stanley Jast and the proto-film archive at Croydon Public Library (see yesterday’s post). I dug out a copy of The Camera as Historian, by H.D. Gower, L. Stanley Jast and W.W. Topley (London: Sampson Low, Marston and Co. Ltd., 1916) in the British Library. The book is predominantly about the use of photography as a civic and social record, but it makes some comments about cinematography which reinforce what Jast told The Bioscope in 1914. There is further detail on the system for viewing films without projection, designed by Thomas H. Windibank, manager of the London Electric Hall cinema in Croydon, with diagrams and photographs. The text is most concerned with practical matters of taking, storing and making accessible photographic collections, but it has some fascinating general arguments. It asserts that photography’s power to record actuality “implies a corresponding responsibility” i.e. that local authorities had a duty to form photographic collections, by which the authors mean cinematographic records as well. The opening quotation boldly asserts the importance of the image for the study of history:

The means whereby the past, particularly in its elation to human activities and their results, may be reconstructed and visualized, can be roughly grouped under the four headings of material objects, oral tradition, written record, and lastly, graphic record, whether pictorial or sculptural. It is no part of our purpose to belittle the value of any of the first-named tools of the historian or scientist; but it will probably be conceded that in many respects the last named has a value greatly outweighing the others. It is obvious, moreover, that the lure of the graphic as of all other record rests entirely upon its accuracy. Now, not only is absolute fidelity to the original beyond attainment in the case of the artist, but the work even of the most painstaking draughtsman is often coloured by his individuality to such an extent that the detailed characteristics of the original he is reproducing assume in his work aspects quite foreign to their real nature.

Then comes the insistence that local authorities should be collecting film:

Hitherto little or no attention appears to have been paid to the enormous value of preserving, in such a way as to ensure their availability for the public of the future, the splendid photographic records of our national life contained in the cinematographic films daily taken for exhibition at “moving picture” theatres. This subject will be treated in a later chapter; but its importance warrants a reference to it here. Here the municipality – or whatever be the local governing body – surely has some interest, nay, the authors would urge, has a clear duty.

Jast does appear to suggest in this next extract that the value of film is as a series of photographs (though he does note elsewhere the importance of seeing films either as still images or in motion), but he explains how easy it should be to start up such a collection:

We have left to the last reference to what is perhaps the most valuable source of photographic records, at all events among those illustrating past events. We refer to the kinematograph films taken for display at the many “Picture Palaces” which have sprung up in such profusion amongst us during the last few years. Many of the noteworthy local happenings (at all events in towns of any size) are recorded in this manner. A few days after exhibition their commercial value has sunk to nothing, and they represent to the picture showman merely so many feet of waste celluloid. The value of a film containing over 4000 technically excellent photographic transparencies would, in this form, be about 3d.! It has been found that requests, by a suitable body (e.g. a Public Library) for the gift of these records are usually met by a most courteous acquiescence; while if a strictly commercial view of the matter be taken, the cost of acquiring the records – by way of purchase – need be so slight as to be negligible in comparison with their real value … That this source of material has been hitherto almost unrecognized is unfortunate. It would be deplorable if, henceforward, through apathy or lack of foresight, any opportunity should be missed of securing such invaluable records.

Jast would have been pleased to know about the regional film archive movement in Britain, but dismayed to learn that it was not instituted until the 1970s. How much local film was lost in the interim? I will now try and find out what happened to the Croydon film collection.

Croydon and film archives

February 23, 2007 By in Archives and museums, Documents, Non-fiction, Preservation

Recently I was asked to find some historical quotations about the need for film archives. Calls for a museum for the preservation of films for all time are almost as old as film itself, even since Robert Paul tried to get the British Museum to take a number of his films in December 1896 (without success). The first true film archive is generally held to be the Imperial War Museum, effectively created in 1919, but there were several collections across the world in existence before them which could variously be described as film museums or libraries.

In my search through my papers, I was fascinated to come across an article by Langford Reed, ‘Films Museums: What Has Been Achieved’, The Bioscope, 30 July 1914, p. 471. In a survey of what was being done worldwide, Reed reported that “the national records office at Madrid” had a cinematograph section, while in Brussels the Congo Museum had a section devoted to “the preservation of films of wild animal life”. He says that films of religious interest were being held in the Vatican Museum. New York Public Library had a “cinematographic storehouse”, and the Indian state of Baroda had formed a library of “instructive films” which was being added to by the private cinematograph operator of the Gaekwar of Baroda. The Royal Library of Copenhagen had a collection of films taken of prominent men, together with phonograph records of their speeches (these films were taken by Denmark’s first filmmaker, Peter Elfelt).

Some of these are known about; some of these it would be intriguing to know if they ever existed in reality (and what happened to the films). But Reed’s real surprise is that in Britain he could find only one place preserving films “for the benefit of posterity” – Croydon Public Library. He went to meet the chief librarian, L. Stanley Jast, who told him:

The matter arose owing to the success which has attended a certain department, attached to the library, entitled, “The Photographic Survey and Record of Surrey.” It was suggested that section should be established to be devoted to the preservation of cinematograph films, and I accordingly wrote a letter on the subject to the chief local picturedrome proprietors. The result surprised me. I quite imagined I should be called upon to pay for any films required, but the gentlemen in question would not hear of it; they insisted on giving them to me. From the Amalgamated Cinematograph Theatres, Pyke’s Circuit, I received a film showing the distribution of prizes at the Upper Nrorwood Academy of Music, from Mr T.H. Windibank, of the London Electric Hall, pictures of the funeral of the late Town Clerk, and of the Croydon Horse Show, while from other sources I acquired about a dozen more. I am arranging with the picture theatre proprietors of the Borough to let me have other local films as soon as they have done with them – we shall keep entirely to subjects of local interest. In certain instances, too, it would be useful if we could engage an operator to take events especially for us. Practically, our only difficulties are concerned with storage, and in this connection I am now making enquiries as to fire insurance and as to the best means of permanently preserving films. I should welcome advice on these points.

The films will not be lent, as in the case of books. I have had a room – up to now devoted to the use of lantern lectures – so altered that cinematograph apparatus can be installed when required. The suggestion is to do without the usual projecting machine, and to view the pictures through the medium of an enclosed chamber, which has been especially designed for us by a local electrical engineer – himself the proprietor of a cinema – in which, in place of the projecting lens, a magnifying glass will be used. The movements will be induced by the hand, and this process will be quite efficient enough for the purpose of examining local records.

What happened to this collection? How long did it last? Was it ever used by the Croydon general public? Louis Stanley Jast appears to have been an interesting person himself: an important figure in the library world (he became President of the Library Association) and co-author of The Camera as Historian (1916). I will try and find out more.

Cinematographing in the Southern Seas

February 17, 2007 By in Documents, Travel and exploration

Trawling through The Bioscope (see previous post) one is always coming across fascinating snippets of news stories, any one of which would be well worth pursuing to find out what truth lies behind them. Here’s a snippet from the issue of 29 April 1909, p. 21.

BIOSCOPE ENTERPRISE

Difficulties of an Expedition to Southern Seas

Mr Leopold Sutto, the representative in Australia of Messrs. Pathé Frères, London and Paris, is on his way back to Paris with a fine batch of negatives, the result of an expedition to the Solomon Islands, New Guinea, and other South Sea Islands. Speaking to an Australian Press representative, Mr. Sotto said:

We only took five pictures in all, and it was terrible work. The public thinks a picture is easily taken. We have to think out every detail; but I venture to say that these five pictures will be found to be of unique interest. In the Solomons we got up an attack of the natives on a house which all of us gallantly defended. I even induced Mr Jack London, the celebrated writer, to assist in the defence.

Mr Sutto described the hardships he and his party underwent in the Solomons. People, he said, who stay at home can have no idea of the difficulties which an expedition such as ours had to encounter. Remember, we had first of all to persuade the Solomon Islanders, who are practically savages, that we did not mean to harm them, and this was no easy task. It was the first time in the history of the cinematograph that such an expedition had been attempted. We were amongst cannibals yet we went further than any white man had been before. We left the memorial erected in memory of the members of the Australiasian expdition, who were massacred some years ago, a long way behind. The worst was that no good road exists, and we had to walk for days in the rivers. The banks were so thickly covered with trees that they were impassable.

Was Jack London associated with the productions, or even filmed? At least one of the films from the expedition survives, PÊCHE À LA DYNAMITE DANS LES ÎLES SALOMON, held in the BFI National Archive. As the title indicates, it shows Solomon Islanders fishing with the less-than-traditional means of dynamite (though it is an European who throws the dynamite).

A synopsis of the life-work of Alfred West

February 12, 2007 By in Documents, Filmmakers

The 1912 catalogue of the films of Alfred J. West, A Synopsis of the Life-Work of Alfred West, has been published online in PDF format by the Wessex Film and Sound Archive. Alfred West (1857-1937) was the man behind ‘Our Navy’ and ‘Our Army’, hugely popular multi-media shows comprising films, photographs, songs and dramas. West was active as a filmmaker from 1897-1912, based at Southsea, Hampshire, UK. His patriotic, militaristic and sentimental shows were popular across Britain and the Empire, and for many who came to see the shows they were their first experience of motion pictures. There is a website dedicated to West which is maintained by his great-grandson, David Clover, who has been instrumental in getting the catalogue published. The original is held in the British Library.

Update (August 2008): The weblink for the document has now changed to http://www3.hants.gov.uk/wfsa/wfsa-collections/navy-marines.htm.