Caring for Archives
Caring for Archives
Film Archives: A Decaying Visual History
(short version)
The Communication Revolution and Modern Life
Our parents saw the Communication Revolution develop out of the Industrial Revolution. We have seen the transition to the Information Revolution. For moving pictures, the Communication Revolution began with the advent of photography at the end of the 19th Century. Rapid expansion of technology and opportunity saw the rise of revolutionary cinema in Russia, and the emergence of Hollywood – an industry that today engulfs our world with images.
The ability of a flickering image in a darkened room to capture the imagination of people led to the rise of cinema. It rapidly evolved into entertainment, with today’s hi-tech image capture, reproduction and dissemination unimaginable even 25 years ago.
Can any of you visualise life without photography, video and cinema? Our world has changed forever, and, more importantly, the way we see it. The creation of images, once the domain of experts, is now produced, controlled and disseminated via the internet by up to half the world’s population.
Computers changed the way we stored, processed and distributed information. Editing moved from physically cutting strips of film and glueing them together to an electronic cut-and-paste scenario. The video camera developed from a primitive machine into a sophisticated piece of electronic wizardry.
Today, video is everywhere, from home security surveillance to scientific study, from CNN to home videos on YouTube, from military satellite pictures to snaps of our children and pets – and it is proliferating rapidly. We never know who is recording what, or why. More importantly, if and how it will be preserved, what is worthy of preservation, who will decide that, how will money be found to preserve it, and in what form will it be preserved?
Images are power. Images are knowledge. Images have value. When Africans sign away their own images to foreign entities, we sell our intellectual property, we give up our cultural heritage. Is this a new form of colonialism or exploitation?
Value, Cost & Access
How does one define the “value” of an image, and how do we define its “legitimacy”? Which gatekeeper will decide which images are “worthy” of preservation and which are to be destroyed? What role does technology play in image creation? It is not neutral. What is a “private” image? What is a “public” image? What distinguishes a “professional” image from a “consumer” image, and does this confer any special extra value on it, and if so, how?
Compare the images of “professional” news-gatherers “embedded” with US forces for the invasion of Iraq, with “private” images recorded by some US soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners in Abu Graib. Which has more public interest value? Which is more “truthful”? Which is more worthy of preservation, and why?
Hollywood studios are spending millions to restore classics. They use software not available even five years ago to restore the films to a pristine condition. 35mm was the acquisition medium for more than half of the 20th century. So nearly all historical footage from this time is on 35mm film. But to acquire images on 35mm film costs at least $250 per minute. Entry-level High Definition will cost around 40c per minute. Pathe, a WWII archive specialist, sells three-minute clips for about $236 – for internal use in a single country for only five years. How much would it cost for world-wide rights, in all media, for perpetuity?
Access to our own material is also often denied. BBC filmed material around the origins of humankind in South Africa. They now own it. A South African filmmaker, on a very low budget, wanted to use some of this material, but could not afford it. We can’t afford to make archives of our own heritage, and filmmakers complain our stories are being “stolen” by rich companies from the developed world. Little prevents foreigners coming into Africa with cameras and taking images for use in any way they like.
A Hidden History
During the fight against Apartheid, a number of filmmakers documented police actions, and the struggle against racism. When South Africa was liberated in 1994 the Mayibuye Robben Island Museum took this archive in for safekeeping. Nearly the entire archive had been shot on the now-obsolete U-Matic video format, and U-matic tape players are hard to come by. This footage is now deteriorating very, very badly. It is difficult to raise funds to transfer this material to a new format and save it.
In Mali three years ago, at the Mali Cinematography Institute in Bamako, I saw Mali’s film archive – a large unprotected room under a tin roof, floor to ceiling with rusty old tins of negative. No catalogue, no digital copies, and no archival protection. So a large part of West and Central Africa’s visual history has never been seen, except by a few people. How many countries face the same problem? This is our hidden visual history. If Africa is ever to tell her own stories, these images have to be liberated from their archives, brought into the digital domain, and put onto the internet.
Every visual archive format has deterioration problems, which are more pronounced than paper. As technology races ahead, formats come and go like so many summer showers. Many of the new High Definition formats will be gone within five years. Where is this technological race going, and how is one to control it?
Going Digital
Put it on computer, make it all digital. Does anyone remember MS-DOS? The technology race is a headache for archivists, because it requires updates of the entire visual archive around every 10-15 years with new and compatible software, an expensive and time-consuming undertaking. But digital has positive aspects – it becomes searchable, accessible, and more manageable – and thus more capable of providing a revenue stream. A second positive is the saving of vault space. A library of 1000 U-matic tapes would take up a wall, the same material on digital DVCam tape-based format would probably take up a shelf or two, and the same material in the digital domain, would probably take up the space of a shoebox.
From personal searches I know the “good” material could be cut to a couple of hours. But who will cut it? Do the cuts tell part of the story? I’m a filmmaker with more than 25 years’ experience, but I don’t feel qualified to judge. During the 9/11 bombings, a huge amount of “amateur” footage made it onto professional news broadcasts. These images became part of our collective human unconscious, like the shooting of JF Kennedy (amateur footage) or the landing of man on the moon (shot by scientists).
Governments have no central repository for this sort of “private” archive, and it grows daily. Private bequests create space, budget and suitability problems for museums, archives and universities. But who decides – and who will know – whether acceptance or refusal will see preservation of a priceless archive of “amateur” visual material of incredible social or historical significance, or whether it should land up in the trash?
Irish television revisited their historical archives and asked the public to send in theirs, creating a fascinating series based entirely on archive footage and giving an amazing feel for the times of yesteryear. It cost next to nothing, yet became a priceless heritage treasure. I could go on all day. So, what to do?
A Call to Action
We need a Pan African strategic initiative to do an audit across Africa, of all audio-visual materials, co-ordinated at the highest levels. We must establish all the archive locations, condition, importance, provenance, and the cost of preserving them, and begin migrating them to digital. The most critical archives need the first attention.
We must roll out a massive education campaign across the continent to brand archive material as our priceless heritage, to be preserved and cared for. Without political will, history will be rewritten and a lot of it will be lost in the process. Funding must be sought and made available, both locally and externally. This is not aid, it’s a move towards self-sustainability, understanding our history and colonial legacies, so we can build proud nations that rise above Africa’s begging-bowl image.
Archivists need education about camera & editing techniques and technology, so they become more proficient in evaluating imagery and their importance. Every upgrade of technology, every move to a new format also unwittingly contributes to a massive censorship of images that suddenly cannot be seen. Many archives today across Africa cannot view their own images, much less show them to the public.
Workshops must be held around the structure & costing, funding & maintenance of digital archives. Knowledge must be passed on. Archivists need to be trained to evaluate archive material containing images, and how to make them accessible in common formats for modern researchers. The new undersea cables to Africa will hasten the move towards ADSL, critically important for imagery.
We need to revise our copyright laws to reflect trends and developments in intellectual property law, asserting our rights and taking back our heritage. We need to lobby governments to fast track these changes. We need to educate our educators so that our children train on computers and cameras.
Most importantly we need to act TOGETHER, across the false boundaries of language, because images have no language. We need to pool resources, share knowledge freely, and help each other develop sustainable strategies. And we need to act NOW, if we are not to be re-colonised via media. African images have influenced the entire world.
Many of the Timbuktu manuscripts existed before European universities, African mask images influenced Man Ray and Picasso, and our wildlife forms the core business of Discovery and Animal Planet.
If we are to re-brand Africa as a fresh, developing and creative continent full of talent and surprises, begin with our images, the knowledge of our history, and the technical know-how to bring it to the world.
David reflects on slavery while overlooking the beach at Goree Island, off the Senegalese coast, 2006
Why Africa’s history needs preserving
It was on a trip to Timbuktu that I realised how vital Africa’s archives were. We were kicking our heels in Bamako waiting for paperwork to film in Timbuktu. We were guests of the Centre National de la Cinematographie du Mali, and Ladgi Diakite, who runs it, showed us the Mali national film archive. They don’t have a lot of money up there, and here was a large room filled with rusting tins of 35mm negative! Windy, dusty, under a hot tin roof.
Later, Ladgi projected some film clips for us, dating from the ‘50s and ‘60s. Amazing footage, our history, but unknown to the rest of the world.
Closer to home, at the Mayibuye archive at the University of the Western Cape, the U-matic tapes which contain nearly all of their footage of the apartheid era are eroding, and the oxide is coming off. Within five years all that valuable history will be gone.
This is happening all over Africa. I heard recently that a film archive in Uganda which contained old nitrate film material was destroyed because it had become a fire hazard to the people who lived next door.
David presented a paper to the first International Conference on African Digital Libraries and Archives (ICADLA-1) held from 1-3 July 2009 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (see his paper below). Initiatives are under way to do something about Africa’s archives. They contain, after all, Africa’s history.
David at the Luthuli Museum in Groutville, KZN, following the screening of his film “The Cradock Four”, at the museum in July 2010.
The ICADLA conference in Addis, 2009.
If you know of a private archive, or an archive that needs saving, or someone with old photos or films, let me know. We are building a resource of these archives, and we are evaluating them to see which ones need saving first.