Saving the cinematic heritage

UNESCO Courier, July-August, 1995

A product of human creative imagination and inventive genius, the art of the cinema developed along lines running counter to those of the other arts, in that its discovery and the progress it made were based on a technical invention. It owes its success, which was immediate, to the new dialogue it established with the public, where every spectator is under the illusion of actually being in the midst of the action caught on film. Film, the miracle of the moving image, abolishes spatial and temporal distance. It records, recounts, illustrates and invents.

Today, more than three-quarters of the perishable and highly inflammable nitrocellulose-based films made prior to the 1950s are lost for ever, while some 60 per cent of the cellulose-acetate films made after 1950 are threatened by a process of deterioration known as the "vinegar syndrome", which bleaches the image if the film is not properly conserved.

The wealth of images captured in art films, features, documentaries, full-length films, shorts, popular-science films, newsreels, instructional and educational films, cartoons and others, is in danger of disappearing forever. The cinema has to be saved.

Under its Constitution, UNESCO is responsible for "assuring the conservation and protection of the world's inheritance of . . . works of art and monuments of history and science", and devotes itself to fostering the action needed to safeguard them. The conservation and restoration of the international cinematic heritage entail special problems that private support and spontaneous gestures cannot by themselves resolve. It is accordingly considered necessary to look for answers to them through partnership arrangements.

This is why, on behalf of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and of the Honorary Committee for the Celebration of the Centenary of the Cinema.

I solemnly appeal to the Member States of UNESCO to take appropriate legal, administrative and financial steps to set up or strengthen the structures that are essential for safeguarding the international cinematic heritage, such as film archives, film libraries, cinema museums and restoration laboratories. If this action is to be successful it will have to be carried out in consultation with the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF), the specialist international organization whose membership includes more than 100 such archives in 63 UNESCO Member States.

I invite cinema specialists and film-goers to join their efforts to those whose task it is in every country to ensure that their national cinema is safeguarded, so as to make it possible to compile exhaustive filmographies.

I invite film producers, actors, directors, technicians and operators to join forces, as they are already doing in some countries, and set up national foundations or associations to alert the public to the urgent need to preserve the national and international cinematic heritage; collect private or public funds to help finance the restoration of national film collections; encourage projects for creating copyright registration systems in countries where archives for the preservation of the cinematic heritage do not yet exist; and ensure that the national preservation practices introduced are consistent with the norms laid down by the International Federation of Film Archives.

I invite the photography, cinema, video and television industries, film producers and distributors and all industries concerned with cinema generally to participate generously in the national and international effort being made by associations and organizations to safeguard the cinematic heritage, by contributing to the creation of an international fund designed to defray the cost of film restoration and preservation work. This fund will be created in the International Federation of Film Archives and UNESCO(*).

I invite cinema and television film producers holding rights to films or successors in title to join in the safeguarding operation by participating in it financially or setting up appropriate restoration programmes; I also ask them to do their utmost to facilitate the distribution of restored films in commercial and non-commercial circuits by concluding agreements with film distributors and distribution agencies.

I invite film festivals all over the world to create a section in their programmes on "films that have been saved" and to organize public showings with the co-operation of the International Council for Film, Television and Audiovisual Communication (IFTC).

I invite schools of film, television and the audiovisual professions to take appropriate steps, in conjunction with the International Liaison Centre for Film and Television Schools, to alert future professionals working in the film industry to the problems of conserving and safeguarding cinematic works.

I invite the industrialized countries to co-operate with the developing countries, so that the latter can successfully engage in research on their film production and ensure the training of conservation specialists through the requisite transfers of knowledge and technology.