[BCMA] CMA Clip Serv: In defence of reel culture

Tue Feb 8 15:09:58 PST 2011

Even if digitization could come to the rescue of Canada's moving images by systematically saving large percentages of what's left out there, would it be wise to create a whole new apparatus at Public expense to do so? Here are a couple of variables to first consider:
  1.. Newspapers have been saved by both microfilm and microfiche in already established archives. Not every issue of every weekly, I know. But in sufficient numbers to save communities' critical historical happenings. 
  2.. Saving commercial or artistic works invariably is a task best left to those who create them and those whom they can in turn convince to safeguard such outputs. Let quality, not mere quantity drive the need to preserve moving images.
Dan Gallacher

  1.. ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Moderated BCMA subscriber listserv. 
  To: bcma at lists.vvv.com 
  Sent: Tuesday, February 08, 2011 9:44 AM
  Subject: [BCMA] CMA Clip Serv: In defence of reel culture

  In defence of reel culture 
  Documentary director Ron Mann laments the loss of our celluloid heritage 
  Michael D. Reid, Victoria Times Colonist, Tuesday, February 8, 2011 

  Officially, one of the Victoria Film Festival's high-profile guests made an appearance here to introduce his new documentary, but as it turned out he was also a Mann on a mission. 

  Toronto director Ron Mann was sharing with anyone who would listen his concerns about cultural heritage preservation. 

  "I think most filmmakers don't think about these issues and they need to, because it's grave and urgent," said Mann, here to screen and discuss In the Wake of the Flood, his flyon-the-wall account of Margaret Atwood's offbeat international tour to promote her latest novel The Year of the Flood and to reflect her environmental 
  concerns that inspired it. 

  Mann said time is running out for Canada's government and cultural industries to unite to preserve our cultural heritage. 

  "AV [audio-visual] is the history of the 20th century, and there's a problem because much of recorded work, both fiction and nonfiction, has been junked. It's deteriorating and there needs to be some acknowledgment of archivists like Christopher Hives, who works thanklessly in the basement of UBC to preserve local film and 
  video, this recorded history." 

  Mann said Canadians have a false sense of security, assuming cultural achievements are routinely preserved. 

  "This is simply not the case. There were no institutions that have made an effort to keep the history of B.C., in the '50s, let's say. 

  "These artifacts act as testimonials, but history is in the archives of TV stations, in the 'out-takes' of TV." 

  He acknowledges some measures have been taken, like Heritage Canada's Canadian Cultural Property Export Review Board, which offers tax incentives to foreign institutions that collect Canadian culture properties deemed significant. Donors receive a tax receipt based on the fair market value of objects or collections bound 
  for museums, archives, art galleries and so on. 

  "It's an incentive because institutions can't afford to acquire these artifacts," he said. "We need to preserve that system because it's the only way donors will gift materials to institutions and protect content from going over the border." 

  Much more has to be done, and soon, said Mann, who'll lead the brigade himself if he has to. 

  "I propose an underground resistance movement of film enthusiasts," the provocateur told delegates to the Springboard conference. "Even civil disobedience tactics, which I'm well versed with. Don't delay, the past is waiting and the future is on hold." 

  Mann said there's an urgent need to increase funding for the National Archives and other institutions that can't afford to acquire or even process their collections. 

  "The [Oscar-winning film pioneer] Budge Crawley collection hasn't even been processed, and that was donated 30 years ago." 

  Mann, best known for his documentaries Grass, Know Your Mushrooms and Comic Book Confidential, started becoming passionate about film preservation after trying to get a film about San Francisco in the late 1960s to use in Grass. 

  "The film had already deteriorated. The entire print was orange and they had to destroy it immediately because it leaps to the next celluloid on the shelf. That print couldn't even be transferred. It was gone." 

  Filmmakers such as Mann rely on such artifacts for their films "and if they don't exist, it's like history didn't happen." 

  Although it seems "rudderless" without sufficient resources and funding, the National Archives does the best it can, Mann said. He was elated to discover a print of Voulez-vous couchez avec God, Michael Hirsh's 1972 underground classic starring beat poet and Fugs co-founder Tuli Kupferberg. 

  "I had restored the movie and used a bit of it in a film about Rochdale College I made," he said, noting it just premièred at the Rotterdam Film Festival, is heading to the Buenos Aires Film Festival and will soon be released on DVD. 

  You do need at some point the original artifact, he said. 

  "This is why the Zapruder film was valued at $12 million." Abraham Zapruder's home movie footage captured U.S. President John F. Kennedy's assassination. 

  Mann also runs a DVD distribution website called DVDs We Like, where film lovers can find "DVDs we like" and restored versions of Canadian classics. 

  His collection includes a restored version of Ivan Reitman's 1973 horror spoof Cannibal Girls. The deluxe set includes a Cannibal Girls apron and cleaver "which is not to be used in domestic disputes," he joked. 

  Technology also must be preserved, Mann cautioned. 

  "Hard drives will be outmoded after two years, so if you don't maintain that, that information will disappear." 

  Then there's the thorny issue of digital content. 

  "Everything is ephemeral in the digital age because nothing has value. Everything's free. Press a button and it's deleted. My effort is to also look at the digital side and see if there any policy in place about recording digital life." 

  A preservation initiative would give producers an ideal opportunity "to give back" to the government that helped finance their films, he said. 

  "Something has to happen and we're at that threshold where you need to engage the industry," he said. 

  "Nobody wants to deal with it. It's like sorting out their sock drawer but we've come to the point where we must deal with it." 

  ---   30   --- 

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