Film Restoration

This is the first monograph-length work intended to enable readers with a humanities background and the general public to understand what the processes and techniques of film restoration do and do not involve, attempting to integrate systematically a discussion about related technological and cultural issues.

This is the first book to bring together the work of a modern motion picture film laboratory together with the specialist techniques for preservation and restoration of archival film. The books data has its origins in a training programme called FILM which was written by members of the Gamma Group with funding from the EU fund Force. The committee comprised senior film archivists and technicians in charge of film conservation departments or working film laboratories within national film archives, together with technicians from commercial laboratories which specialise in archival film conservation and who do not work for national and local archives. The final group consisted of many of the most experienced individuals in their fields. Restoration of Motion Picture Film is an extremely informative, well-researched book which is an unmissable addition to the bookshelves of conservators, archivists and curators worldwide. Film history and film conservation students will also find it of great interest and use. * Only book in English on this subject * Prepared by leading specialists in their field * Includes coverage of digital technology

A history of film preservation and restoration, telling the story from the earliest days of the cinema to the modern days of digital restorations. The cinema was invented in the Victorian era, but for the first four decades of its existence almost no effort was made to preserve the millions of feet of celluloid which rolled through the cameras and projectors of the world. As a result, thousands of movies were lost forever. In the 1930s, the first concerted attempts at film preservation were begun by pioneering individuals such as Iris Barry at New York's Museum of Modern Art; Ernest Lindgren at the British Film Institute, and the indomitable Henri Langlois at the Cinémathèque française, a man who performed heroics in occupied France to save the world's cinematic heritage from destruction by the Nazis. The 1980s video boom encouraged the studios finally to instigate asset protection programmes and in the digital age new methods of producing, exhibiting and restoring motion pictures emerged.

The manipulation of pictures and video in digital form has been an established research activity for more than twenty years. It is only recently, however, that digital image and video processing equipment has been accessible to the gen eral public. This is due in part to the rapidly growing economy. of the home computer. A major contributing factor has been the marked rise in the pres ence of the non-academic user on the internet, particularly the World Wide Web (WWW). Manipulating digital imagery has become synonymous with the WWW. It is the drive to present audio and visual media to the home user in an interactive form and to increase the available range of choices, which has encouraged agreements to begin digital video television broadcasting before the turn of the century. With the increased demand for video material, there is a perceived increase in demand for material from archive sources and this has fuelled commercial interest in automatic digital restoration processes. Further more there is a continuing effort to design techniques for correcting errors in received compressed video bit streams for the purposes of live communications links over noisy channels e. g. mobile telephones and the internet. This book introduces the reader to a range of digital restoration activities beyond the well traversed areas of noise reduction and deblurring. It describes a number of problems associated with archived film and video.

Despite the clichés which govern much of its current forms, the cinema continues to have a vital political and aesthetic significance. Our commitment to, and our sincerity towards, our ways of being in the world have become catastrophically eroded. Nihilism and despair have taken hold. We must find a way to renew our faith in our capacity to transform the world, a faith that will give us back the reality of a world eroded by the restrictive capitalist ontology of modernity. How can we restore belief in the reality of a world when scepticism and universal pessimism have taken hold? Is it possible to find alternative ways of living, being and thinking? This book will discuss the means by which some filmmakers have grasped the vocation of resisting and transforming the present, of cultivating new forms of belief in the world when total alienation seems inevitable.

‘One of the great imaginative creations in English literature’ Daily Telegraph A dazzling novel of loyalty and dreams set in Restoration England. The gaudy years of the Restoration are long gone and Robert Merivel, physician and courtier to King Charles II, sets off for the French court in search of a fresh start. But royal life at the Palace of Versailles – all glitter in front and squalor behind – leaves him in despair, until a chance encounter with the seductive Madame de Flamanville, allows him to dream of a different future. But will that future ever be his? Summoned home urgently to attend to the ailing King, Merivel finds his loyalty and skill tested to their limits. Rose Tremain has sold over one million copies of her books. PRAISE FOR MERIVEL ‘This book is richly marbled with intelligence, compassion and compelling characters’ The Times 'Magnificent story-teller' Independent on Sunday ‘Wonderfully entertaining’ Michael Holroyd, Guardian Books of the Year