Digital Struggles: from Film Restoration to a Digital Historical-Critical Environment

Our presentation is focused on the ongoing reconstruction and restoration of La battaglia dall'Astico al Piave (Regio Esercito - Sezione Cinematografica, 1918, 35mm, tinted and toned, film certificate n. 13649 of 01.09.1918, mt 1255), carried out by the University of Udine in collaboration with Kinotealje, La Cineteca del Friuli, Istituto LUCE, Cineteca Italiana, Lobster Films and supported by MIBACT. To the present day are documented three versions of La battaglia dall'Astico al Piave: the 1918 Italian and French Version, both realized by Italian Royal Army Film Department, and a further version, named \u201cTa Pum\u201d, released in 1927 and still in circulation around 1930-1933, likelihood re-edited by Istituto LUCE. The project aims to reconstruct the first Italian edition of 1918 and at the same time give an historical and visual account of the other versions, especially the 1927 re-release. Restoration and reconstruction are based on film materials collected after a first survey among film archives (and on several non-film materials such as journals articles, archival documents, etc.): - witness \u201cK\u201d: that is, the main reference for the Italian version, retaining the most part of the narrative order, the original intertitles and tinting and toning, including the handwritten information on the color palette printed on the film edge (from Associazione Kinoatelje: 35mm nitrate print on three reels, long approximately 900 mt); - witnesses \u201cG1\u201d e \u201cG2\u201d: two 35 mm fragments of the French version preserved by Cineteca del Friuli (restored 35mm copies from the nitrate prints preserved by Lobster Films); - witness \u201cG3\u201d: a short fragment of the Italian version, preserved by Cineteca del Friuli within a nitrate print of Da Capodistria a Fiume italiana; - witness \u201cRM\u201d: a long duplicate negative (1000 mt ca.) with flash intertitles on 35mm safety stock, preserved by Istituto Luce, and likelihood dating back for the image contents and intertitles to both the late 1920s re-release and the 1918 edition; - witness \u201cMI\u201d: 35mm positive fragment on nitrate film preserved by Cineteca Italiana in Milan and close to the 1927 edition. The aim of our contribution is twofold: on one hand to highlight specific restoration and reconstruction issues (film material description, documentation and analysis; version, editions, rereleases; tinting and toning reconstruction; performative aspects concerning the specific status of film, involving both commemorative and trauma reliving aspects during the screenings); on the other hand to focus on the reloading and reframing of the long-standing and sensitive field of digital researchand educational-oriented critical edition of films, addressed to document the restoration and reconstruction process and give a wider account of the material, visual and cultural history of film as a set of apparatus, discourses, and practices, here proposed through an innovative digital design and environment and following new interdisciplinary approaches

The Digital Witness: Film Reconstruction and the Forensic Imagination in New Media Environments

Early on 2020, University of Udine signed a collaboration with Instituto LUCE, aimed to a digital restoration of a supposedly lost expedition film: Spedizione Franchetti nella Dancalia (Mario Craveri, 1929, b/w, silent). LUCE and University of Udine brought to light a large amount of film materials that included 35mm original negatives, DupPos Lavanders, Positives, and a 9.5mm reduction print but no trace of an edited version of the 35mm film. The pandemic forced the project to shift remote and forbid working on the original film materials. Therefore, an inspection of edge-to-edge digital scanned copies of every element was planned: a “digital fac-simile” (Gschwind 2002) through continuous scanning. Planning the philo-genetics of each digital element, on one hand we assume that digital environments support and sustain an “ideal allographic environment” (Goodman 1976), as to say “a premeditated material environment built and engineered to propagate an illusion of immateriality” (Kirschenbaum 2008) – a premise that legitimate a philological authentication of digital copy of analog films. On the other hand, digital technology tends to and “must produce perfect outputs from imperfect inputs, nipping small errors in the bud (Kirschenbaum 2008). Given this premise and the pivotal role that errors and innovations play in the stage of recensio and collatio, this proposal intends to reframe the “digital witness” by stressing the materiality of film (in digital film preservation) as an ongoing interpretation, where digital philology is always digital hermeneutics

Digital Struggles for Film Restoration: La battaglia dall’Astico al Piave

Our contribution is focused on the ongoing reconstruction and restoration of La battaglia dall'Astico al Piave (1918, 35mm, tinted and toned, mt 1255), by the University of Udine in collaboration with La Cineteca del Friuli, Istituto LUCE and Cineteca Italiana, and supported by MiC. To date, three versions are documented: the 1918 Italian and French versions, both realized by the Italian Royal Army Film Department, and a further version released in 1927 which was probably re-edited by Istituto LUCE. Archival prints collected after a first survey of the film archives have been used to reconstruct the text on proxies, with the help of edge-to-edge and “repro-set” documentation and the other non-film materials. The restoration is being carried out through the digital intermediate route, using witness from Kinoatelje (“K”) as the main reference to reconstruct the order of the scenes and the colour palette for the digital Desmet procedure. The aim of our contribution is twofold: on one hand, we highlight specific restoration and reconstruction issues; on the other hand, we focus on the reloading and reframing of the long-standing and sensitive field of digital research and the educational-oriented critical edition of films, in order to document the restoration and reconstruction process and give a wider account of the material, visual and cultural history of film as a set of apparatus, discourses and practices, proposed here through an innovative digital design and environment and following new interdisciplinary approache

Film Reconstruction and the Forensic Imagination in The Case of \u201cSpedizione Franchetti nella Dancalia\u201d

Early on 2020, University of Udine signed a collaboration with Instituto LUCE, aimed to a digital restoration of a supposedly lost expedition film: Spedizione Franchetti nella Dancalia (Mario Craveri, 1929, b/w, silent). LUCE and University of Udine brought to light a large amount of film materials that included 35mm original negatives, DupPos Lavanders, Positives, and a 9.5mm reduction print but no trace of an edited version of the 35mm film. The pandemic forced the project to shift remote and forbid working on the original film materials, thus a long time was dedicated to an inspection of edge-to-edge digital scanned copy of every element: a \u201cdigital fac-simile\u201d (Rosenthaler 2001) through continuous scanning. While planning the philo-genetics of each digital element, as a crucial stage of recensio and collatio, on one hand we could assume that digital environment supports and sustains an \u201cideal allographic environment\u201d (Goodman 1976), as to say \u201ca premeditated material environment built and engineered to propagate an illusion of immateriality\u201d (Kirschenbaum 2008) \u2013 a premise that helps us to legitimate any philological enterprise led on digital witnesses of analog films; on the other hand, digital technology tends to and \u201cmust produce perfect outputs from imperfect inputs, nipping small errors in the bud. This is the essence of digital technology, which restores signals to near perfection at every stage\u201d (Kirschenbaum 2008, 133). Given this premise and the pivotal role that errors and innovations play in the stage of recensio and collatio, this proposal intends to reframe the \u201cdigital witness\u201d by stressing the materiality of film (in digital film preservation) as an ongoing process of interpretation (rather than a given characteristics of the object), where digital philology is always digital hermeneutics. In fact, in this digital environment we are forced to constantly find a balance between a \u201cFormal materiality\u201d and a \u201cForensic materiality\u201d (Kirschenbaum 2008) of film. The first refers to the evidence perceived \u201cat the junctions\u201d between the analog and digital states of the film, or the \u201cdifferences\u201d the restorers perceive while shifting from the state of the analog film in their mind (a state of \u201cforensic imagination\u201d), to the state of the film appearing in the digital witness (i.e. a digital stressed instability that correspond to a change of film element). The second pertains to the evidence of practices that impacted on the \u201chardware\u201d, as to say something that is happening only in the digital object (i.e. digital artifacts produced by the digitization conditions or the technical characteristics of the digital file). To this end, we will discuss the \u201cdigital witness\u201d characterized as a \u201cphysical object\u201d (signs and traces inscribed in the digital medium), as a \u201clogical object\u201d (data extracted through the digital processes of inspection), as a \u201cconceptual object\u201d (the digital image as it appears on the screen), and as a physical data \u201cstorage\u201d

Cross-Phase Modulation Induced by OOK Channels on Higher-Rate DQPSK and Coherent QPSK Channels

In this paper we show that, in hybrid wavelength division multiplexed systems, the performance of high datatrate QPSK channels impaired by cross-phase modulation (XPM) induced by the lower rate OOK channels can be simply estimated by an extension of a well-known linear model for XPM, and novel analytical expressions of the sensitivity penalty are provided. From such a model we prove that the reported QPSK penalty decrease with QPSK baudrate increase should be attributed to the action of the phase estimation process rather than to the walkoff effect. The model also simply shows how coherent QPSK is more affected by XPM than incoherent DQPSK, and allows to infer that even more impact is expected when the baudrate is further reduced through polarization multiplexing