The Paper Print Collection: How Copyright Formalities and Historical Accidents Led to Film History.

Prior to the 1912 Townsend Amendment in US copyright law, motion pictures could not be registered as such for copyright protection. Seeking protection against competitors, filmmakers in the formative years of the film industry printed their films to photographic paper and deposited them for copyright as a series of individual photographs. This method of complying with a technicality in the copyright law inadvertently led to the preservation of the earliest chapter in US motion picture history, a chapter that otherwise might have been lost. The so- called Paper Print Collection, still housed at the Library of Congress, encompasses approximately 3,000 film titles. This article examines the significance of the relation between copyright, archival practices and the consequences for the study of film history. It demonstrates how (circumventions of) mandatory copyright formalities were instrumental in the safeguarding of the film titles. In turn, they played a pivotal role in the 1978 International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) Congress in Brighton, UK, the landmark event that constituted a turning point in film historiography. An examination of the Paper Print Collection provides new insights into the relationship between copyright, registration systems, and media historiographies

The Go-Between. The Film Archive as a Mediator Between Copyright and Film Historiography.

Based on the premise that only in being accessible can the film reach its potential for history making, the contribution of the film archive to a particular film historical narrative is fragmented: the films that are extant are not necessarily available and the ones that are available are not necessarily publicly accessible. The contention of the thesis is that ‘doing’ film history in the context of the film archive should always be seen in light of an ever increasingly narrowing fragmentation of accessible material that takes place in the film archive. What is new about the contribution of this thesis is not that the film archive can be seen simultaneously as a result of a particular historical narrative as well as contributing to one, but that this debate is put in the context of copyright as a determining factor of why the accessible part of the film archive is only a partial picture. To this end, the thesis proposes a reorganisation of existing categories of analysis in the form of a cross-section of the film archive based on copyright ownership plotted against the material’s ‘availability’. By such practices as using a risk-managed approach to copyright clearance for archival digitisation projects, the film archive can be seen to act as a mediator between copyright and film historiography. On the one hand, the film archive is subjected to copyright law, against the constraints of which it can be seen to resist. On the other hand, the archive makes productive use of copyright in its involvement in the interplay between the ownership of the physical objects and the ability to control the subsequent use and dissemination of those objects. Some of these resistant and productive practices, such as found footage filmmaking as a historiographic intervention and providing access to public domain material, are analysed in the context of some of the digital access practices of EYE Film Institute Netherlands between 2002-2005, in which the film archive can be seen to actively shape access to its film archival holdings as well as a particular potential for film history writing

A Material-Based Approach to the Digitization of Early Applied Colors

While the digitization of archival films has been practiced for more than a decade, there is still a lack of academic rigour in this field, both on a scientific as well as on an interdisciplinary level. Therefore, we are in need of a better understanding of basic principles, both technological and aesthetic, that guide the many decisions taken throughout the process. This paper presents three interconnected research projects that investigate these topics with a comprehensive approach. Based on thorough analyses of the technology, physics, and aesthetics of film colours, this material-based approach connects these diverse disciplines with the aim to translate the appearance of analogue film colours into the digital domain

A material-based approach to the digitization of early film colours

While the digitization of archival films has been practiced for more than a decade, there is still a lack of academic rigour in this field, both on a scien tific as well as on an interdisciplinary level. Therefore, we are in need of a bet ter understanding of basic principles, both technological and aesthetic, that guide the many decisions taken throughout the process. This paper presents three interconnected research projects that investigate these topics with a comprehensive approach. Based on thorough analyses of the technology, physics, and aesthetics of film colours, this material-based approach connects these diverse disciplines with the aim to translate the appearance of analogue film colours into the digital domain

The Art of Defiance. Found Footage, Legal Provenance and the ‘Aesthetics of Access’

This essay focuses on the artistic practice of found footage filmmaking—defined as the practice of creating new films with extant material—and the relation of found footage filmmaking to Lucas Hilderbrand’s 2009 concept of “aesthetics of access”. A focus on legal provenance of the source material, as well as techniques of circumvention that are used when obtaining material for compilation, will be used to analyze the aesthetic form of found footage films, both within and outside an institutional archive context. It will conclude that these films as well as the changing practices within which they are produced emphasize the interdependent relationship between institutional context, copyright and film form

Audiovisual archives and the public domain: economics of access, exclusive control and the digital skew

Abstract not available

Too Good to be Forgotten. The Copyright Dichotomy and the Public-Sector Audiovisual Archive.

Film archives own, or hold on deposit, many physical works of film, whereas the copyright hold- er to these might be someone quite different. The colourisation debate of the late 1980s in the US and Als twee druppels wAter (the spitting imAge, NL 1963, Fons Rademakers), an embargoed film in a public-sector archive, are both examples of this copyright dichotomy between material and intellectual property.The examples expose the archive as a vulnerable place. On the one hand, the archive cannot guarantee a fixed and stable environment for cinematic memories. On the other hand, an inhibited visibility of important works of film that are arguably crucial to an understanding of the history of film is the result if a film archive cannot provide access to its holdings. The examples provide new insights into the wider cultural implications of the intellectual property (IP) system.They demonstrate how IP underpins understandings of public accessibility to (a limited range of) primary source material and their subsequent potential for history making

Recycled images: from orphan works to found footage

The focus of this article will be on the artistic practice of found footage film-making-with which is understood the practice of creating new films with extant material-and the 'aesthetics of access'. Lucas Hilderbrand introduces this term in his 2009 publication Inherent Vice, in which he assembles issues of copyright, preservation and bootlegging and applies it to the specific case study of VHS. When he speaks of aesthetics of access he does so in reference to the formal characteristics of the image. That is how the term is intended here as well. So for instance, film-maker Matthias Mueller shot the footage he has used to compile his found footage film Home Stories (1990) with a 16 mm film camera off a television screen. Whether this mode of production was favoured for its specific visual impact or for circumventing having to obtain permission to re-use the (mainly Hollywood feature) film material, the resulting slightly degraded look of the duplicated material is a direct result of how the material was accessed, hence its 'aesthetics of access'. This article argues that the legal provenance of archival material, and potential ways of circumventing legal restrictions in obtaining that material, can be traced in the ultimate form of found footage films. It also argues that in their new amalgamated states, the films emphasise such concepts as ownership and authorship and that they can be seen as illustrative in their allusions to the ways that institutional context, copyright and film form are interdependent