For over a century following its birth, the history of cinema has paralleled that of human beings as a mirror of the age. However, in terms of film preservation, it has been nothing more than a history of discontent. Though a lot of new titles have been released, preservation of the actual film which serves as their carrier has been ignored, and countless important films have been lost for good through acts of nature, war, and human disasters. Especially in Japan, whose film history is one of the foremost in the world, people have had little interest in film preservation and even now the movement is insufficient. Not only films with commercial value but also documentaries and personal home movies or any moving images in the past must have potential value as historical sources. To preserve these films, and pass them onto generations to come, we have to have a consensus that “film is cultural heritage” throughout the whole of society, to add to the efforts of the government and film companies.
Based on this current situation, we set up a voluntary group “StickyFilms” in 2001. Since 2005, when we changed our name to “Film Preservation Society”, we have taken part in activities such as “Home Movie Day” to discover the charm of home movies that might have been sleeping in peoples__ attics for a long time and promote the importance of preservation, as well as discovering and restoring long lost feature films and collecting information on film preservation to make available to the public. Through such activities, we have been widely promoting the importance of film preservation and in addition, from now on we are going to do more in terms of research, provision of information, and fostering film archivists and give support to companies to preserve films, and aim at realizing a society where any films are going to be preserved and made accessible as a common cultural heritage. A frame of film is an irreplaceable picture showing our history and culture. However small the film is, saving it is connected to saving them. We consider founding a non-profit organization is an appropriate way to carry out the above-mentioned activities, rather than a voluntary association or other corporate status, as most are activities that can only achieve results in the long term. Social credibility is necessary for the cooperation and understanding of citizens, and to make our assets public after the dissolution of the organization.
NPO Film Preservation Society