October 27th is “World Day for Audiovisual Heritage”. This date was chosen in 2005 to commemorate 25 years since “Recommendation for the Safeguarding and Preservation of Moving Images” was adopted on October 27th 1980. On this day, audiovisual archives all over the world have celebrations in some way. Here is a message from the Director General of UNESCO, Koichiro Matsuura. World Day AV Heritage Trailer http://www.ccaaa.org/wdavh/?c=trailer

I had visited the archive in April 2004 for four days to find out what fields I could help with, if any. Due to the fact that this was the first time I had undertaken such a project, some of the goals and plans formulated were possibly overoptimistic, some did not match my qualifications well under the circumstances.

Last years__ discussions with some of the staff members about raising public awareness have certainly helped and unlike then, the archive participates and organizes public screenings on weekends now. Due to numerous reasons they only show dvd or vhs copies of their holdings, but it is a start. I went to a screening of NANG NAK (1999), a famous Thai ghost story that exists in over 20 versions. This latest version was one of the most successful films in Thai cinemas, beating even TITANIC in box office numbers. One member of the audience brought a home made vcd with excerpts from many other versions, scans of posters and programming notes. This was a good example of how the public involves itself. The Archive opened its Museum within the past year where some of the screenings are being held. Also the attendance of the workshop held at the premises of the archive on June 25th and 26th showed a general interest and concern for the problems of the institution. However, without knowing too much about the political climate in Thailand, I did get the impression that public pressure is not always a useful mean to better the situation of an institution. The ultimate success of the greater visibility of the archive remains to be seen, as does the success of the volunteering. Only by returning will we be able to know in what ways the volunteer actually does make a difference. This, amongst other things, will hopefully be the result of my next report on this ongoing long term project.

Author: Brigitte Paulowitz Filmarchivist. Worked at Haghefilm Laboratories in the Netherlands as Quality Controller, at the Austrian Film Museum as Head of the Archive, and at the German Filminstitute as Researcher. Student at the L Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation in Rochester, USA in 2000-2001. Intense movie goer since the mid 80s, preferably silent and/or Asian cinema. 

I guess this open-mindedness is based on its very casual environment. CTFA is located in part of a very old building. which is nothing special compared to ordinary Taiwanese firms. Staff members are in casual clothes, and working cheerfully and clattering away. This atmosphere is not really bureaucratic but more like a film-related seminar at the University or somewhere. Once inside, to the left of the main entrance there is a small screening room (about 50 seats). If you go right there is a library and a reference counter. And in the video booth, there was a young Taiwanese girl watching Mikio Naruse’s “Floating Clouds (1955)”. They showed me a storeroom for books but it wasn’t that big. 

Compared to the National Film Center in Tokyo, which is a leading film archive in Japan and has a beautiful building of 7 floors in all, CTFA didn’t look like a “national” film archive to me. Eventually this skepticism was overturned by the hidden truth of CTFA but I’ll write about it later. On that day, the screening room was holding a “French-speaking Film Festival” and showing films from French-speaking countries such as Canada, Rep. of Senegal or Burkina Faso. I found some westerners in the audience. This program is free of charge, and anyone over the age of 18 can get in if you book a seat in advance. When I was taking a picture of the entrance, I caught the eye of a guy who was carrying the film cans from inside. He smiled nicely at me pottering around with a camera. I wonder if the films were stored inside? I checked it later, and got to know the film vault is located in the suburbs of Taipei (No.9 Chong-xin town Shu-lin Taipei), which is not only for films but also for books and film posters. I hope I can go there next time I’m in Taiwan, but it won’t be as easy as this time. “What good luck I had today”. After looking around the inside, I thanked all the staff members including the receptionist who gave me her kind permission for the tour. Leaving the building which CTFA is in, I took a look at the guide book. Well, it seems there’s another big film related institution in Taiwan which is called “SPOT-Taipei Film House”. House? Is it something like a cinema complex? I wasn’t sure but I decided to head out to “SPOT-Taipei Film House”. * * * * I was a bit skeptical about the unusual name “SPOT-Taipei Film House” but took a taxi and went ahead to ZhongShan anyway, which is located in the center of Taipei city. There you can find duty free shops, five star hotels and western brand shops. It’s a really fashionable area similar to Aoyama or Daikanyama in Japan, I guess. My destination, “SPOT-Taipei Film House”, is in this ZhongShan area. I got out of the taxi and sneaked into the road behind the ZhongShan N. Rd., which is lined with trees and brand shops, where you’ll find yourself in a nice and quiet housing area. Surprisingly, it was a luxurious house. It’s not so vast but the white building and green grassy carpet made me feel as if I were in a movie.

“SPOT-Taipei Film House” is a former US official residence, but had been abandoned since the US and Taiwan broke off diplomatic relations in 1979. In November 2002, the house was renovated and revived as a center of film art. At the moment, Taiwan Film and Culture Society runs this facility under commission from The Department of Cultural Affairs, Taipei City Government. The head is a film director, Hou Hsiao-Hsien. Entering the gate, you’ll find an open terraced cafe. Passing through the cafe, there’s the entrance to the mini theater (88 seats). According to the program, it seems they show films six times a day, from lunch time to midnight. The last show is from 22:30! It means you can have time for dinner and being relaxed before the movie. When I visited there, “The Canadian Film Festival” was on and the tickets were 170 RMB (about 590 Yen) for membership holders. You can book tickets through the internet. Sometimes tickets sold out in the case of popular programs. On your right hand at the entrance, there is a satellite shop of the big Taiwanese bookstore chain, Eslite Books, where you can get a wide range of domestic/international cinema related books, magazines, and DVDs. Akira Kurosawa, Fellini related books were easily found. Even some Japanese magazines, too. Oh well, I was looking around worrying this place might be emptying my wallet, and found out something unexpected in the film history section, which was “The Death of Cinema History, Cultural Memory and the Digital Dark Age” by Paolo… Paolo? Is this an icon in the film preservation world (I only know his name but) Paolo Cherchi Usai? Wow! Chinese translation! It’s my pain all the time, when it comes to film preservation, there’re only English books available. I suddenly envy Taiwanese people, and how advanced Taiwan is. By the way, the translator is Prof. Chen Ru Xiu, the chairman of the Motion Picture Department in National Taiwan College of Arts. As I expected I was totally broke at the bookshop. I left the shop with bags full of books. Across from the booksotre, it means on your left at the entrance, there’s a fashionable cafe with white interiors. An intelligent looking woman was enjoying having coffee with a westerner. At the same time, very typical Taiwanese junior high students were hanging around with notebooks. It seems they are on their field trip or something. 

There are a lot of film posters along the stairs to the second floor. The ceiling is decorated with the faces of Chinese movie stars. Fae in the back, there’s a retro looking bar. I went there in daytime, so I couldn’t get in but probably you can have wine or something on the couch or at the counter. Actually, this is an art space, focusing on moving image, and a date spot at the same time. You can have cappuchino while reading film related books from the bookstore, and enjoy film shows at night on the big screen, and afterwards you can talk about films you saw at the bar, with a glass of wine. Plus, students can visit here in sportswear and enjoy rare films which are a bit different from cinemas in the street, and finish off their assignments, talking to each other. I checked the past programs, and learned they are stunningly varied. Taiwan vs Southern Europe, European films for family, Kim Ki-Duk + I Jae-Yong, Ghost films, Taiwan vs India, Yasujiro Ozu etc. etc. You can enjoy this variety of films until very late at night and even drink! I stayed there only for one hour but even in the weekday’s daytime, a lot of visitors from students to elders, were in the “SPOT-Taipei Film House”. Not only for the films but just popping in while having a walk. I think it’s just an extention of their daily life. Just walking for nothing, found a nice building and went in, then the films were shown from all over the wold, old and new, there’re books, and the space for having a chat. In Taiwan, there ’s such a place for cinematic experience merged with daily life as well as cinemas. You might envy this or you might think “so what?”, I don’t know, but as a film fan, I really want to go to “SPOT-Taipei Film House” again. As with “CTFA” in part 1, “SPOT-Taipei Film House” was very open minded. I felt a “welcoming everybody!” atmosphere. There is a huge gate at “SPOT-Taipei Film House”, but the gate was literally widely open during the opening hours. Of course you’d love Chinese food and massage if you’re travelling in Taiwan, but I hope some of you will think about “SPOT-Taipei Film House” as well. The door is always open for you. (A) (from Mail Magazine “FPS” vol.0, vol.1)

I found such sentences in a website which explains the status of “Beyond the Rocks”, however, surprisingly, the original nitrate projection print of this film has just been found and will be restored and shown by Dutch Filmmuseum, according to their press release dated of April 17th, 2004. For film fans, researchers and film archivists, this was not a forgotten film, but one of the most famous lost films, and that was why this discovery had a huge impact. On the same day, European media such as BBC broadcast details of this news and a few days later, even Japanese newspapers covered it, as did Dutch TV (VPRO)’s program called “R.A.M.” (You might know this program as its Takeshi Kitano special, shown on Japanese TV). As it was possible to get this kind of information from Japan through the internet in real time, though I couldn’t understand the language, I’ll introduce what I got, as best I can.

First of all, the story. It’s about a British woman, Theodora(Gloria Swanson) who got married unwillingly to a rich old man but is going to fall in love with a handsome young aristocratic man (Rudolf Valentino); the romantic love story…… just like a typical Valentino melodrama, it seems. “20 seiki America Eiga Jiten” edited by Akio Hata says this film was released May 1922 in the US and Japanese release was March 1923. The original novel of the same title was by Elinor Glyn, the script by Jack Cunningham and it was directed by Sam Wood. 8 reels in total. Swanson is famous for her outstanding performance in “Sunset Boulevard” which Paramount digitally restored in 2003, but just as with her role in that film, the peak of her career as a film star was in the silent era. This film was also the only time she worked together with that other silent film star Valentino.

Secondly, the process of this discovery. After the death of a film collector who had a tremendous amount of nitrate prints, his family donated more than 2000 cans of film to Filmmuseum, which was the start. In western archives, it’s common to put an accession number on each artwork at the very beginning of acquisition, and this number will never be changed or deleted, as opposed to location numbers, and the films are dealt with using this number in the process of inspection and cataloging. So, even if the film is going to be destroyed in the end, the accession number remains for good. “Beyond the Rocks” was for a while an unknown film, which only had an accession number. Later, archivists with gasmasks were opening rusty film cans whose labels could not even be read, and taking out film in horrible condition – sometimes deteriorating, with moss formed or misshapen without cores etc. – to check reel by reel, to reveal what they really were. The print just taken out from a can, seemed to be a feature film of the Dutch version, and the top title was read as “GOUDEN BOEIEN”. In the past, it was common to change the title or the characters’ names, and sometimes the ending scenes depending on the country in which a film was to be distributed, but fortunately, in this case the characters names were the same as in the English original. So when the archivist did a character name search on IMDb, using “Theodora played by Swanson”, the result appeared as “BEYOND THE ROCKS”. She didin’t believe that at first, but after repairing and putting the cans in proper order, it was the discovery of the complete print of the long lost film. If the first reel was lost or even if it had been almost complete but without the top credit, the identification might have been very difficult. By watching the TV program about this, I guessed the print is tinted in yellow in some parts, and there is a end title “EINDE”, and it looks as though some parts are badly deteriorated, and in some scenes emulsion is melting away, but probably the projection damage was not that bad, and the edge code seems to be the product of KODAK?

Not only celebrating the discovery of the lost film, but I think Filmmuseum was very consious about making the best use of this opportunity to broadcast the importance of film preservation activities. The archivist was showing her respect to film collectors in general, and clearly pointed out the importance of film collectors existence in the archival world, and the possibility of more discoveries thanks to them. Not by accident, nor through national strategy, this tragic love story was saved and is going to be revived on the screen purely through the deep love of a film fan.

(2004.06.01 from Sticky Tsushin Vol.18)