Film Archive marks 5 years

Press, 26 February 1986, Page 18

Film Archive marks 5 years

Next month the National Film Archive will celebrate its fifth birthday. The best birthday present it could receive would be the guarantee of permanent premises, but director Jonathan Dennis says that is unlikely.

“There is talk of our getting space in the new Pacific Cultural Centre but that is not due until 1990.”

The archive has moved into premises in Wellington’s Tory Street but most of its collection is boxed and stored at Lower Hutt.

Space and security of tenure are familiar problems for the archive, as is funding. But Jonathan Dennis shrugs them off. “We don’t want to be seen to be whingeing all the time.”

But "whinge” the archive must to find enough money to keep its film collection and restoration programme going.

In the 1985-86 financial year its funds have come from the Film Commission and the Lottery Board, and from the Education Department, the Film Unit and from Tele-

vision New Zealand. "It has come from a lot of smaller groups rather than in one lump sum from anyone.” The 1985-86 budget is $350,000, a paltry sum compared to the Australian film archive’s $3.5m which is planned to grow to sl7m in the next two years.

Within that budget the archive, a member of the worldwide Federation of Film archives, plans its restoration programme.

Jonathan Dennis estimates that it costs $1 a foot to preserve New Zealand’s early films. The archive is trying to collect all the films made in this country before 1952. That was the year that film making switched from nitrate films.

Nitrate film has only a limited life after which it ends up as a “sticky, smelly mess”. The archive wants to trace and copy all the nitrate film before it has perished. There are about 2000 nitrate films about. The archive has been copying the originals in black and white but one day, when funds and time permit, it will re-tone and re-tint

JONATHAN DENNIS them in their original tones. “We keep the original obviously for as long as we can and the original has more value because it is the first edition, but it is the copy that will last.” The archive regularly receives film - from some unlikely places. Recently a film about Maori life was found in Denmark.

As well as rescuing sole copies of old films, many of which turn up in sheds and garages, the archive collects contemporary films. The collection of these current films has a lower priority than the preserving and copying of the old

films but it is still an important part of the archive’s works. It is easier to collect these films and all the associated items now than to try and find them in later years, Mr Dennis says.

It is not just the film itself the archive keeps, but all the drafts of the script, the props and anything else it is given. “We recently got’Roger Donaldson’s collection of films which included Sam Neill’s pistol from ‘Sleeping Dogs’, there were 30 crates”.

The yellow bonnet of the Pork Pie mini has a place of honour at the top of the stairs in the Tory street building. Why keep this memorabilia, when space is at a premium? “Because people react to these things.”

The archive occasionally is given films that were made in other countries. These it returns, just as other national archives return New Zealand films. The Imperial War Museum in London holds all the films of New Zealand troops in World War 1. They will be returned

to New Zealand when the archive has enough money to bring them back.

As well as collection and preservation the archive’s aim is to make films accessible to the public. This it does by public showings of films.

For the cancelled Pacific Arts Festival last year the archive organised a series of 60 films to represent New Zealand work. For the opening of the Te Maori exhibition in San Francisco it showed several early Maori films. The archive has been asked to stage a similar display when the exhibition opens in Chicago next month but the date clashes with showings in Rotorua for its own birthday.

Rotorua is one of several venues the archive regularly shows films at. Because of the lack of space the archive can no longer show films at its building as it would like to.

But in spite of the perennial problems of funding, lack of space and no permanent home, the archive is in good heart Jonathan Dennis says.