For the love of film – Preservation of film

This following post is part of the For the Love of Film Blogathon, hosted by Ferdy on Films and The Self-Styled Siren and sponsored by The National Film Preservation Foundation, an independent, nonprofit organization created by the U.S. Congress to help save America’s film heritage. They work directly with archives to rescue endangered films that will not survive without public support.  Please donate.




Film Preservation
I was recently watching Scorsese and friends race to save film classics from destruction, a report on CNN about Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Foundation that aims to preserve film classics from around the world. In the report Walter Salles, one of the several prolific directors working on this project, talked about his effort in restoring 'Limite' a black and white film from 1931, he said the movie 'shows a Brazil that doesn't exist anymore'. It made me think how I would want to be part of reserving film - to find films from the Middle East and see what gems can be discovered.

So when I found out about For the Love of Film blogathon, I thought it was very timely and gave me an excuse to learn more about film preservation. Its importance in giving us knowledge and glimpse into the past cannot be expressed enough – and in my part of the world, there isn’t enough on record on film, we have many photographic records, but not enough on film.

Which is why I love the British Film Insititute's National Archive based in London. The BFI has an archive of  over 1400 films and TV programmes from the BFI National Archive dating from 1894. Fortunately for anyone outside London, some of these can be seen online and going through them reinforces how important it is to continue the task of preserving film. In fact, it’s making me want to move to London to work for the BFI to be part of this honorable cause.

Watch this clip showing the streets of London from 1903. I adore the city of London and try to visit it as much as I can; so watching this brings me joy and gives me an insight to what the city looked like a very long time ago. Enjoy these moments along with wonderful music performed by James Pearson with the Ronnie Scott's All Stars.

FilmHind MezainaFor the love of film, Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Foundation, Preservation of filmComment