Film Preservation Study: Washington, D.C. Public Hearing, February 1993
Film Preservation 1993:
A Study of the Current State of
American Film Preservation
Volume 3: Hearing Before the Panel of the
National Film Preservation Board
Library of Congress
Washington, D.C.
February 26, 1993
June 1993
Report of the Librarian of Congress
Table of Contents
The National Film Preservation Board and its Current Members .vii
List of Abbreviations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Opening Remarks by Winston Tabb, Moderator, NFPB Panel . . . . .
Opening Remarks by Fay Kanin, Chairwoman, NFPB . . . . . . . . .
Statements by:
Matthew Gerson, Vice President, Motion Picture Association
of America, representing the Alliance of MotionPicture and Television
Producers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
George Stevens, Jr., independent producer and filmmaker. . . . .
Frederick Wiseman, independent filmmaker . . . . . . . . . . .
Richard Prelinger, President, Prelinger Associates, Inc. . . .
Douglas Gomery, Professor of Journalism, University of
Maryland, College Park. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Tom Gunning, Associate Professor and Acting Chairman,
Film Program, State University of New York, College
at Purchase, representing the Society for
Cinema Studies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Robert Kolker, Professor of English and Comparative Literature,University of
Maryland, College Park . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Brian O'Doherty, Director, Media Arts, National Endowment
for the Arts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Alan Rettig, First Vice President, Council on InternationalNontheatrical Events
(CINE), accompanied by JohnMendenhall, Vice President, CINE. .
Samuel Sherman, President and Chief Executive Officer,
Independent-International Pictures Corporation. . . . . .
Robert Harris, restoration specialist. . . . . . . . . . . . .
Jan-Christopher Horak, Senior Curator, George Eastman House,
representing the Association of Moving Image
Archivists (AMIA) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Jonas Mekas, Artistic Director, Anthology Film Archives. . . .
John P. Homiak, Director, Human Studies Film Archives, National
Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. . . .
Paul Spehr, Assistant Chief, Motion Picture, Broadcasting
and Recorded Sound Division, Library of Congress. . . . .
Mary Lea Bandy, Director, Department of Film, Museum of
Modern Art. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Lewis Bellardo, Director, Preservation Policy and ServicesDivision, National Archives
Susan Dalton, Director, Preservation and Archival Projects,National Center for Film
and Video Preservation
at the American Film Institute (AFI). . . . . . . . . . .
Marie Nesthus, Principal Librarian, Donnell Media Center,
New York Public Library, accompanied by Mary BooneBowling, Curator,
Rare Books and Manuscripts Division, New YorkPublic Library. .
Donald Crafton, Director, Wisconsin Center for Film and
Theater Research. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Alan Masson, Director, Product Programs, Motion Picture
and Television Imaging, Eastman Kodak Co. . . . . . . . .
Philip E. Murphy, Vice President, Operations, Television Group,Paramount Pictures
James M. Reilly, Director, Image Permanence Institute. . . . .
Balazs Nyari, President, Cineric . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
L. Jeffrey Selznick, President, The Louis B. Mayer
Foundation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Josh Sapan, President, American Movie Classics . . . . . . . .
The National Film Preservation Board
and its Current Members
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
Member: Fay Kanin
Alternate: Robert E. Wise
Directors Guild of America
Member: Arthur Hiller
Alternate: Martin Scorsese
The Writers Guild of America
EAST
Member: Jay Presson Allen
WEST
Alternate: Del Reisman
National Society of Film Critics
Member: David Kehr, NY Daily News
Alternate: Julie Salamon, The Wall Street Journal
The Society for Cinema Studies
Member: John Belton
Alternate: Lucy Fischer
The American Film Institute
Member: John Ptak
Alternate: Jill Sackler
The Department of Theater, Film and Television of the College of Fine Arts, University of
California, Los Angeles
Member: Bob Rosen
Alternate: Teshome Gabriel
Department of Film and Television of the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University
Member: Bill Everson
Alternate: William Paul
The University Film and Video Association
Member: Ben Levin
Alternate: Peter Rainer
The Motion Picture Association of America
Member: Jack Valenti
Alternate: Matthew Gerson
The National Association of Broadcasters
Member: Edward O. Fritts
Alternate: Stephen Jacobs
The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers
Member: J. Nicholas Counter III
Alternate: Carol Lombardini
The Screen Actors Guild of America
Member: Roddy McDowall
Alternate: Barry Gordon
The National Association of Theater Owners
Member: Theodore Pedas
Alternate: William F. Kartozian
The American Society of Cinematographers and the International Photographers Guild
Member: Allen Daviau, A. S. C.
Alternate: William A. Fraker, A. S. C.
The United States members of the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF)
Member: Mary Lea Bandy, Museum of Modern Art
Alternate: Jonas Mekas, Anthology Film Archives
At-Large
Member: Roger Mayer, Turner Entertainment Co.
Alternate: Milt Shefter, Miljoy Enterprises
At-Large
Member: John Singleton, New Deal Productions
Alternate: Janet Staiger, University of Texas, Austin List of Abbreviations
AFI American Film Institute
AMC American Movie Classics
AMIA Association of Moving Image Archivists
AMPTP Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers
ANSI American National Standards Institute
ASCAP American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers
BFI British Film Institute
BMI Broadcast Music, Inc.
CIC Committee for Intercollegiate Cooperation
CINE Council on International Nontheatrical Events
FAAC/TAAC Film Archives Advisory Committee/Television Archives Advisory Cmte.
FIAF Federation Internationale Des Archives Du Film/International Federation
of Film Archives
IFIDA Independent Film Importers and Distributors of America
HDTV high-definition television
IN internegative film
IP interpositive film
IS&T Society for Imaging Science and Technology
LC Library of Congress, Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound
Division
M&E track music and effects sound track
MGM Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
MoMA Museum of Modern Art Dept. of Film
MPAA Motion Picture Association of America
NAMID National Moving Image Database
NAPM National Association of Photographic Manufacturers
NARA National Archives and Records Administration
NEA National Endowment for the Arts
NEH National Endowment for the Humanities
NFPB National Film Preservation Board
NHPRC National Historical Publications and Records Commission
OCLC Online Computer Library Center
RH Relative Humidity
RKO Radio-Keith-Orpheum Pictures Corporation
RLIN Research Libraries Information Network
SCS Society for Cinema Studies
SMPTE Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers
UA United Artists
UCLA University of California, Los Angeles, Film and Television Archive
USC University of Southern California School of Cinema-Television
USIA United States Information Agency
YCM yellow, cyan and magenta color film separation records; also L.A. film lab
The Current State of American Film Preservation
-----------
Friday, February 26, 1993
National Film Preservation Board Panel
Library of Congress
Washington, D.C.
The National Film Preservation Board Panel met, pursuant to notice, at 9:10 a.m., at
the Library of Congress, Mumford Room, 6th Floor, James Madison Building, 101
Independence Avenue, S.E., Washington, D.C., to conduct its second public hearing on the
current state of American film preservation, Winston Tabb, Associate Librarian for
Collections Services, Library of Congress, presiding as Panel Moderator.
National Film Preservation Board Panel
James Billington Librarian of Congress
Fay Kanin Chair, NFPB
John Belton Member, NFPB
David Chasman Producer and former industry executive
David Francis Chief, Motion Picture, Broadcasting
and Recorded Sound Division, Library of Congress
Milt Shefter Alternate Member, NFPB
Proceedings: Morning Session
MR. TABB: We need to get underway because if you have seen a copy of today's
schedule you know we have a very ambitious one, and cannot afford to fall behind at the
beginning.
I am pleased to welcome all of you here for the second of two town meetings on film
preservation in the United States sponsored by the National Film Preservation Board at the
Library of Congress. The first of the two meetings was held in Los Angeles just two weeks
ago today.
I would like to begin by introducing our panelists.
First, on my right, Fay Kanin, who is the Chair of the National Film Preservation
Board, on which she represents the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
To my left is David Francis, the Chief of the Library's Motion Picture, Broadcasting
and Recorded Sound Division.
Next to Fay is John Belton, a member of the National Film Preservation Board
representing the Society for Cinema Studies. He is also a professor at Rutgers.
To his right is Milt Shefter, an alternate at-large member of the Film Board and
president of Miljoy Enterprises, Inc., a preservation consulting firm.
And, finally, to my far left, David Chasman, who is a veteran industry executive.
Dr. Billington, the Librarian of Congress, will also be joining us shortly.
Before we go further, I would like to call on Fay Kanin to read the remarks that Dr.
Billington would have delivered had he been able to be here at this point and then we will go
ahead and talk about the ground rules for the rest of the day. Fay?
CHAIRWOMAN KANIN: Thank you, Winston. I will now read Dr. Billington's
statement.
I want to thank all of you for joining us today for the second of two
public meetings on film preservation by the National Film Preservation
board. Two weeks ago in Los Angeles we had our first meeting which
successfully brought together major film studios, archivists, film techniciansand
users for a very interesting discussion of the issues before us.
These meetings are intended to help us develop a report which wemust
deliver to Congress in June and to achieve our historic mission, to
preserve our film heritage.
In June 1992, Congress reauthorized the National Film PreservationBoard
for four years. Congress asked us to continue performing some ofthe
tasks we were already performing, such as selecting 25 culturally,
historically or aesthetically significant films and to collect archival copiesof
them for a national collection in the Library of Congress. But the 1992Act
clarified that our principal mission is film preservation.
Congress asked us to take two steps. First, we were asked to take a
snapshot of all the current activities and issues in our national film
preservation efforts and to report this information to Congress by the endof
June 1993. Second, using this report as a working document, we are towork
with all of the relevant parties to develop a national plan to
preserve our film heritage. We will prepare this plan by the end of 1993.
So today we continue on the task we began in Los Angeles two weeks
ago as information gatherers. Last September, the newly reconstituted
National Film Preservation Board decided that we should hold
public meetings to discuss our nation's preservation activities. These
public meetings are a great opportunity to air a wide assortment of issues,to
hear from all parts of the film community and to begin to shape public
policy.
Before we start, there are two points worth underlining that I
mentioned at our Los Angeles meeting. We are defining preservation
broadly to include the full range of activities required to save and also tomake
available America's film heritage. The other point is that Congressasked
us to limit our report to film preservation, so we will put aside any
questions about television and other video media. Our report may pavethe
way for a second report on the important issues involved with the
preservation of television and video materials but we were not given this
mandate from Congress and are not charged to address them today or inour
June report.
On February 12 in Los Angeles, we had 20 witnesses from public
archives, film studios, labs and citizens groups discuss a variety of
concerns about the physical preservation of materials, accessing
information about what is currently stored and preserved, and about
public access to the materials themselves.
Today we will add to our information base with testimony from 25
additional witnesses from the film community, and we are doing it in a
public forum to encourage discussion of the issues we are now facing.
Let me repeat what I said in Los Angeles. We encourage response
comments from those testifying today and from those of you in the
audience on any of the subjects before us today or that we discussed inLos
Angeles. All written comments must be received by the Library of
Congress by March 15.
Again I want to publicly thank Annette Melville and Scott Simmon,our
consultants tasked with writing the report, for all of their efforts todate.
And that is Dr. Billington's report. I might just say for myself that the number and
the diversity of the interests that are participating in this meeting is quite remarkable. I think
it is historic that the Library and the National Film Preservation Board are able to provide
such an opportunity for us all to get together to talk about this. I know all of us are very
eager to hear and learn from all of you. Thank you.
MR. TABB: Thank you very much, Fay.
Now, as moderator, I would like to review our procedures for today's meeting. We
have organized the speakers into panels of varying sizes. In fact, some of the panels will be
one person only. But I will ask each panel to come to the speakers' table together and then
the speakers will go in the order listed in the program that we distributed in the lobby.
If anyone failed to get any of the handouts, you may go out and get any that you wish
to have. There are several that I think will be very useful to you to have throughout the
hearing.
All the speakers have been instructed to keep their prepared remarks brief, that is, no
more than ten minutes. And I will call time, if necessary. In fact, I think I will have to
wield a fairly mean gavel today to be sure we get through all of the comments as well as
have time for the questions.
After the speakers have given their prepared statements, I will invite my colleagues on
this panel to ask follow-up questions during the balance of the time allocated to that group.
All written comments and the transcript of the proceedings today will be printed and
available to the public as an appendix to the report we submit to Congress in June. We invite
the speakers, observers and anyone else who has a strong interest in this matter to submit
written comments to the Library, that is, to Steve Leggett of the Motion Picture, Broadcasting
and Recorded Sound Division, by March 15.
If you have not yet got a copy of the notice in the Federal Register, it tells you what
the address is and what the deadline is. March 15 is the time by which we must receive all
comments.
Now if we could begin, I would like to invite to the table Matt Gerson, who will be
speaking for the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. We know Matt also as
the alternative representative of the Motion Picture Association of America on the Film
Board, so we are glad to see you, Matt.
Statement of Matthew Gerson, Vice President, Motion Picture
Association of America, representing the Alliance of Motion
Picture and Television Producers
MR. GERSON: Thank you very much, Winston.
Chairman Kanin, panel members, my name is Matt Gerson. I am Vice President of
the Motion Picture Association of America [MPAA]. A number of people wondered whether
this forum would be cancelled today because of the snow but I knew that at the Library, just
like in Hollywood, the show must go on.
It is an honor to appear today on behalf of my friend and colleague, Nick Counter, the
president of AMPTP, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. Nick and I
represent the producers and distributors of films, TV shows and home videos. MPAA
represents the seven major studios. AMPTP represents those studios and 100 other producers
in labor negotiations with the various guilds.
I am here today because we support this panel and efforts to develop a plan for
preserving America's film heritage. We appreciate the importance of your mandate because
your work is targeted at our history, our family tree, if you will, and will ensure that we leave
a legacy for future generations.
As this panel knows, the studios have had ongoing preservation programs for a very
long time. They had programs before anyone anticipated that our films would flourish in the
home video and cable markets. In recent years, the studios have increased their preservation
initiatives. At the hearing held earlier this month, as Ms. Kanin noted, you heard about
several of the programs ongoing at the major studios.
There are four points from Nick Counter's written testimony that I would like to
emphasize today.
First, we want to work with this panel and the Library in formulating a national plan.
We have learned many practical lessons about preservation and want to share that knowledge
and serve as a resource.
Second, we recommend that the board establish a glossary of terms so that everyone is
singing from the same song sheet. Jargon can lead to confusion and misunderstanding. Some
speak in terms of preservation, others speak in terms of restoration, and it is hard to be sure
that everyone is always talking about the same thing.
We believe that a glossary would facilitate communications among experts and laymen
and enhance the identification of films in need of protection and clarify the focus of
preservation efforts.
We propose the establishment of a separate committee, a committee set up to prepare a
glossary, and we would be eager to suggest experts from the studios who could share their
knowledge and the knowledge that they have acquired over the years that we have been
preserving our films. This committee might also be asked to study the technology of
preservation so that we all better understand the different technologies used by the different
players.
Third, Nick wants me to suggest that we encourage this panel to focus their energies
and resources on those films that are not being tended to, those films that are being neglected,
those that will be lost if steps are not taken and not taken now.
Fourth, we want to reaffirm MPAA's commitment to the National Film Preservation
Board. Our members will do their part to ensure that the Library has prints of films selected
for the National Film Registry. In the past, the Librarian of Congress, Dr. Billington, has
thanked Jack Valenti and the MPAA for our efforts to make sure that film prints are available
to the registry.
We are honored to own a number of the films that have been selected for the Registry
and we do recognize a duty to the Registry and, as I said, to this panel and the panel's efforts.
In conclusion, let me note that it is quite refreshing to see the level of cooperation that
characterizes the preservation community. Studios, private collections, archives and public
institutions regularly help one another by exchanging material, sometimes through funding.
The spirit and common purpose that I have seen inspires confidence that the panel will be
able to meet the goals that have been set for them.
I would be glad to respond to any questions that you might have. Thank you very
much for this opportunity.
MR. TABB: Thank you, Matt. Questions? David?
MR. FRANCIS: Obviously the glossary is very important. We all speak the same
language but it seems not only do we have to have a glossary, we have to have standards to
match the words we use.
Do you think those standards already exist among your members? I mean, are they all
using the same standards?
MR. GERSON: In preparing for my testimony today, I read the testimony the studios
gave to you a couple of weeks ago in Los Angeles and it appears to me just from that brief
reading that they do not necessarily have the same standards. It is not always done the same
way.
My recommendation about a glossary, our recommendation of a glossary, comes from
my background which is more public policy than preservation. I know that when this panel
makes their recommendations to the Congress they are going to be dealing with legislators
who are not experts in preservation, laymen in this area, who go from the Agriculture
Committee to the Intelligence Committee to the Copyright Committee and then have to think
about preservation.
I think it would help them to do their work and you to achieve the goals that you have
set for yourselves if they can better understand these issues. I think it would be a great asset
to those that are going to help you meet the goals of this panel.
MR. TABB: John?
MR. BELTON: Yes. I was wondering whether the producers and distributors have a
mechanism for sharing information about their own ongoing preservation activities, where
such discrepancies might come to the surface, or whether such a mechanism needs somehow
to be part of a national preservation policy, whether there is some sort of a forum for people
within the industry to talk about problems they face?
MR. GERSON: I know that each of the individual studios have in-house databases.
Phil Murphy of Paramount is testifying later on and he described in his testimony last week
the database that was put together by Paramount so they can share information in-house, all
over the world, through a personal computer. Many of the studios have similar facilities.
The big question is what about sharing between and among the studios, the archives
and private institutions, and the Library of Congress. I believe that is one of the questions
that really needs to be addressed by this panel, whether or not we can put together a database
that will achieve your goal while at the same time maintaining the rights of copyright owners.
Again, in my experience observing preservation over the last five years, there is an
extraordinary amount of cooperation that goes on. It is refreshing to see how the archives
will help out a studio and vice versa. And I think that there can be more done to facilitate
that information sharing.
MR. BELTON: There seem to be new models for cooperation between private and
public archives which we discovered in California, the Sony-Columbia arrangement, the
Museum of Modern Art is also working with studios, Eastman House.
Is there any encouragement within the industry for establishing newer models rather
than the deposit models that have been used in the past, to actually work actively with public
archives?
MR. GERSON: Sure. There is absolutely a commitment to doing that. At the same
time I think there has to be a sensitivity to the rights of the corporations, the rights of the
copyright holders, the rights of the shareholders. But as a general matter, I think it is equally
important that we share information because in our efforts to preserve a film that may be
missing five minutes or one reel, the portion we need might be sitting in a warehouse in a
private archive or a private institution and we can benefit from knowledge, from knowing that
it is out there someplace. So we are committed to developing a database that works for all
interested in preservation.
CHAIRWOMAN KANIN: It would be very key to have the studios enter their
information into a national database because without that commitment, we would not have a
full picture.
MR. GERSON: Well, again, we are committed to developing the right kind of
standards but I will emphasize we also have to have sensitivity to the rights of our
shareholders, the rights of copyright owners, the proprietary rights that we enjoy under the
copyright act and elsewhere.
MR. CHASMAN: Excuse me. You raise a point. There are many films which
are--not to be blunt about it--illegally held by private collectors, some of them very rare,
some of them very old. What would the studios' reaction be to some sort of amnesty or
forgiveness for the registration of such material improperly held though they may be?
MR. GERSON: Sir, I honestly do not know the answer to that but I certainly can
explore that and get back to this panel. We were just talking yesterday with some of the
experts that are assisting this panel and that there are films out there, in Eastern Europe and
elsewhere, that used to be and still are owned by the studios. However, if the copyright
owner does not have a copy, what good is it to them? So I think in order to get a copy, they
may forego prosecutions.
MR. CHASMAN: That is a whole new can of peas because with the dissolution of
the Eastern Bloc, all of the films that are being found are usually illegally acquired outside
the copyright agreements.
MR. GERSON: But it seems to me that there would be great incentive just to have
back this property that we have lost. As I said, I would like to explore that question a little
bit further with the people that I represent.
MR. CHASMAN: I understand.
MR. GERSON: And we will be glad to get back to you on the subject.
MR. CHASMAN: Thank you.
MR. TABB: Are there any other questions?
MR. TABB: Thank you very much, Matt.
MR. GERSON: Thank you very much.
MR. TABB: We will move on to the next panel of independent filmmakers.
I invite to the table Mr. Stevens, who was formerly a representative of the AFI on the
Film Board, and also Frederick Wiseman, who is the maker among other films of High
School, which the Librarian has chosen for the National Film Registry.
We will start first with you, Mr. Stevens. We have up to ten minutes for prepared
remarks and then we will have questions from the panel. Thank you.
Statement of George Stevens, Jr., independent producer and filmmaker
MR. STEVENS: Thank you, Winston, and members of the committee for a chance to
offer a few comments from my perspective. I am here today in the good company of Fred
Wiseman as an independent filmmaker. Of course, I also have had an interest in this
particular topic for, I guess, close to 25 years.
Driving up here through the snow it seemed to me kind of a metaphor for our quarter-
century involvement in trying to preserve films, rescue films and save films and, in thinking
about just a few things to say today, I developed two themes. One is, "We have come a long
way, baby," and the other is, "Baby, we have a long way to go."
I was just thinking back to my own involvement and really taking a look at the
activity that is going on in these areas, the work of the Library, the Film Preservation Board,
and it is quite remarkable, the level of involvement, the breadth of involvement, that has
developed in recent years to focus on this very important problem--because it is an issue that
was almost off the radar screen many years ago.
I remember my first kind of shock of recognition, you might call it that, about the
issue of film preservation that came at--I remember it precisely--the 1963 Cannes Film
Festival. I had the privilege of being the American delegate at the Cannes Film Festival. I
was then working at USIA for Edward R. Murrow at the Motion Picture Division and that
was one of the perquisites that came with that job. And I think I could fairly call him a
disheveled man, a large man with hair down to his shoulders--I see David Francis smiling
because he knows I am describing Henri Langlois--and he accosted me, sat down and started
this tirade about the failure of America to preserve its films. I was very ignorant of those
circumstances and he was a missionary preserving films in Europe, but he also had this great
love and affection for American films and it was provocative and stimulating.
In the immediately ensuing years when we were planning the American Film Institute,
it certainly put preservation at the forefront of my mind and made it a cornerstone when the
AFI was founded.
And, of course, it was such a different landscape then. There was the pioneering
George Eastman House, led by James Card; there was the Museum of Modern Art, led by
Eileen Bowser and Willard Van Dyke; and the Library of Congress and very little else. And
certainly the studios at that time had virtually no interest in film preservation. And to
complete the picture, most of you know that at that time in the Library of Congress, film
preservation came under a subsection of the Prints and Photographs Division. And when we
were beginning the AFI and the Library people became involved, it is ironic in retrospect that
the first decision of the AFI board in terms of film preservation was to make a grant of
$50,000 annually from this new, small organization to the Library of Congress to stimulate
film preservation. We decided not to create an archive, thinking that was not what we should
do. Rather, we would help collect films for the Library and, happily, I think some 20,000
films are now in the AFI collection in the Library of Congress.
There have been lots of these trips by so many of us--not always snowy trips but
sometimes they seem snowy trips--up Independence Avenue to try and make the Congress
more aware of these problems. Gregory Peck was the founding chairman of the American
Film Institute and we came together several times to testify. One time we were before John
Brademas' committee--Greg had worked very hard on this and he then was very concerned
about film preservation and he still is, and his testimony was excellent and he gave it with the
resonance that he is capable of. As we walked out, he asked if we are successful in getting
this preservation going, could we exclude a film called The Days of Glory? That was Greg's
first film that he was not very proud of. It would be interesting to find out if that film has
indeed been preserved.
You know, it is interesting, David Chasman was asking, one of the great early crises
of the American Film Institute was when Sam Kula and Larry Karr were the two archivists.
There was a film, which I think for this purpose should still remain nameless, that was found
in England, and it was a very important film on the rescue list of 50 films that Card, Everson,
Van Dyke and the AFI staff had developed. And Sam Kula came to me with great
enthusiasm that they had found a print of this lost film in England. He said it belonged to a
collector and that he was willing to turn over his mint condition print if we would make a
dupe and give it back to him.
Well, it turned out to be a break between the AFI and one of the major film
companies because we had given our pledge that we would give the man a copy of the film,
and it was the feeling of the studio that that was a complete violation of their rights. There
was that capacity for tension between the studios and the rescuers and collectors.
Today, we have a visionary leader of the Library of Congress. I think it is so
encouraging that Jim Billington, who is a scholar in so many fields, has taken such a personal
interest both in guiding these efforts and screening films, and sitting through long meetings of
the Film Preservation Board. I would just like to thank you personally, Jim. I think you
have made a great difference.
I think when we see so many archivists and historians working in this field, and we
begin to see an interest on the part of the film companies in taking an active role. You
remarked that was stimulated by video. I think there is a more aware generation of leadership
in the film studios. After our testimony in 1989 before the Senate committee, it was just at
the time of the Sony purchase of Columbia, and a number of us raised the concern that Mr.
Smith Goes to Washington is now owned in Tokyo. And I sent a copy of my testimony to
Mickey Schulhof, the chairman of Sony, and within two days he called up and he said we are
aware of that concern. He said we are going to form a committee to work on film
preservation, and he asked if I would be part of it. And a number of us, Mary Lea Bandy,
Bob Rosen, and others have been meeting with the Sony executives and they have been doing
a superb job. I think it is a great example of the kind of collaboration that now can go on
between the private sector and the public. And I think it is worth saying at this time that the
involvement of the public sector--the National Endowment for the Arts which created the
American Film Institute, and the Library of Congress--has been the stimulus that has kept this
question in front of the public and in front of the film companies. I think it is important that
stimulation continue.
Now, just two or three personal items from another perspective on the "Baby, we've-
got-a-long-way-to-go" department. In addition to making films, being the son of a filmmaker,
I end up having a kind of custodial role in that there are occasions when I get involved with
the films of my father. It was two years ago that I got a call from 20th Century Fox. When
we were preserving films, we thought that rescue work was about the silent films, the nitrate
films, the films from the distant past. It never occurred to me that I would be getting a call
in 1990 about a film made in 1958, The Diary of Anne Frank. Somebody from the Fox
studio called and said that they had gone to the negative--the only negative, the existing
negative--of The Diary of Anne Frank, and found that two reels of the film had become
"vinegarized." This film was made with such care, such beautiful photography and such
beautiful lighting about a subject of such importance by an individual who believed that films
well-made would stand the test of time and be of interest to other generations. Fox was
aware that I had a 35mm print of the film, and the sad conclusion of this was that the only
way to recreate those two reels of The Diary of Anne Frank was to make a negative off the
print. And, of course, that means that film will forever exist in a degraded state.
So, I think we have to be vigilant and questioning in the public's interest. I realize, as
was pointed out earlier by the MPAA representative, that the studios have some proprietary
feelings and some proprietary rights, but--sitting here with Fred Wiseman--I would like to
raise the filmmaker's perspective, the perspective of the people who conceive and spend long
days and nights making these films. I speak for friends who have gone--John Huston, William
Wyler, John Ford, Hitchcock, my father--to say that a public responsibility exists, and, I
believe, there should be some accountability in terms of the preservation of these works that
are so much a part of our national culture. Thank you very much.
MR. TABB: Thank you. Mr. Wiseman?
Statement of Frederick Wiseman, independent filmmaker
MR. WISEMAN: Thank you. I appreciate the chance to talk with you today.
I would like you to imagine yourselves historians of twentieth-century America
working in the year 2093. You would have access to the usual historical records, books,
newspapers, memorandum, computer disks, still photographs, Hollywood movies, but probably
not documentary films because they would not be available. Yet much of the material
historians of our time will be most interested in exists in and on documentary film.
One can put aside the politics or point of view of documentary films and just look at
what is shown as a form of natural history. Documentary films show how people talk, walk,
dress, relate to each other, the nature of work, the social organization of society, family
relations, the handling of deviant behavior, the operation of courts, the role of police, medical
practices, the relationship between men and women, racial issues, the functioning of
government agencies, scientific experimentation, the nature of entertainment and our music
and the way it was performed. The list is obviously endless.
I would like now to reverse the historical look and suggest that our knowledge and
understanding of nineteenth-century America would be enriched and enlarged if film
technology had been available to document American life in that century. We would be
endlessly fascinated by a police station in Boston in 1840, a southern plantation, a hospital in
Washington during the Civil War, the voyage of a clipper ship, a western frontier town, the
Library of Congress in 1890, a congressional race in Missouri in 1866, a regiment fighting in
the War of 1812, the South during Reconstruction, Charles Dickens' tour of America, a band
concert in a small Ohio town in 1872 to name but a few topics from another endless list.
What interests twentieth-century historians of nineteenth-century American life are not
just the best-selling popular novels of the period, but documents that give the texture and feel
of everyday life. I would like to suggest to you that the principal film archival effort that I
am familiar with is the equivalent of collecting the popular novels of the 19th century. The
emphasis today is on the preservation of Hollywood movies to the almost total exclusion of
documentary film material. There is to my knowledge no systematic, selective effort to
preserve and collect the work of the documentary filmmakers of our time.
I am going to briefly describe my own material because it may be representative of the
problems facing many documentary filmmakers.
Over the last 26 years, I have made 26 films covering a wide variety of topics drawn
from the common experience of everyday life: schools, military service, courts, hospitals,
religious life, handicapped people, business and prisons. This represents about 4 million feet
of negative and 4 million feet of quarter-inch tape. There is also 4 million feet of work print
and 4 million feet of magnetic track. In addition, I have the original negative, interpositive
and duplicate negatives for each of the films. This represents another half million feet of film
and optical track.
The cost of storing this material is about $7000 a year. I cannot afford to continue to
pay this. I am obviously going to keep all the preprint negative material but I am now forced
to consider destroying the rest which consists of most of the material. Yet the kind of
documentation that exists in the outtakes of films may be of most interest to historians and the
general public in succeeding centuries in their efforts to reconstruct, know and understand the
way we live now.
I would urge you to support an archival effort that makes a systematic and enduring
effort to preserve and collect documentary film material. I believe that in doing so you would
make an important contribution to the future study and understanding of our times and
establish a precedent that would be admired and followed.
I would like you also to think about the possibility that the documentary film of our
time may be the entertainment film of the next century. One measure of social change will
be the extent to which the documentary films of the twentieth century become the equivalent
of the Marx Brothers or situation comedies of the twenty-first century. Thank you.
MR. TABB: Thank you. Any questions? John?
MR. BELTON: Yes. Mr. Stevens, you have had tremendous experience with the AFI
during its first 13 years or so. I was wondering if you could share with us, or use this
background of the experience of trying to coordinate a national film preservation effort, to
pinpoint one or two of the major problems which you felt that the AFI faced, and what
solutions might have accelerated preservation activities over the past two decades.
Unfortunately, that sort of thing just did not happen. What is the nation facing in terms of
chief problems?
MR. STEVENS: Well, first the progress. I think the most important progress has
been this interest and awareness. I think it was so difficult before because people's eyes
glazed over. People had not yet realized how important it was to preserve feature films and
documentary films. So I think that is very important progress.
The difficult part is money. I mean, just hear Fred Wiseman describe the cost of
preserving the materials of one filmmaker. I think, at the time, we felt that this nitrate rescue
effort would be done and then everything would be fine. The lesson was that that was merely
the beginning, that there are more and more and more films being made, and the fact that
they are made on safety film did not guarantee their survival. Loss and carelessness and
inattention put them in jeopardy.
If I could, parenthetically, give one other personal item because we are involved in it
right now. The American Film Institute is paying tribute to Elizabeth Taylor. Paramount
Pictures lost the negative to A Place in the Sun. We are now dealing with material from
whatever they have been able to piece together. The scene selected from A Place in the Sun
for the tribute to Elizabeth Taylor is a scene that most people with memory of the film
remember, the scene with her and Monty Clift when they are dancing, they go out on the
porch and she says, "Come to mama." There is a terrible pop in the sound track. We could
not avoid that pop when we made George Stevens: A Filmmaker's Journey; we could not
avoid that pop when we honor Elizabeth Taylor. It is very hard to get the attention of
Paramount Pictures to the fact that this is a very important film classic, and that it needs to be
preserved and safeguarded to the best extent possible now that the negative is lost, unless
somehow there would be the good fortune of finding the negative.
So I both herald the progress and answer your question by saying that money and
interest are the two big problems.
MR. BELTON: Is there a suggestion you might make in terms of how to structure a
national preservation policy, how public attention and the attention of the studios can be
focused on this issue?
MR. STEVENS: Frankly, I think there are people who are working on it today who
are better informed on that and I would defer to you who are more active than I am right
now.
MR. TABB: Fay?
CHAIRWOMAN KANIN: To Mr. Wiseman. You rightly describe for us the
information that is available about our lives and our society on documentary films. What is
the problem of public access to that [material]? And how do you see that as being used by
the public? What structure do you see for that?
MR. WISEMAN: I suppose if an archive or archives began to collect this material
more systematically it would be open to the public, to anyone who wanted to have access to
it, whatever access to it.
CHAIRWOMAN KANIN: You would, for instance, give your material to an archive?
MR. WISEMAN: I would give all the outtake material. I would not make the films
available free because that means I would stop eating.
CHAIRWOMAN KANIN: But you were saying you would make it available with
certain fees, is that it?
MR. WISEMAN: Well, I would make the outtakes available without any fees.
CHAIRWOMAN KANIN: I was using you as an example, not holding you up--
MR. WISEMAN: The full-length films I would not make available free.
MR. SHEFTER: Just a quick question for Mr. Wiseman. Your films have moved all
of us, so you are among fans here, but I was especially interested in the fact that you have
your own distribution company, Zipporah Films?
MR. WISEMAN: Right.
MR. SHEFTER: And I think this could be a role model for independent filmmakers
and documentarians to take control of their own destinies. Could you tell us a little bit about
this and how you came to that decision?
MR. WISEMAN: Well, after having been cheated blind by a couple of the studios I
felt that there was a 100% margin of error in setting up my own company, which I did in
1970, so that at least whatever money came in I got to keep, and whatever mistakes I made
were my own, and I had no one else to blame. Because I was not only not getting any
money from distributors, but I was having to sue them to at least get the reports to see how
they cheated me.
MR. SHEFTER: Would you advise other filmmakers to set up their own companies?
MR. WISEMAN: Well, it was much easier in the seventies than it is now, because in
the seventies when schools and libraries were more interested in 16mm prints, you could eke
out a living on it. Now with videocassettes, it is extremely difficult, so I would suggest that
anybody proceed with great caution.
MR. SHEFTER: Thank you.
MR. CHASMAN: On a slow question, in addition to studios who are copyright
holders there are a half dozen separate entities, universities and museums, that maintain film
preservation programs. Would either of you have any thoughts or even recommendations on
how a national coordination of this kind of preservation could be achieved?
MR. STEVENS: I think the process is one of bringing people together and I think
that the studios, the archives, all interested parties should be formed into a federation of some
sort, an organization that exchanges information, meets regularly and works with rescue lists
and an awareness of what films are in trouble, what films are missing. Certainly the Film
Preservation Board and that list of films is a good beginning.
MR. CHASMAN: Let me say as a postscript that Greg Peck's worst fears are
realized. Days of Glory shows on American Movie Classics all the time.
MR. TABB: David Francis?
MR. FRANCIS: Mr. Wiseman, I think that the question of outtakes is one of the most
difficult ones for film archives. One of their great worries is that the material is often not
well documented at the time of production, because of the stresses that take place then.
Do you think if one could devise a standard format for describing outtakes, that
documentary filmmakers, knowing that national collections would then consider them, would
be prepared to follow that format--if it were as simple a format as possible but one that had
basic information?
MR. WISEMAN: Well, I assume that documentary filmmakers that have a minimum
of intelligence would be interested in following that format, because it would be in their
interests. And I think that just in order to make a documentary film, to edit a film, you have
to have a very good log of all the material. I cannot speak for others, but I know for myself
that I have a log which lists every shot on each roll of film, and I would think that most
people have that.
MR. FRANCIS: If I may follow up just briefly, do you think the log that you keep
would also be as intelligible to someone who was not around at the time of shooting? If it
suddenly came into a collection like ours and was given to our cataloging staff, would the
information be enough to make that material valuable in the way that you described in your
testimony?
MR. WISEMAN: I think so, but I cannot speak for anybody else. I keep very
detailed logs summarizing the action and the conversation.
DR. BILLINGTON: Well, first of all, I would like to say as a historian that I think
you are absolutely right about documentary film. We are already discovering that the film we
have restored and put in our American Memory packets, which we tested in 44 sites around
the country, often has unexpected educational value. I mean, when you have shown a very
little bit of footage of what a street in New York was like at the turn of the century, you get
people asking questions that stimulate the leading experts in the field because the leading
experts in the field have not looked at this material.
Much of it is immediately intelligible and prompts questions about clothing, why are
these people walking this way; they knew that there was horse and carriage but why were the
people sitting the way they were in the carriage, and so forth and so on. There is just an
almost infinite amount of material in these documentaries, and our experience is that a lot of
this stuff can really fundamentally affect the educational process and rekindle for an
audiovisually oriented audience an interest in history and traditional history as we are doing in
libraries. So this kind of experience forces people back into books rather than pulling them
away the way so much television does these days.
Now, that leads to two questions. One, in our hearings in Los Angeles, one of the
more, I think, surprising testimonies to most of us was the testimony of a young woman who
was the custodian of an ethnically oriented, but nevertheless basically home movie collection.
And I wondered if the same thing that is true of documentaries is not also true of home
movies, and if there is any rational way of collecting and sorting and preserving those
materials? That is my first question.
And my second question is if you, not only as a distinguished producer of
documentary films and distributor of them, but also as a lawyer, if you saw any way in which
laws or regulations, federal or otherwise, could be changed to encourage more preservation in
the documentary group?
MR. WISEMAN: Well, the last part is easier to answer because I would say I was
physically present in law school. [Laughter.] I have never practiced and do not even keep up
with the laws that relate to this.
DR. BILLINGTON: Is there a documentary of your physical presence? [Laughter.]
MR. WISEMAN: Fortunately not. And as far as home movies are concerned, I have
not really thought about that. I suppose I have a parochial interest in first attacking the
problem or trying to do something about the problem of documentary movies. I agree with
you. If there was a way of collecting some home movies, the problem is that there is such a
volume of them that you would have to obviously, and similarly with documentary film, be
enormously selective.
MR. TABB: I think we need to end now. We are over our time but we appreciate
very much your responses to the questions. If I could call Mr. Prelinger now to the table?
Statement of Richard Prelinger, President, Prelinger Associates, Inc.
MR. PRELINGER: I am speaking today as president of Prelinger Associates, Inc.,
one of the largest private collections of what I call "ephemeral films", that is to say, films
produced for a specific purpose at a specific time. Our collection contains educational,
industrial, advertising and amateur films as well as a great deal of unedited material,
approximately 9000 hours in all. Unlike most other collections or archives that will be
represented here, we derive our income primarily from licensing archival footage.
Although ephemeral films have not received much attention from scholars and
historians, in fact these genres have numerically dominated American cinema for most of its
history. Since the advent of the talkies in 1927, I estimate that over 600,000 of these, plus an
uncountable number of amateur films, have been produced in this country. Many were made
to show in theaters and, as such, should be part of any consideration of film history. But the
majority reached their audiences on school days, at community meetings or in the workplace.
Webster's defines ephemeral as anything lasting but a brief time, and this has been the
situation with regard to these mostly obscure films. No one knows how many survive but
perhaps as many as 50% no longer exist.
No logical principle governs what has survived and what has disappeared. No archive
is equipped logistically or financially to house the huge number of remaining films and an
infinitesimal percentage has been preserved. In fact, they are one of American film's best
kept secrets.
So why bother to preserve films like The Wonderful World of Wash and Wear,
Rochester: A City of Quality or Dating Dos and Don'ts? I would suggest that these are our
national home movies, the best and most vivid records of our public and private lives, how
Americans have lived, worked, thought and consumed.
Recently I was invited to visit Britton, a town in eastern South Dakota. It seems that
during the Depression a man named Ivan Besse, an enterprising projectionist, tried to boost
attendance at the Strand Theater. So he took his camera out to Main Street to shoot films of
people visiting town on Saturday. Later, he also shot cornhusking bees, WPA workers
building a dam and sheriffs taking prisoners to jail. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, when
business was slow, he showed these 16mm pictures at the Strand.
When TV came to South Dakota, Ivan's efforts to corral audiences were no longer
successful. He lost the theater in the sixties and the films were sold for 50 cents to a woman
in Texas. Later, they came to me and when the mayor Britton found this out, I was invited to
bring them back to the Strand. 53 years later, Ivan hosted a screening of his films in the
same old theater, narrating them in front of an audience who pointed out their younger selves
promenading on the screen. I have never seen people talk back, call out and interact with a
movie like that audience did, for they saw images of their town surviving what in South
Dakota what they called "the dirty thirties" as best it could, and that meant a great deal to
them. They saw the rich public life of Main Street crowed with shoppers, gawkers and
flirting teens, community rituals like proms, distributions of Christmas presents and Memorial
Day parades and the faces of people, their manners and body language of fifty years ago.
One person even saw her older sister for the first time for her sister had died before she was
born.
Somewhere in the forgotten industrial, advertising or educational film there is
something for every one of us, scenes of our hometown, pictures of how our fathers and
mothers worked for a living, a treatise on social etiquette or maybe the look of a twenties
farm or fifties supermarket and you will not see many of these everyday images in newsreels
and feature films.
Since 1984, we have supplied footage to over 2000 film and video producers,
researchers and scholars seeking imagery and historical documentation unavailable from any
other source. Images from our collection are routinely seen on PBS's American Experience
and NOVA, on network news programs, in documentaries and independent productions and, of
course, in numerous commercials and corporate shows.
I think this testifies to the importance of and demand for this material. We are now
fielding requests from publishers of electronic books, interactive and other kinds of emerging
media. Their products, if enhanced by carefully curated moving images, promise to nurture
historical consciousness in future generations and we have brought one project that we have
done to show how this material can acquire life in the optic media. It is outside.
But no foreseeable increase in business activity will permit more than token efforts on
our part to preserve our over 23,000 completed films and 40,000 cans of unedited footage.
And this I am afraid is the situation all repositories of ephemeral films face, whether public or
private.
I urge the board to look beyond recognized masterworks and to consider the
importance of ephemeral films and the state of their preservation which, unhappily, is not
significant at this time. I hope you will make generous provision for them in your report and
recommend that these historical materials receive their proper share of attention and funding
under a future national moving image preservation plan, whether they are held by public or
private custodians. Their preservation and ready accessibility will send a powerful message to
future generations, that the history of daily life is not just a matter of nostalgia or quaintness
but a means of understanding the heritage of our own communities, lives and labors. Thank
you.
MR. TABB: Thank you, Mr. Prelinger. Are there questions? John?
MR. BELTON: Just to follow up on your last point, you mentioned that your
commercial exploitation of your holdings has not generated enough income to finance their
preservation. If there were some sort of national, public preservation, exactly what
relationship would it hold to your holdings? That is, if material within your collection were
to be preserved, what would the status of this material be in terms of public access or your
own access? How would you envision a deal?
MR. PRELINGER: Well, this has been a tough nut to crack lately, but I feel very
strongly about making material available to people that need it. I should say that we deal
with hundreds of independent film and videomakers every year who do not have money, and
that we still are able to work for them simply for the cost of duplication.
I also believe strongly in a rich public domain, which is one of the reasons that we
have been able to derive income from exploiting these films, and I think that we have to
figure out what the public stake in material would be if it is preserved at public expense. I
think if public funds are used that some kind of access without charge will ultimately be
necessary, perhaps after a window.
MR. SHEFTER: Mr. Prelinger, the panel has heard a call for creating some form of
national database of materials. I know that your Footage '89 represented a rather large
database of material primarily on stock footage and other types of films. Perhaps you could
help us in telling us how you put that together. Did you get cooperation from all sectors?
And how valid was the information you received?
MR. PRELINGER: Beginning in 1987, we surveyed every actual or suspected
repository of moving image material that we could think of in North America. We ended up
listing in that book and in the revision somewhere in the neighborhood of 1750 sources.
There were many we could not list or for whom we could not elicit information.
One of the things that became very clear in the process of preparing a reference is that
the state of information is pretty terrible. There is a national database in the works, NAMID,
the National Moving Image Database. We are going to begin to upload records to them
because I feel strongly that should represent non-theatrical material as well. But we found
that we had to include a great deal of anecdotal information that archivists or public service
people at the collections would tell us. And also the decentralization makes it very difficult
to have a broad picture of what actually still exists in this country. You can go to the back
closet of a university media center anywhere in the country and find unique material. Or you
can find government-produced films that are not in the National Archives.
MR. SHEFTER: So if we were to run a so-called national survey of materials either
that had been preserved or should be preserved, we should question the results of that, based
on your experience? The information received from the various repositories?
MR. PRELINGER: I think that the outreach needs to go beyond the repositories with
which we are very familiar. And I know that this has been part of the history of AFI, that it
has looked all over the place. But if we expand this search to work that is not just features,
we will have to look in much different places.
MR. TABB: Fay?
CHAIRWOMAN KANIN: In terms of your own library or others that you know of,
what is the state of preservation of a lot of your material now? What media were they done
in? What is holding up and what is not?
MR. PRELINGER: In almost every obsolete and current film format you can imagine.
We are not equipped to collect videotapes, so we do not.
Until recently, we were able to take refuge in the fact that, since we were primarily
collecting safety, what little nitrate material we have, we could put it off until we had a little
more money. Suddenly that is no longer true. Because of the vinegar syndrome, our
holdings in nitrate have become much more significant.
We would like to preserve nitrate material and certainly safety films which are
probably of the greatest historical value, but I think we have to wait. I think a lot of people
in the stock footage business and the archival sector look to the turn of the century and the
millennial consciousness as a means of generating a considerable interest and possibly income
out of their holdings.
So the other thing we do which I think I would like to mention is we collect preprint
material on ephemeral films. Archives like Iowa State, which also collect this material, are
not able, in the absence of funding, to preserve this material. I think this is a very good idea
to try to find preprint elements and safeguard them.
MR. FRANCIS: I just wanted to follow up something that Milt said. I do not know
whether you plan to revise your stock footage directory regularly, but I was wondering about
the possibility of your sending out questionnaires, because I am very reluctant to start yet
more surveys, if there are surveys that already exist or could be slightly modified to question
all of these people about what in their collections they feel is most valuable to them and most
in danger? We could then get some picture of all these collections and find out what people
individually feel is most in danger. Then, we would have some idea of what are the most
important elements in this field, and the most important things that could be done. Would
that be possible, do you think?
MR. PRELINGER: I think that is an excellent idea. I should say that nobody seemed
to respond to questionnaires. We had to make about 10,000 telephone calls. But beyond that,
the message of this is that we will find a lot of unexpected repositories, including stock
footage collections, have unique material. We are familiar with the newsreel problem, that is
an example of that.
MR. TABB: All right. Thank you very much.
MR. PRELINGER: Thank you.
MR. TABB: I would like to call now our panel from the educational community,
Professors Gomery, Gunning, and Kolker. While this panel is getting settled, I would remind
people that Mr. Prelinger has brought a videodisc which is out in the foyer. When we have
our break for lunch, please stop and see what he has brought. Thank you very much for
bringing that. Can we begin now?
Statement of Douglas Gomery, Professor of Journalism, University of Maryland, College
Park
MR. GOMERY: Good morning. My name is Douglas Gomery and I have prepared a
statement which I have put into the record. I always wondered having watched C-SPAN for
years how I should do this, and so I have looked at various models and I will use the Jack
Valenti model. [Laughter.] The Jack Valenti model is you prepare a statement and then you
try to talk about it and make the points. I will not do as well as Jack because I will not tell a
lot of great, funny anecdotes that I had a staff look up because I do not have a staff.
[Laughter.] I have three points. Point one, and I speak for myself as a teacher, as a person
who entered this field, like John Belton, 20 years ago or so, and remember the battles, as an
author of nine books and 300 articles and, I am proud to say, several thousand reviews.
My first statement is I think this is not a problem of current energies or of focus. I
guess I humbly disagree with some people on this matter. I think that this meeting this
morning is testimony. I live in Washington and I guarantee you that this is the most well-
attended meeting of today. Everybody else's kids are out of school, every school system has
closed down. I came in this morning thinking there would be about three people here. My
spouse who studies health care and is working with President Clinton will have many less
people at her meetings than I will.
I do not think it is energy. I think these people work extraordinarily hard and,
speaking as a media economist, for relatively low wages given what they could do otherwise.
I look at people like Greg Lukow and I just wonder what makes people like that go. I can
only think missionary zeal, a kind of religious metaphor. I do not think that is the problem.
I think a little tinkering here, a little tinkering there is all we need.
So what is the problem? I think the problems, in my opinion, are two things. First is
the nature of the issue at hand, and the second more important problem, that is, of course,
resources.
The nature at hand is, and, I think here Fred Wiseman said it better than I will, to use
my metaphor, we are fighting the last war. I think most people that I know and I think the
general consensus would be that we ought to save motion pictures. But I think that is to lose
sight of what we ought to really be focusing on saving, which is less trendy, less hip, less
educationally viable to my colleagues in the universities--my apologies to these, of course,
enlightened colleagues--and that is television.
Television is where the Fred Wisemans of the next generation, to use Dr. Billington's
expression, will get their footage, will recognize what a school board meeting in Washington,
D.C., looked like in 1992, will recognize what people discussed and wore, etc.
And irony of irony, it is not the national television news; it is the local television
news. This is what captures the texture of a community, the texture of our society. We have
a channel here called NewsChannel 8, 24-hour CNN local news, all day, all night. And they
really document the nature of this community. They do not document the nature of the
president's jogs; they do not document these kinds of hearings; they document ordinary,
day-to-day activities that three-and-a-half, four million people that make up Washington live
by.
And we do not save that, and we are not--NewsChannel 8 is taping over its tapes just
as most news organizations are doing; we are not saving anything.
Vanderbilt is on shaky grounds. Other news archives are what we used to call pirated
and in-house and hidden in the closet, etc.
So I would argue that the problem of focus needs not to be narrowed or specified, but
to be expanded.
So now we know what the next question is, which is the proper question which my
colleague George Stevens, Jr. brought up and I have heard at these kinds of meetings for
years and years and years, and that, of course, is the problem of resources.
As an economist, I am familiar with this. My spouse is really after resources. She
studies Medicare; we are talking there billions and billions of dollars. When I told her my
proposal for this, she kind of chuckled. The rounding error in her community is
$100 million. So what is the argument?
The argument is, and I think Dr. Billington stated it, others have stated it. The
argument is that this material is absolutely necessary for the education of today and in the
future. It is not ephemeral; it is not tangential; it is at the core of what we do. It documents
the world; it explains the world; it is our primary cultural artifacts of the world. So to not
have libraries, to use that metaphor, of moving image collections is not to have libraries of
books in the nineteenth century. It just to me makes no sense.
So that is the first step. The first step is it is an educational goal. It is an educational
motivation. It is an educational drive, centerpiece. So that is the first.
The second step is it is a national education demand, not just state and local. State
and local is how we organize education in the United States. We have great state universities;
we have great local institutions. But some material, some activities need to be done on a
national basis. I think this is one of them. I think we need a national library of moving
image material like we have a national library of books that Dr. Billington looks over.
So the question is what to do. Well, I propose that the fairest means of raising money
for a national archive, a national institution to meet educational goals is what I call a user tax.
I think the fairest kind of tax--we have heard a lot of data about taxes in the United States--is
a tax in which people recognize what the goal is. I think that people are willing to pay a
certain amount for an energy tax because they realize the goal is to reduce pollution and have
positive contributions to society. So I propose a user tax.
A user tax encompasses the people who produce and the people who distribute and the
people who use moving image materials. That is everybody. That is everybody.
So I propose a 1% sales tax and revenue tax on the production and distribution of all
moving image materials. This will raise, I estimate by my calculations, $500 million per
year, and I think it will then also be passed on, in part, not totally, in part--this is called tax
incidence--to users like us, and you, [and] everyone else, which will mean 2 cents or 3 cents
more for rental of a videotape, 5 cents more for going to the movies, etc. And that way,
because it will be passed on, as taxes on corporations traditionally are, and I could cite that
literature for you if you want me to, we will all pay. The studios and other organizations will
not take the full burden, they will take part of the burden, but they should take part of the
burden. They are taking part of the benefit. We are taking part of the benefit, we should
take part of the burden.
So I propose that we need a dedicated specific tax aimed at education and that is what
I think would help solve this problem. Thank you very much.
MR. TABB: Thank you. Mr. Gunning?
Statement of Tom Gunning, Associate Professor and Acting
Chairman, Film Program, State University of New York,
College at Purchase, representing The Society for Cinema
Studies
MR. GUNNING: I am Tom Gunning from the State University of New
York-Purchase. I guess my model will be to stick to the script. [Laughter.] I am speaking
here both as an individual scholar involved in researching and writing the history of American
cinema and also as a representative of the Society for Cinema Studies (SCS), the professional
society for film study in the United States whose more than a thousand members teach and
write about the cinema. Although our membership is based in the academy, both professors
and graduate students, it also includes other serious film researchers and other film study
professionals such as film archivists.
I would say that as film professionals, most of whom are involved both in research
and in the teaching of film study, we members of SCS are concerned about film preservation
at both ends of the chain. For us individual researchers the preservation of our film heritage
constitutes the very material of our work. The vast strides that film study has made over the
last two or three decades comes directly from the fact that our generation had the opportunity
of looking closely at actual prints of films which film historians and theorists of an earlier
period often had access to only through memory or from printed sources. Clearly we feel the
need for preservation most intently because films are the substance of our work, our curiosity,
and I should add our passion.
At the other end of the chain comes conveying the results of our research. Those of
us involved in teaching are also dedicated to passing on our discoveries and our delights down
to another generation. Most of us in this room, I think, came from a generation for whom
film viewing was a natural passion shared by most members of the society and it hardly
seemed a necessity to teach a love and interest in cinema to anyone. But the generation we
are now teaching are not as naturally attuned to the film image as we were and, although we
live in a constant environment of visual images, they often seem to be more the victims of
those visual assaults than their masters.
As professionals involved in film study, I feel we are teaching a form of visual literacy
and, although much of this literacy involves contemporary issues, I also feel that a knowledge
of the history of film, where it came from and how it developed, is essential for visual
education. As teachers, we are a sort of medium of preservation as well as the critique of
film culture. And for this task we need film preservation not only to provide materials for
research but also to allow our students to directly experience the texts of our film heritage.
I am therefore adding my voice to those of archivists in pleading for the immense
importance of preserving our film heritage which for technical reasons is the most fragile of
our arts and for commercial reasons one of the most difficult to preserve. But I would also
like to add to that central plea that the planning for preservation should also consider the
availability and circulation of films. We need, in other words, not only to preserve films in
archives but to increase availability of these films not only to those scholars lucky enough to
live in proximity to archives or wealthy enough to take long trips, but also to classrooms
across the nation and to students who need to see something of the vast range of our film
heritage beyond what is available at the local video store or those films considered
commercially profitable in the ever-shrinking market of 16mm film rentals.
I believe that addressing the availability of films to students and to film scholars for
teaching purposes completes the purposes of film preservation by allowing such films to
become a living part of our heritage. Therefore, I would urge that a consideration of film
preservation not take place in a vacuum but consider a strategy for intersecting with film
education.
As a historian, I tend to look to specific events for guidance in understanding the way
history functions and I think that a very strong example for the way issues in film
preservation should be approached lies in the Paper Print Collection of the Library of
Congress. It was this extraordinary collection of film that helped revolutionize the study of
early cinema in this country and my own book on the early films of D.W. Griffith depended
on it enormously.
As you are undoubtedly aware, this collection was basically an accident, originally
established to plug a loophole in the copyright laws before they covered motion pictures, and
never intended as a means of film preservation. However, in the 1940s, Harold Lamarr
Walls, a clerk in the Library of Congress, discovered this cache of paper film and recognized
its unique value. The rescuing of this collection and its transfer to 16mm film not only
addressed therefore preserving it but also provided a means of making it available to scholars
and other interested viewers.
Since anyone can purchase a print of a film from this collection--although
unfortunately the cost has increased a great deal in recent years--it has provided not only a
tool of research but the core of several university teaching collections on the history of early
film as well as personal collections of scholars, aficionados and filmmakers. The decision to
consider how to make these films available is one of the aspects that makes this collection not
only valuable but powerful in revising our notions of early film history.
A second aspect of this collection raises another point regarding preservation that I
would like to stress. The preservation of the Paper Print Collection was not selective. It
included films by great directors like Griffith, Mack Sennett or Edwin S. Porter, as well as
silly comedies by anonymous directors and advertising films. All of the very sorts of films
preserved in the Paper Print Collection have yielded discoveries about the development of
American cinema and its relation to American culture. I am still making discoveries in it.
As Patrick Loughney of the Library of Congress has pointed out in his research on the
Paper Print Collection, the very variety of the collection appealed to the Librarian of Congress
during its discovery, Archibald MacLeish.
MacLeish favored creating a film archive which would deal not only with the
preservation of film as an aesthetic form but also as a part of America's history, society and
popular culture. I would stress the importance of such collections. This is partly because
aesthetic values are always changing and we often discover our strongest art works in
categories previously treated with contempt. But beyond this, film is perhaps the most
resolutely social of all art forms, involving complex intersections of industry, technology,
capital and a range of makers and audiences. Therefore, its value not only for film historians
but for historians of culture becomes particularly intense.
I would stress, then, that film preservation should be focused not only the preservation
of feature films which often receive the greatest comment and attention because they have
professional publicists whose jobs are precisely to make such films highly visible. Film
preservation needs to be especially scrupulous in ferreting out and preserving films which
were often made with minority audiences in view, ranging from the films of the avant-garde
to those of specific ethnic groups or geographical areas.
Preserving the work of avant-garde filmmakers, African American, Yiddish or regional
filmmakers in Maine, Florida or Salt Lake City is harder because there was less invested in
the film's distribution or publicity. But for film history they are precious indeed and for
reasons which we can not always predict in advance.
I strongly applaud the movement the Library of Congress has begun to make in this
direction in the last few years, showing that our heritage of distinguished films need not be
limited to the most familiar and widely recognized titles but needs to consider those works
especially in need of highlighting and preservation because of their neglect or marginalization
within a commercial industry.
Film archives have been doing a heroic job in this area and need further support and
recognition. Again, these films which were always so little distributed need to be made
available for teaching and study as well as preservation.
At the beginning of this month I traveled to the University of Chicago for a screening
of the magnificent restoration of D.W. Griffith's masterpiece Intolerance undertaken by the
Museum of Modern Art and the Library of Congress. This restored print has been shown five
times around the world accompanied by an orchestra score restored and conducted by Gillian
Anderson. And I have had the good fortune to attend four of those screenings, three in this
country and one in Italy.
However, at present, I can only tell my students about this extraordinarily restored
version while I project a 16mm print which I now consider inadequate to Griffith's original
conception of the film. The restoration of Intolerance is a magnificent work and I applaud it
heartily. But in some senses its preservation will only be complete when it is available to a
larger range of viewers.
I cannot stress enough the importance of film preservation in the teaching of American
culture and preservation in the broadest sense also means carefully considering strategies for
availability. Thank you.
MR. TABB: Thank you. Professor Kolker?
Statement of Robert Kolker, Professor of English and Comparative
Literature, University of Maryland, College Park
MR. KOLKER: Robert Kolker, University of Maryland. And one of the benefits of
being last is that I get a chance to summarize and set forward some of the points of my
colleagues.
Like them, I want to speak on behalf of the growing number of educators using film
as part of the classroom process either as an aid or complement to the central subject matter
or as the central concern of their curriculum. The latter is of particular interest to me because
my career is devoted to the study and teaching of film.
The number of cinema studies courses grows yearly. Colleges and universities are
either adding film studies departments and programs or situating course offerings in existing
departments. Introductory courses are showing up in community colleges and even high
schools are beginning to express interest. The need to teach young people how to read,
analyze and understand the moving image, the form in which most people get the stories the
culture wants to tell them, and the desire of young people to make such images on their own
is placing more and more institutions on alert.
As programs grow or are created, access to material becomes an increasingly serious
concern. How do students get to see films and how do the teacher-scholars who teach film
get to study the form and learn its history so that they can teach it well, not only to their
students but to the public at large for whom they write their books and articles?
How do those institutions like community colleges and high schools that do not have
access to experienced film teachers or budgets for expensive film rentals provide the
education their students want and need?
And what of the choices for preservation? The emphasis seems to be on 35mm
theatrical features, which are certainly of central interest to many film scholars. But thought
has to be given to the independent film, the work of the avant-garde and the recent upsurge in
films by and about women and minorities, gays and lesbians.
The board needs to direct some of its attention to some of these marginal works,
because they are central to important cultural issues, and think about them not only in terms
of preservation but of availability as well. Here are films with no corporate structure to help
preserve or distribute them.
The National Film Preservation Board needs to confront a number of issues beyond
those concerned simply with the preservation of existing theatrical films. It needs to be
concerned with questions of scope and access. To say that a particular title has been saved
from deterioration, that a color, nitrate positive has been transferred to three safety black-and-
white negatives and put in cold storage is a triumph indeed but an incomplete one.
What is the value of an expensive act of preservation if the results are inaccessible? If
scholars and students cannot see the results, if the only access to the particular film is still
through a scratched and spliced 16mm dupe or, more likely, a poorly resolved video
recording, who profits from the preservation? Pedagogy and the history of film do not. The
unseen remains the unknown.
At the very least I would suggest the Library of Congress should be enabled to make
viewing copies of every film that becomes part of the preservation process. Further, as
copyright problems are worked out and negotiated, there should be a mechanism developed
for the larger public availability of these preserved titles. Right now, the LC offers, I believe,
certain borrowing privileges to recognized archives. These privileges might be extended to
accredited universities. Efforts should be made to arrange traveling exhibits, perhaps of the
programs presented at the Pickford Theater, for example.
Finally, an educational outreach program needs to be instituted either as part of the
preservation board or perhaps more reasonably as a separate entity. No such program exists
in the country at this time. The American Film Institute has put its concentrations elsewhere.
There is no central location for finding prints, arranging screenings, publishing study guides,
filmographies, bibliographies. The Motion Picture Division of the Library of Congress
provides a basic and wonderful reference service that could serve as the base of an expanded
operation that could publish introductory and advanced materials, training in film studies
pedagogy and perhaps viewing material in some usable form.
I expect that many of the country's leading film scholars would be interested in taking
part in such an operation as part of the service component of their research. And certainly
Doug Gomery's notion of revenues from a user tax could be used for such a service.
Visual narratives are the fundamental transmission forms of our culture's immediate
thoughts, beliefs and fantasies. They need to be understood and such understanding requires
education and access. Preservation is the beginning of a process that can, with some of the
additional elements outlined above, lead to the perpetuation of knowledge. Thank you.
MR. TABB: Thank you very much. Milt, I think you had the first question.
MR. SHEFTER: Professor Gomery, I know Jack Valenti and you, sir...(pause) did
very well. [Laughter.]
MR. GOMERY: Thank you. I take that as a very high compliment.
MR. SHEFTER: I cannot speak for Mr. Valenti, but I think he would have been
pleased with your presentation although not your proposal on taxation. [Laughter.]
MR. GOMERY: I am sure of that.
MR. SHEFTER: I would like to get into that a little bit and, by the way, on behalf of
the panel I would like to thank you for coming forth with a very positive suggestion for
revenue. We have been hearing virtually nothing but requests for an ever expanding realm of
material to be preserved.
In your proposal, and you have suggested that we be more comprehensive and include
television, I do not see any taxation on television or any of the other things that you wish
preserved and I am kind of curious as to how this idea of yours would work.
How would it function and how would the money be distributed should it be
collected?
MR. GOMERY: Well, let me read it. I was just trying to summarize. In fact, just to
be absolutely specific, I did not do as well as Jack might. I meant television absolutely as
well. No question about it. It would be much less of a figure if television was not included.
To pay for this, I am reading, I am sorry, but let me be precise. To pay for this, I
propose a user tax. That is, those of us who gain entertainment information from moving
images, insight and fun both from film and television should be willing to contribute a tiny
portion of what we spend on purchase and rental to maintain preservation. I suggest a 1% of
all gross sales and rentals and television advertising expenditures of all films and television.
I think such a tax would yield $500 million a year, every year, not just one year, and
that it would be a regular, ongoing source of funding. I think one of the things that my
colleagues point out--Tom did a terrific job--is the ups and downs, the inconsistencies. We
have some things saved from some eras because we are lucky that funding was available or
people were industrious, and in some areas we have nothing. It is really the vagaries of the
budget process that leads to that, which I think is a shame. So I think we need something
permanent.
I think it would not be just television stations, television networks, movie studios,
television producers, etc., all just contributing because I think that as economists would
suggest they would slightly increase their prices, pass it down the system, and so that we
would all contribute just as the arguments that are going on at the moment for raising the
corporate rate. The rise in the corporate tax that President Clinton has proposed, virtually all
economists that I have seen and heard of would suggest that that in part will be passed on to
all of us and it will be, just as this would be.
MR. SHEFTER: And your mechanism for the distribution of these funds?
MR. GOMERY: Well, I see that as less of a problem, I think, if by the stroke of
serendipity or whatever, some larger force than I, it would happen. Let me preface.
I think government works. I am a fan of government. I think some of the greatest
things that have been contributed in the United States of America in our 200-year history that
I have studied intensively have been done by government. I do not believe, as some of my
fellow Washingtonians, that everything that touches government is bad. I think that is a
fallacious assumption, that is a narrow reading of history and that is dead wrong. So I think
that [the mechanism might be] a board, a panel--and I mulled this over, asking my spouse
who does know how these things work better than I. I would put it in the Education
Department, and I would make it responsible for creating libraries and access, as my
colleagues have articulated much more clearly than I have. First you have to preserve and
then you can provide access, but you cannot do either without money.
MR. SHEFTER: Thank you.
CHAIRWOMAN KANIN: I want to address a question to our counsel here as a result
of your proposal, Doug. Has a user tax in this form ever been proposed and what was the
reaction to it?
MR. SCHWARTZ: I do not think one has ever been proposed.
CHAIRWOMAN KANIN: No one has ever proposed that particular way of raising
funds?
MR. GOMERY: Then I suggest we should call it the Gomery Tax. [Laughter.]
MS. MELVILLE [staff member speaking at request of Mr. Tabb]: Jean Firstenberg
told me at one point that she had recommended a tax on videocassette rental.
MR. GOMERY: Actually, she said to me at one point.
CHAIRWOMAN KANIN: Yes. I just wondered if it had ever flown?
And then a question to Mr. Kolker. You talked about educational outreach. Would
you see a particular database just for the educational community or would a national database
serve those needs?
MR. KOLKER: I think that the building of a national database should be sufficient
and I think, as we all know who are working in electronic libraries, that databases are only as
good as the software that allows access to them. And so it may be useful to have varieties of
access, different kinds of software for different kinds of users that would access more or less
information, whatever a particular user needed. So there might be a particular educational
software package to get into that database and no reason to provide more than that.
MR. KOLKER: To have a separate entity.
MR. FRANCIS: Could I just follow up on Fay's question just for a moment? And I
would also like to ask another one.
There was a lot of discussion in Europe about a tax on blank videocassettes because
blank videocassettes are used for time shifting. This could be used as a source of funding for
film and television preservation because the blank videocassette is mainly used for time
shifting purposes. The idea never got anywhere in the end because the manufacturers' lobby
successfully killed it. But that was one that was discussed quite widely in several European
countries.
And the other question I would like to ask and I think it is really addressed to Tom.
One of the other people testifying mentioned that there was a lot of expertise, particularly all
the people who teach and are involved in film studies, which could be valuable to archives as
far as advising them on what should be preserved and what should be made available. Often
I think archivists feel they are working on their own. They very seldom receive requests
specifically to preserve or to acquire or make available a particular film.
In SCS, do you ever have discussions amongst your membership in order to draw up
lists of films that you particularly want to see available which are not currently available? It
would be extremely valuable to archivists to have such lists. I do not know whether you do
that.
MR. GUNNING: There is, and I think actually John Belton would be able to answer
this even better. There has been for several years in the Society for Cinema Studies
a subcommittee on film availability which, I think, John was at least a member of and may
still be, which was partly involved although primarily in terms of making information
available about commercial rental of 16mm prints for classroom use.
But it is in place, I think, to address the type of issue that you are talking about.
Since both of us are here, we can see to it. But I might ask John if he has any further
comment on that.
MR. BELTON: I think the interesting issue that has been brought up has to do with
the relationship of the academic community to the archival community. The testimony that
all of you have presented is one which expands the parameters of preservation to include
access and availability.
SCS has concentrated so far solely on non-theatrical distribution and the availability of
films in this area. In fact, I would turn it around and ask all of you perhaps to comment on
models of availability that perhaps already exist. For example, the Museum of Modern Art
has a circulating library and the Museum of Modern Art is one of the only archives in this
country that attempts to distribute the materials that it holds in its collection, as well as some
materials from the Eastman House collection. Is this a viable model for both creating bridges
between the academic community, the general public which is being serviced by the academic
community (that is, college students and so forth), and the archives as part of a larger
preservation plan? Anyone?
MR. KOLKER: Well, would another model be Bill Blakefield's unit at the [National]
Archives?
MR. BELTON: Could you explain that?
MR. KOLKER: Where he distributes and circulates material from that group. There
is a different problem, obviously, because there is not a copyright problem with the products
that are circulated out of the Archives. One of the elements that I am interested in is whether
the Board or some other organization can begin a negotiation process in which the copyright
problem is made somewhat less severe so that prints or other forms, other media, are made
available.
I am concerned with the fact that 16mm format is becoming less and less useful to us
because of expense and because of the appalling quality of those films. So I felt a bit
constrained, because I know that the charge of the Board is not to consider alternative media
but I am wondering if perhaps [after] the preservation of a given print, the manufacture of a
laserdisc version would be considered and that disc be available for either purchase or
distribution, circulation, if the appropriate contracts could be worked out.
DR. BILLINGTON: I would really welcome any thoughts that you have on how one
deals with the copyright problem in order to distribute films. That is the fundamental
problem. The paper print distribution, which is another model that you have mentioned, all
three models that you have mentioned as positive, simply do not have the problem of
copyright. If you are going to get into a serious distribution program of the films, you are
going to have to deal with this.
The Copyright Office is part of the Library of Congress, and we are not only obliged
but we think it right and proper to be vigilant custodians of the intellectual property rights and
so forth. But I see a situation emerging in another area where, despite reassurances that
copyright will be respected, some of the more aggressive special interest lobbyists--let me put
it directly and bluntly, you need only read today's paper--by getting certain issues into certain
agendas and with the cooperation of the media, these special interests are able to simply
misrepresent and, in effect, undercut the possibility of added services in needed areas that can
be performed by the nation's libraries by raising this problem as a bugaboo.
Now, it seems to me what we need is some creative way both of solving the added
distribution problem and respecting intellectual property rights. We would not do it at the
Library of Congress, and I do not think the other repository institutions would do it in any
way that did not respect the laws of the country. But this is being presented by people who
are in many cases more Catholic than the Pope on this issue as, in effect, an obstacle. It is
being constantly thrown out to frighten corporate executives.
The Library of Congress is part of the legislative branch of government. We are not a
lobbying organization so we are in unequal combat with people who are, in effect, preventing
added new services of distribution by simply presenting this as an obstacle.
Now, what is the practical way to deal with this, since we are in unequal combat? We
are not a public relations and sales organization; we are a public service organization. We are
trying to expand public services, but we do have to have some way of presenting this
argument and of coming up with a formula. Because, if there is going to be an added, more
aggressive distribution program, as there surely should be, there is going to have to be some
way of answering these questions besides reassuring people that it is going to happen, so I
appreciate any thoughts you have on it.
This is a very practical and current problem for a whole range of questions. Because,
frankly, I can say that in the current budgetary climate, in my view, unless great public
institutions are going to be able to extend their services the people who are lobbying
intensively against the extension of services are going to destroy the great public institutions
because there are not the dynamics of support as such. It is easier, if you are in prison in
California today, to get access to a library than if you are in a public high school, and that
situation is getting worse and worse all the time.
I see this question of extending services not only as important intrinsically for better
teaching and better understanding of our world, but for the survival of institutions that are
being severely undercut, and may even be destroyed, by the shortsighted attempt to create
problems which do not exist in fact, but are made to exist, because of the preference of the
media to dramatize problems rather than to talk about opportunities. This is a very serious
practical problem that affects us all. I really would appreciate any thoughts you have on this.
MR. KOLKER: I am absolute novice in terms of copyright law and I can only think
of it in an administrative gambit which would be studio-by-studio or even individual-by-
individual discussion.
For example, I have noticed in my own discussions and from my own work a very
slight opening of the door at Warner Bros. There is a gentleman, I believe vice president in
charge of properties, who has expressed verbally to me that he is interested in the work of
film scholarship. That alone is an extraordinary statement. And perhaps this is one way, to
locate these individuals who are indicating exactly what you say, a recognition that there is a
problem and a possibility that they may at least initiate a discussion to solve it.
I think a lot of it is as exactly as you say. It is a smokescreen because it means work
for them. It means work for the studio to begin dealing with their own entangled copyright
situation. But the only way to do it that I know of is to begin talking, and to explain the
problem in those terms, with that kind of eloquence, and to see where the points of entry
exist.
MR. TABB: Do the other speakers want to respond to this question?
MR. GUNNING: Well, one brief point that I think I would make: expanded
distribution and exhibition of films of the sort that I am thinking. I do not have a Gunning
Plan to match the Gomery Tax, but I think there are ways maybe to go about it that do not
necessarily involve violation of copyright or even of ownership.
One of the things that I think is very extraordinary to keep in mind--and it is generally
kind of a problem but it actually is also an opportunity--is the fact that film is one of the few
art forms that makes money. And consequently there are ways, I think, to run distribution
and exhibition with just a lower profit margin or no profit that would not necessarily collapse
if copyright royalties and duties had to be observed.
One of the things that strikes me around this country, although I tend to agree with
Professor Gomery that government is a beneficent thing, it is behind things that pop up
otherwise. In almost every large urban center and in many small urban centers--I know a few
out in the country--there are not-for-profit film theaters that are set up. They partly proceed
by grants, but they basically just are able to run on a kind of flat profit scheme. Their idea is
primarily to bring films to communities and things like that.
Now, those have not been organized by a government. But I think there would be a
possibility of working that out, and also that there is already a kind of network of such places
in existence, that they also could be a framework from which one could think about a
not-for-profit distribution scheme, which would not necessarily have to totally upset or throw
out copyright in any sense, but that would precisely be able to proceed because it would not
be aimed at making a profit, just hopefully covering expenses.
It is interesting for me, in New York City recently Cineplex Odeon took over a
repertory theater that had shown old films in New York and closed it. They said they did not
close it because it was not making any money; it was actually making money. It is just that
if they were showing Indiana Jones they could make a lot more money.
So there are possibilities, I think, in terms of film exhibition and distribution that even
within existing schema that if it was rethought could make availability much more possible.
MR. TABB: David?
MR. FRANCIS: There is one possible model, and that is the model of the record
industry. Every time a record is played, this is reported back, and a certain amount of
funding is allocated to the copyright owner. It may be worth looking at that as a possible
model for film distribution. The problem is the collection costs are usually very high indeed--
MR. GOMERY: So we need an ASCAP-BMI equivalent.
MR. FRANCIS: Exactly. Yes. One would like to find a way where the collection
costs were not so great, but you could achieve the same end.
MR. GOMERY: To answer Dr. Billington, I believe in the countervailing theory of
special interests. I read with sympathy the article in the Style Section of the Washington Post
this morning, and can understand how you must have felt, somewhat beleaguered. But I think
the educational institutions should rise up and argue that this material is important for
education; this is important for the future of the country. Secretary Reich of the Labor
Department has made an articulate case for labor and training as being the sole future of the
United States, and I think that this is part of it. I do not believe it is the whole thing, but it is
certainly part of it. I think that countervailing forces should be sent in. I would think my
colleagues, and I think the NEA and other pretty effective institutions in Washington should
say, "Yes, we realize there are copyright problems." We as authors know about copyright; we
get statements every year and worry about xeroxing of our books. I have walked in the
library many times and watched people xerox my books and the flow of funds circulating
somewhere else.
So I am very sympathetic, but I think that David is absolutely right, that non-profit,
cooperative institutions have to be set up to recognize the educational mission that this is
about to undertake. We are not trying to drive the studios out of business, we are trying to
increase their interests. We are trying to say to people, look, this is the most important
material of the twentieth century. We think it is not just something to sell, we think it is the
fabric of our culture. We think this is terrific and we are trying to extend it. We are not
trying to limit it. We are trying to get more people interested.
I always think the analogy is when videotape was proposed and begun in the seventies,
my role model and others, Mr. Valenti, went crazy: "Oh, this will be the end of the movie
industry, nobody will go to the movies, theaters will close, 20,000 will close down." Well,
there are more movie cinemas now, more movie screens showing movies, than at any time in
history. There are more people spending money on movies. There are more people watching
movies in more forms than any other time in history. It did not suppress things; it expanded
them. Hollywood was the big winner with videotape, not the loser.
Educating people, getting people interested, learning, excitement--that is the name of
the game, not carving this up. And I think that our educational colleagues deserve to speak
on this.
MR. KOLKER: He's [Gomery] pointed out often in his work that the studios have
fought every new transmission or form of media that they ultimately profited from. Maybe
there is now some argument that can be made to convince them that they do not have to
repeat the first part of that cycle.
It also occurs to me that, if I understand conversations with the librarians of motion
pictures over the years, that in many instances studios request the Library to make copies or
to make deposit prints for them, and I am wondering if a contractual agreement can be made.
If the Library is going to do this, the Library must also have the rights for some kind of
educational distribution.
MR. TABB: I would like to call on the Board's counsel, Eric Schwartz, to make a
few comments at this point.
MR. SCHWARTZ: Thank you, Winston. Let me clarify a few things, because
several issues have been raised over the years on these points.
First, to calm the fears of copyright owners, a few terms should be clarified and
narrowed, the first being what is meant by educational use, enumerating the difference
between a classroom use versus what is essentially a commercial use such as use in a book or
other similar project.
Second, we can further narrow the scope of what we are talking about by defining
narrowly what is meant by public domain, that is, materials that are older than 75 years, and
not materials that are in the public domain because of failure to file renewals or meet some
other formality. The latter being less than 75 years old can result in underlying rights,
musical rights in the film, screenplays and the like, remaining under copyright protection and,
therefore, archives or distributors could be held liable for distribution of these motion pictures.
Finally, if you want to distribute materials for educational markets, you have to decide
whether or not to limit the program to public domain materials. Such a program could begin
with the creation of a self-sustaining system of some sort that will pay for itself, unless you
are going to find more public funds, which in this day and age is not likely. Then, if not
limited to public domain films, you will have to seek permission from the copyright owners
from the outset, and probably limit the program in most cases to non-theatrical, non-feature
films where the commercial markets are somewhat smaller. You still have to obtain the
permission of the copyright owners, and, using that as a model, can later add to that system
other more commercial films.
In sum, I think what has created the greatest fears in the copyright owners' minds is
the discussion of an overly broad system of educational distribution. Educational uses can be
read very broadly as can the nature and the types of films that you are talking about that may
be considered public domain--where a less than 75-year-old film may be public domain, but
certainly the underlying materials are not. So you probably have to limit any program for
distribution to material that is older than 75 years.
MR. TABB: John?
MR. BELTON: I have a question about this because it concerns me greatly, and
maybe Eric can also answer part of this question which regards the parameters of fair use for
educational purposes, face-to-face fair use.
If I walk into any video store today and rent a videotape and take it to a classroom
and show this videotape on a screen for my students in an educational setting, I understand
that I am operating within the parameters of "fair use". The studios within the past 15 years
have moved through different models of leasing to selling materials. It seems to me that we
are in a market now in which one would want to redefine fair use in a classroom setting, if
there is a fair use applicable for using videotapes but not for using a motion picture film.
MR. SCHWARTZ: Fair use questions are always difficult because they are
determined on a case-by-case basis. It is an equitable doctrine of law in which courts look on
a case-by-case basis at four key factors. One key factor is the purpose and character of the
use, and certainly in the legislation it talks about educational uses. But often the most
important factor as described in the Supreme Court decision in the Betamax case, is the
impact on the potential marketplace. A classroom use is a part of a commercial educational
market and there are other educational commercial markets. For example, a motion picture
use in a classroom scheme can involve the taking of stills and frame enlargements. If the
number of the frame enlargements is excessive or the purpose of taking the frame
enlargements is to reproduce them into a book which is eventually sold, that is a commercial
purpose. Yes, the book is primarily sold in educational markets but it still is an educational
commercial market and conceivably a court would rule, depending on how many frame
enlargements were taken, that is not fair use. And that is the problem for copyright owners.
I think what needs to be done may be more in the way of cooperative ventures, instead
of legal ones done with the permission of the major copyright owners, and in cooperative
agreement with educational users, so that there is a certain amount of certainty which fair use
cannot provide since it is determined on a case-by-case basis. There are models for
cooperative agreements for educational uses in the copyright law. For instance, the use and
reproduction of educational classroom materials of literary works is outlined in the House and
Senate reports of the 1976 Copyright Act.
MR. BELTON: Thank you.
MR. TABB: Milt, did you have a question?
MR. SHEFTER: Yes. Thank you. This is addressed to the whole panel. I think we
are on the edge of a couple of key issues here and I would be interested in your response to
it.
If we follow on the Gomery Tax as we are now affectionately calling it here--and in
the present climate your name attached to that temporary tax will probably last longer than
being on an edifice in this nation's capital--if we follow through on that tax, you have
suggested the distribution medium might be the Department of Education. But in coming to
the problem of prioritization as to where this money goes, now we have heard from Mr.
Gunning here that in his discussions with Cineplex Odeon, an exhibitor, that they closed the
theater and reopened it to carry more commercial fare to make more money, defined that that
is what the public wants. That is an issue I think we have to address in the prioritization and
I would like to hear your comments on that.
Secondly, in terms of access, I think that most of the private copyright ownership
material that has been "donated" to various public institutions has been made available for
scholarly or educational purposes but prohibited from commercial exploitation. Since you
have all asked for more access under this plan, I would like to know your comments on that
as well.
MR. KOLKER: Well, I think it is self-defining. There are publics. I mean, there is
the public that the Cineplex Odeon is interested in and there is a more carefully defined
public who may very well want after school to go and see the latest popular film, who also
wants or needs to be educated to want to understand what is actually going on when they are
going to see the latest popular film. And since that is a more defined market, that indeed
could be another wedge to separate these complicated copyrights.
MR. SHEFTER: Not to interrupt you but the tax that is being proposed here is going
to be paid for by the public.
MR. KOLKER: Right.
MR. SHEFTER: Everybody that uses everything will pay for this.
MR. KOLKER: Well, the public pays already taxes for education that all who pay do
not partake in. So that it seems to me would not be--
MR. GOMERY: I, just as a case example, have no children and pay thousands of
dollars to the county of Montgomery in Maryland for education. Some could argue I am
being ripped off. I argue that the education of people in Montgomery County, as it is
organized, is a very important task and I, like every other citizen in the country, I am willing
to participate. It is now in terms of a property tax, which has some plusses and minuses, but,
as a property owner, I participate and I think that is important.
I agree with Secretary Reich. The education and training of our labor force and our
citizens to me is about as paramount a task as we have as a country and I think we should not
shirk it or neglect it. And I agree with you. Prioritization would be a difficult problem. But
prioritization, in my mind, is not a problem until you have resources to prioritize. And, at the
moment, we have no resources to prioritize. And so what I am trying to do, I thank the
person who suggested I have a positive spin. I do have a positive spin because I think that
this [is] important and we ought to have resources allocated to it.
In terms of health care, in terms of defense, in terms of other issues of the country,
this is trivial. This is rounding error in the health care world. We might be talking about
hundreds of millions of dollars in our world, but health care is billions and billions and
billions of dollars, and, needless to say, the prioritization of that is as equally a difficult task.
I do not think it is simple but I think we ought to get on with it.
MR. TABB: We have time for just one last question.
MR. FRANCIS: It is really not so much a question but a clarification. I just want to
find out what materials you and your colleagues ideally want. Is it 16mm film and video or
videodisc? Perhaps you screen it once and you use the other format for notes? It is
important for the record we are absolutely clear what material you think you all need in the
classroom.
MR. GUNNING: Well, I do not know that we would have immediate agreement on
this. What I would emphasize is I think right now we are in a very particular situation where
there are a variety of technologies and that what we have to realize is that they all do
different things.
To some extent, we tend to look at them only as having different price tags and
therefore the cheapest is the best. Certainly one of the things that technologies do is cut
costs. But I would say that in fact I think it is very important that we think about the
different possibilities of these different technologies and not absolutely stack one over the
other. I mean, I think that the technologies of video and videodisc, laserdisc are extremely
important. I also, as an archive rat, have an extreme importance on the use of 35mm for
research and 16mm for exhibiting to classrooms. But I think all of them have roles and I
think they are all different. I do not think they replace each other necessarily.
MR. GOMERY: I agree with Tom but let me be a little more specific. I think there
are two functions.
Function one--and I think one of the world's leading experts is sitting on your panel,
you might ask him at lunch time, Belton's wonderful new book on widescreen cinema--is to
see the film and/or television program in its original form as it was presented. And I think
that I am not going to rehearse the pan/scan, colorization, etc. issues because you all know
them as well as I do.
But it is difficult now to show original widescreen color films to our students. They
are not reproduced in books. Quite often in terms of frame enlargements, they are not often
seen. I think it is--just like a literary work, just like the complete version of Shakespeare or a
complete version of War and Peace--I think it is part of the educational responsibility to
expose people during their university training to the complete work, not some abridged or
partly affordable work.
I think that the other technologies of videotape and increasingly laserdisc, because
again of their affordability, can be used in subsequent screenings. Although, of course, if you
are going to write a paper trying to argue the complexity of wide screen imagery in Douglas
Sirk or Orson Welles or whomever, it is going to be pretty difficult unless you have access to
original material over and over and over again so you can make that kind of an argument and
analysis.
MR. TABB: Okay. I think I need to bring this part of the program to a close. As
the comments of the last 30 minutes indicate, the Librarian asked a very important, difficult
question. I think it would be especially useful to the board for you and others who may be
listening in the audience to go away and think about this and submit written comments for the
record on this particular issue.
We are going to have a ten-minute recess now. We will start again exactly at 11:20
with Brian O'Doherty.
[A brief recess was taken.]
MR. TABB: We are ready to begin the second part of this morning's hearing. If I
could call Dr. O'Doherty to the table, please?
Ladies and gentlemen, please. Thank you very much. We will get started again.
It is our pleasure to welcome Brian O'Doherty of the National Endowment for the
Arts. Brian?
Statement of Brian O'Doherty, Director, Media Arts, National Endowment for the Arts
MR. O'DOHERTY: Thank you for the opportunity to speak here. I feel like a
member of the associated union of boilermakers amid all these experts. But I do have things
to say and I will say them.
I was present at the first historic meeting of the Center for Film Television
Preservation in Los Angeles. That was the first time that studio heads and the heads of
nonprofit archives got together and sat at the same table. The cochairmen of the new center
were Fay Kanin, who is with us, and Elton Rule. And Elton Rule looked at the studio people
and he said, "I do not know how much you are interested in film preservation; I think the
only form of preservation you know about is self-preservation."
That was in 1985. We have come a long way. I will try to avoid telling you what
everybody in this room already knows, but let us recite our gains for a moment.
The formation of the National Center at the American Film Institute was due to the
vision of the former chairman of the Arts Council, Frank Hodsoll, whose passion for the
media arts graced his tenure and, of course, increased the media arts program's budget. The
founding of the Center was as important for the interest it generated as for the achievements it
has so vigorously pursued.
Studio involvement was once sporadic but through conversion programs that liaison is
now ongoing.
The AFI catalog received a profound impetus from the founding of the Center. The
Humanities Endowment, our sister agency, invested generously. The Center is now pregnant
with the thirties volume, which it will shortly bring forth. The end of that stupendous project
is in sight.
The template of a national database is in place. We have not heard much about it
today.
A stirring short film on preservation made a too-brief appearance in 1983 before going
into the limbo of rights negotiations.
American Movie Classics has put its strong shoulder to the preservation wheel.
The coloring crisis to which we all probably overreacted has come and gone.
And this Library undertook the responsibility of naming year-by-year an acceptable
cannon of American films, a responsibility that the Endowment properly declined. We are
very glad to see that task undertaken here.
A field once industriously submerged in the twilight of isolated repairs has emerged
into unaccustomed sunlight. A great consciousness raising has taken place even as the fiscal
landscape has become more parched and inhospitable. And that, as we know from today, is
not conducive to salubrious meditations.
I am going to talk about a missing factor here: the public. I am always amazed at the
depth of the public's good will towards preservation. Nothing demonstrates the hold that film
has on the public imagination than this amiable reservoir.
I mention the public because the public has invested heavily in film preservation.
Some 10 million in tax dollars has gone to nitrate preservation from the Endowment over the
past 20 years--the longest and most sustained investment outside that of this library.
What has the public got in return? And what questions should be asked of the
preservation field in its name?
I do believe that the preservation field will eventually, of necessity, have to draw on
public support in the near future not just through tax dollars but directly.
In approaching that public, should not the case be made in a way that anyone can
understand it?
The way the field represents itself, if I may say so, needs renovation. Take nitrate
preservation and its familiar slogans. The vision of a continent of memory sinking from sight
is a powerful rhetorical trope. But as one who has supervised the expenditure of millions of
these dollars, why are the estimates of what remains to be done so, shall we say, imperfect?
Will the public continue to bless our generalities so kindly?
Take another one. Half the films made before 1951 are gone. But most of the art
produced in any era is, as we know, no loss. We hear of priority lists and heroic searches. I
think it behooves the field to educate the public beyond the habitual mantras--which,
unfortunately, I frequently find myself repeating.
And by what standards are films identified for preservation? For an arts agency, there
is one standard, artistic excellence. On that basis, should I question the artistic value of much
that has been preserved in the Endowment's name, how ever virtuous its social, political and
anthropological relevance?
Pressing the standards issue, in my experience, makes everyone nervous. Surely it is
better to be wrong for clear and defined reasons than to make judgments by undeclared,
undetermined or blurred standards. Every age is blind to one's segment in its arc and vision.
We are very insightful as to degrees of that arc in past times. But open standards beget open
discussion, and discussion deepens our insight. Often this is mislaid in technical discussions,
invaluable though these are.
The very nature of preservation involves risk-taking, and it also involves the athletic
act of flinging oneself 30 or 40 years forward to gain a retrospect on the present. It is a risky
business, and true conservation never assumed a conservative failure of nerve.
The value of the database now in formation at the National Center is indisputable. It
is a powerful tool that can eliminate duplication, make information flow smoothly, assist
research, facilitate curators and exhibitors, aid in education, feed an innervating stream into
preservation's day-to-day business. The monies required to carry the database through are of
an order beyond the Arts End |
