The Times (16/Mar/1982) - Time runs out for rare film

(c) The Times (16/Mar/1982)

• keywords: Alfred Hitchcock, Blackmail (1929), British Film Institute

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Time runs out for rare film

By Kenneth Gosling

Historic and rare British films, such as the original silent version of Alfred Hitchcock's Blackmail, may perish if the National Film Archive fails to secure more funds to accelerate its preservation programme.

The archive is the largest division of the British Film Institute and in an interim report today the Commons Education, Science, and Arts Committee recommends immediate consultations between the institute and the Office of Arts and Libraries to decide how urgently to raise the additional £695,000 a year needed to save the archive's nitrate collection, one of the world's finest.

The main problem concerns films produced commercially between 1893 and 1951, which were printed on an unstable cellulose nitrate base. Proper storage can slow but cannot halt, chemical decomposition. The answer is to copy all nitrate films on to a safety base, but because costs have risen, the plan to complete this task by the year 2000 has fallen behind. By 2001, there will be 21.75m feet of film still unduplicated.