- New Zealand Film Archive
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The New Zealand Film Archive is a charitable trust dedicated to the collection, preservation and viewing of mainly New Zealand films and videos made between 1895 to the present day.
Contents
Background
The Film Archive was founded in 1981 to collect, protect and project New Zealand’s film and television history. Its main collections are based in Wellington, where its premises feature a mini-theatre and gallery for regular exhibitions. It maintains a secondary office in Auckland and video access rooms within host institutions in other provincial centres.
The Film Archive is a member of FIAF (Fédération Internationale des Archives du Film), AMIA (Association of Moving Image Archivists) and SEPAVAA (South East Asia and Pacific Audio-Visual Archives Association), and adheres to international standards of collection management, preservation and access.
Activities
The growth of the Film Archive's collection depends primarily on voluntary deposits by filmmakers, collectors and the public. The collection is stored in a secure, climate controlled vault and conservation is undertaken where necessary. Most of the collection can be viewed via VHS or DVD at the libraries in Wellington and Auckland. A school disk loan library was initiated in 2006, to support screening programmes in the school curriculum.
Regular screenings of New Zealand films are held in the cinema, which is also available to community groups for screenings and events. As well as film and video, its exhibition programme showcases the work of contemporary artists and emerging filmmakers using video and computer technology, such as the online performance platform UpStage. The Archive recently established a partnership with Illusions, New Zealand's moving image and performing arts criticism magazine, to create the magazine's web site.
In 2010, a collection of 75 previously thought to be lost films, were discovered in the archive.[1][2]
American silent films
The archive has many silent American films that had been shipped to New Zealand at the time of their release, but were thought not worth the expense of shipping back to the United States after they ran in theaters.[1] The films were supposed to be destroyed after being sent to New Zealand and seen there at the end of their distribution run, but some were stashed away instead, then later put into the archive. Only about 20 percent of films from the silent era were still in existence as of 2010.[3]
The New Zealand Film Archive has a strong commitment to repatriating old films to their country of origin. In 2009, the archive agreed with the (American) National Film Preservation Foundation to repatriate 75 silent American films, all rare or previously thought by American archivists and scholars to be lost (the archive continues to hold many other silent-era American films). About 70 percent of the copies were complete. The films, all on highly volatile and dangerous nitrate stock, were to be shipped back to the United States for restoration and copying, except for Upstream, a 1927 film by John Ford, which was determined to be so precious that transportation could not be risked before it was restored and copied in New Zealand. Other films in the cache include "Mary of the Movies" (1923), the earliest Columbia Pictures feature film known to have survived,[1] "Maytime" (1923; starring Clara Bow); the first surviving film Mabel Normand directed (and starred in); an episode of the serial The Active Life of Dolly of the Dailies, as well as industrial films, documentaries and newsreels. The agreement to repatriate the films came after an American film preservationist from the Academy Film Archive visited the New Zealand archives while on vacation and began discussing the New Zealand institution's holdings with archivists there.[3]
References
- ^ a b c Kehr, Dave (2010-06-07). "Trove of Long-Lost Silent Films Returns to America". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/07/movies/07silent.html?src=mv. Retrieved 2010-06-06.
- ^ "New Zealand Project Films: Highlights". filmpreservation.org. http://www.filmpreservation.org/preserved-films/new-zealand-project-films-highlights. Retrieved 2010-06-06.
- ^ a b King, Susan, "Silent film treasures to be preserved", June 7, 2010, Los Angeles Times, retrieved same day
External links
Coordinates: 41°17′37″S 174°46′41″E / 41.293656°S 174.777939°E
Categories:- Film archives
- Archives in New Zealand
- Cinema of New Zealand
- New Zealand organisation stubs
- Film organization stubs
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