15 February 2010

FOR THE LOVE OF FILM

Right now, there is a fantastically important blogathon going on: hosted by Self-Styled Siren and Ferdy on Films, it's a fundraiser for the National Film Preservation Foundation, a nonprofit organisation dedicated to rescuing films in immediate danger of being lost forever; they can't do this without significant public support, which you can provide here:

Donate to the National Film Preservation Foundation

I'm going to be contributing something myself later this week, but of course I had to do my little bit to get the word out, and urge you to read the articles already pouring in from the dozens of bloggers trying to help raise awareness of the very real threat that mere age and poor archiving practices present to the rich history of films, especially silent films Both the Siren and Marilyn are keeping master lists of all the contributions; there's a lot to read, so get to it!
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2 comments:

  1. Marilyn2/15/10, 11:55 AM

    Thanks tremendously for supporting the blogathon. We look forward to your post!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous2/15/10, 10:20 PM

    I know you try to keep things more on the art and theory end of things here, Tim, but given the topicality of this post I would call attention to the efforts of one peculiar gentleman to help preserve film for posterity.

    Jeff Kreines is building, one unit at a time, film scanners designed to digitally capture even the most decayed nitrate prints before they dissolve into goo and are lost forever. Even for those not technically inclined, this article points to some larger issues of preservation worthy of consideration for any cineaste.

    http://www.kinetta.com/download/files/PaperPrintf2008forWeb.pdf

    ReplyDelete

Just a few rules so that everybody can have fun: ad hominem attacks on the blogger are fair; ad hominem attacks on other commenters will be deleted. And I will absolutely not stand for anything that is, in my judgment, demeaning, insulting or hateful to any gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or religion. And though I won't insist on keeping politics out, let's think long and hard before we say anything particularly inflammatory.

Also, sorry about the whole "must be a registered user" thing, but I do deeply hate to get spam, and I refuse to take on the totalitarian mantle of moderating comments, and I am much too lazy to try to migrate over to a better comments system than the one that comes pre-loaded with Blogger.