Just think about the following facts:
Over 80% of all silent films are lost FOREVER;
Nearly half of all the films ever made (up to and including the present day) are lost FOREVER.
Film is not only a wonderful form of entertainment and amusement for us all, but it is an indelible marker of our culture and society, too. It is a legacy that we leave for future generations to understand who we were and where we were, frozen for that particular moment in time.
Please take a moment to look at this short video about the Celeste Bartos Film Preservation Center of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).
The Center, located in Hamlin, Pennsylvania, comprises two buildings on a 38-acre estate. This includes a 7,900-square-foot facility for the Museum’s holdings of 5,000 fragile nitrate films, dating from 1894 to 1951; and a much larger 28,000-square-foot main building that houses some 9,000 titles on acetate-based “safety stock.”
To find out more about film preservation in general, please check out these resources:
National Film Preservation Foundation
National Film Preservation Board (Library of Congress)
Women’s Film Preservation Fund
Film Preservation in the Digital Age (article)
