Archive
The film stock that burns is the film stock that survived
Nitrate base was dangerous, chemically unstable and optically superior. What replaced it was safer and introduced a decay problem…
Archive
Older films, restorations and the long tail nobody is marketing.
20 articles · updated August 11, 2026 · page 2 of 2
Archive
The colour you remember was a chemical process with its own rules
Historic colour systems did not simply record what was in front of the camera. Each one imposed a palette, and restoration has to…
Archive
Sound on film was a photograph of a waveform, and it aged like one
For decades the soundtrack lived beside the picture as an optical stripe. How it was recorded explains both its character and its…
Archive
Old films were cut before release, and the cuts are often what survived
Classification regimes across the last century removed material at national and local level. What circulates today is frequently a…
Archive
Half the work in an archive is establishing what the film even is
A large proportion of surviving material arrives unlabelled, mislabelled or in fragments. Identifying it is detective work with…
Archive
A projectionist used to be running a live performance
Presenting a film on film required continuous manual work, judgement and repair. Automation removed the labour and, with it, a set…
Archive
Home movies are the archive nobody planned to keep
Amateur film records ordinary life that no professional production had any reason to photograph. It is also the material most…
Archive
Most of the world heritage sits outside the archives that get funded
Preservation capacity is distributed very unevenly, and it does not correspond to where films were made. The consequence is a…