Cinema Refugees: Conserving and Preserving South Asian Films

This post was written by Deborah Stoiber, Collection Manager in the Moving Image Department at the George Eastman Museum. This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services: Grant #MA-245614-OMS-20. Visit www.imls.gov.

Last year, while prepping to teach my students in The L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation, I began to check a print titled Bin Badal Baarsat (Zeenat Begum, Pakistan 1975) for content before assigning it to my class. While looking online to confirm the title, I found a bootleg copy that appeared to have been uploaded from an old VHS tape. As I continued to watch and compare to our 35mm print, I slowly realized that what I was seeing online was made from the print I had in my hands! The scratches, splices and cuts were identical. I looked in other places and sure enough, they were all VHS copies from this print.

Then it dawned on me–this is most likely the last 35mm film of Bin Badal Baarsat on earth.

At the George Eastman Museum, we are working hard every day to ensure that films like this, the last of their kind, are protected through conservation, preservation, and restoration.

Conserving film is not easy, especially when it has been subjected to a hard life in an abandoned movie theater, warehouse, basement, or garage. Rodents make homes in the boxes and cans. Water and heat can turn film emulsion into a moldy petri dish. Lack of humidity can make the plastic base brittle and shrink. But with the right tools, care, and understanding, the Eastman Museum can bring life back into these relics from the past.

In September 2020, we were happy to announce we received a $250,000 grant from the Institute for Museum and Library Services to allow us to purchase the necessary equipment and to hire two full time archivists to inspect, rehouse, clean, and catalog over 900 South Asian film prints into the museum’s permanent collection. The grant program, Museums for America, will also allow the objects, once cataloged, to be accessed for research through our Moving Image Study Center.

Starting a project like this is a major undertaking! We have been working with vendors to order supplies necessary to take on such an extraordinary task. Gloves, splicing tape, cores, cans and computers became a priority. A large amount of fresh film leader to add to the heads and tails of the reels was needed. Several packages of acid detection strips to test decaying prints for vinegar syndrome is necessary to have on hand. Plus, lots of cleaning supplies. Most importantly we needed to hire two archivists for making this venture happen.

I am proud to announce the hiring of two new project film specialists, who will be starting in early December: Ms. Lydia Creech and Dr. Erica Jones.

Lydia Creech is a graduate with an MLS from Indiana University at Bloomington, with a specialization in Archives and Records Management. Her professional experience has primarily involved film inspection and moving image archiving. She has five years of experience with film handling and got a love for inspecting 35mm at her internship at the Yale Film Study Center. Her experience with various types of film damage and decay, including mold, vinegar syndrome, and broken splices makes her qualifications a perfect fit with this project. She is wrapping up at the Missouri Historical Society on a very similar grant project before moving to Rochester.

Erica Jones recently completed a degree in film preservation at The L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation at the George Eastman Museum where she learned all aspects of moving image preservation. She received her Ph.D. in June 2017 from the University of California, Riverside (UCR) in Ethnomusicology. Erica’s academic research and teaching experience focused on the intersectionality between music and media scholarship exploring concepts of Indian culture and globalization. Her interest in applying knowledge of South Asian cinema to a career as a film and media archivist makes her an ideal coworker.

Together, and with the rest of the Collection Management team in the Moving Image Department, we hope to find lost films, give care for to the materials, and most importantly, conserve this vast collection of South Asian Cinema for scholars, researchers and film lovers all over the world. We will be posting blogs along the way to show some of the highs and lows as we discover them on this adventure. We hope you will join us as we work to bring these films back to life-and back to the cinema.

This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services: Grant #MA-245614-OMS-20. Visit www.imls.gov.

The views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this post do not necessarily represent those of the Institute of Museum and Library Services.