Inside the BFI
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Time Out asks the key figures whether film is an industry at the mercy of market forces, or an art form that must be protected. Twenty-five miles from London, on the outskirts of the Hertfordshire commuter town of Berkhamsted, stands an eclectic bunch of buildings that look like they might once have housed a temporary RAF base or a secret code-busting operation during WWII. It s on this site, which mixes an appearance of light industry with an air of academia and technical expertise, that you ll find the National Film Television Archive. You might not have heard of this 72-year-old institution which, unlike its printed-word counterpart, the British Library, doesn t have a strong public profile. Yet last month in Parliament new Culture Secretary James Purnell boldly declared the BFI archive is a national treasure. It is arguably the finest film and television archive anywhere in the world It is safe in our hands . It was an assurance that many who are aware of the rocky history of this great British institution will believe only when they see the archive refurbished, replenished and renewed with their own eyes.n
This unrivalled collection of film prints and other important movie materials such as the private collections of directors David Lean and Derek Jarman is our film and television heritage made real in the London suburbs and, with a horrible predictability, it s been under threat from a lack of cash for years. The archive is a fascinating place to visit. One building houses a comprehensive collection of commercially redundant video-playback machines, which are essential for transferring old video to new digital tapes for storage and making them available to such outlets as the Mediatheque at the BFI Southbank. On Time Out s visit, ITV s news coverage of the first Gulf War is being transferred bulletin by bulletin. Nearby, another building, accessible via an airlock and security door, houses three 650-square-metre vaults that rise ten metres into the air. They contain row after row of film cans stored in a climate of 5 C and 35 per cent humidity advantageous conditions for slowing down the inevitable decay of film stock. The archive is home to 250,000 cans the world s largest collection of nitrate film, notoriously unstable footage that can burst into flames that burn underwater; a nitrate fire killed 180 people at an early Lumi re brothers show. Most of the BFI s nitrate material is kept in limestone quarries in Warwickshire it s better to store it away from masses of humans, explains senior preservation manager Andrea Kalas. In the 1970s, vast amounts of footage were transferred from nitrate to acetate-based safety film which has since proved alarmingly prone to a less dangerous but equally ruinous process of vinegarisation . Elsewhere, a white-coated preservation expert is examining critical scratches on a delicate roll of film that contains footage of Sir Henry Seagrave attempting to break the water speed record on Lake Windermere in 1930 and crashing to his death.n
It s a sparse, specialist environment, peopled by staff fondly described by one BFI representative as loonies for their passion, expertise and long service. Berkhamsted houses 50,000 fiction features, 100,000 non-fiction works and 625,000 TV programmes. Getting the material into the public domain is central to the archive s values: it was here, for example, that the Mitchell and Kenyon films of Edwardian life were restored so that they could play to more than 4 million BBC viewers in 2005. But a paucity of funds means that about half of the collection is currently unviewable by staff while roughly a quarter of all material held is awaiting formal acceptance into the archive. In truth, the staff here can only dream of the work they need to carry out. This has not gone unnoticed by government: in 2003, the National Audit Office condemned the BFI, which manages and funds the Archive, for leaving films to rot on its shelves. The Berkhamsted facility is closed to the public and rarely accessible to anyone other than its 100 or so staff, but its work is crucial to anyone who cares about the past, present and future of a cinematic culture in Britain. Nowhere else in this country is there an independent body responsible for the collection and preservation of film material at a national level. Without such an archive, the survival of films would be left to the vagaries of private owners and film companies, neither of whom have the expertise or the will to ensure we don t lose forever key titles in our film history.n
The current annual budget for the BFI archive is 3.5 million. (The British Library s is more than 100m.) The BFI is now seeking an annual budget of 6m, with an additional one-off grant from government of 34m to bring the storage conditions up to scratch and begin digitisation. Digitisation is not, however, a holy grail there s no guarantee that the format will prove any more durable than celluloid nor is it cheap. An average feature costs around 8,000 to transfer; a Technicolor film requiring restoration work might come in at 20 times that. If you were just digitising things to look at them on YouTube, you could find a way to do it cheaply, says Kalas. But if you want to make sure that in 100 years people can see The Red Shoes on the big screen, it s important to do it right. Sources at the top of the BFI are confident that Purnell and his colleagues are committed to increased funding for the archive and an announcement is expected later this year. But the debate over its future is only one aspect of a wider argument relating to film in this country. The BFI is itself at a moment of crisis and never before has its role in our culture been so uncertain. Charged, since its inception in 1933, with a broad remit to champion film culture throughout the UK, the BFI is predominantly dependent on government money. Generally recognised to have been underfunded for decades, its situation has not improved since it was removed from direct ministerial accountability and placed under the governance of the UK Film Council (UKFC) in 2000. The UKFC s overall strategy is heavily geared towards optimising conditions for the commercial success of the British film industry a privileging of profit and sustainability many consider to be at odds with the cultural role of the BFI. One British filmmaker we interviewed pointedly described the relationship of the BFI to the UKFC as that of servant and master .
Related: Inside the BFI
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