Film History: Film Preservation Vs Scholarship Vol 7, no 3

Since the inception of the archival movement, the relationship between motion picture archivists and film researchers has been, at best, problematic. For the film archivist, researchers were an uneducated breed of raiders of the lost nitrate, unaware of the rarity of archival holdings, as well as careless about the survival of films for the sake of posterity. Such an attitude was fully reciprocated on the other side, where film archivists and curators were seen as guardians of heritage whose value would lie in its inaccessibility. At best, the film archivist was generally perceived as an enthusiastic film buff, whose diffidence towards academia was matched by his or her personal style of rewriting and interpreting history. This volume of "Film History" provides some examples of the directions taken within this context, offering both the scholars' and the archivists' viewpoints.