IAC DISCUSSION FORUMS

With the advent of Cine Clubs and at present Video Clubs, many formats of film and video have been made. What happens to them over the years regards looking after them for future generations ?. Because there will come a time when the present state of clubs will be a item of the past. As clubs shut down where or who looks after the moving material?

Why do I ask this question?. The other day I was walking past a skip and in there were cine film, VHS movies and DVD"s.
It turned out the person had died and the relatives wanted to put the house on the market and had no interest in that sort of moving history.
I know the IAC has a library for past and present.

Frank, that's really sad and reminds me how near I am to that very situation. My editing room is full of past films: celluloid, tape, discs and files on drives. All will be in a skip quite soon I fancy, judging by comments about the state of my room and my advanced age.

The IAC Video Library does have various films donated over the years by clubs or individuals.

The cine material on various gauges is now stored by the East Anglian Archive and is slowly being digitised.

So far as I know all the video material remains with our librarian.

There are regional archives, all of which like to get material of interest to their area.

Of course the great question is: what is worth preserving? Surely not every club movie?

Sorry Michael to hear of your situation in the form of looking ahead. I was wondering if one's local library could play a part in preserving films or video of local interest?
Then again once we pass on, its up to our family members to take the task on to either store or fling?
All I know my side of the clan are watchers of video I have edited but couldn't care less about the work involved to get it on the screen.
Sorry to say most club video's are only good on the day of showing or for club competion.
With new technology coming out more video images will be compressed in a format which will take up little room. Leaving the days of cine,VHS and DVD's to disappear.
I have noticed a decline in people buying DVD's as they are streamed on the computer.
Michael would it pay you to have a word with your family members and tell them how you feel and what will happen to my or your memory material?

It is always possible to leave instructions in a Will ... perhaps saying that your films/videos should be offered to an archive or library before being dumped.

http://www.filmarchives.org.uk/filmarch ... embers.htm - gives a list of the main UK regional film archives.

When my own club, Dalziel Cine and Video Club in Motherwell, had to close down a few years ago I made sure that the club's films (i.e. fiction films and documentaries made by the club) were preserved and donated to the Scottish Screen Archive who were delighted to receive them. The films dated back to the start of the club in 1960 and there was quite a lot of material that the members had filmed around the town of Motherwell at that time. Before sending them to the archive I made a list of every film with as much information as I could find about the production of the films, the people involved and the names of any actors we had used. I think most film archives are short of cash and have to prioritise what they can accept so we were lucky that they took the Dalziel films on board and had quite a few copied onto DVD.

When good friend and film maker Ron Wing died we had the help of Dave Watterson in relocating his films to the East Anglia Film Archive. They have been included in the IAC collection and as funds become available they will be digitized and cataloged. The need is for funds to support the preservation so this is a worthy cause for support.

ned c

Going back to the original post.

It is so sad that the family were so disrespectful of their relative that their treasured memories were skipped.

Its their heritage they are throwing away.

I would love some more visual records of my family's past, all we have is a photo album covering 1850 to 1930 of my Maternal Grandfather, then very little until the 70's.