Examination of Witnesses (Questions 119
- 130)
TUESDAY 31 OCTOBER 2006
BFI, FILM ARCHIVE
FORUM, BRIDGEMAN
ART LIBRARY
Q119 Chairman: Thank you for your
patience. For our final session this morning I welcome Amanda
Nevill and Heather Stewart of the British Film Institute, Dr Frank
Gray and Dr McKernan of the Film Archive Forum and Viscountess
Bridgeman and Pandora Mather-Lees of the Bridgeman Art Library.
I start by asking you to give us a quick overview of how you see
the state of film archives in this country. Do you feel that the
DCMS is giving them sufficient recognition and support?
Ms Nevill: I think the first thing
to remember about film archives is that they are probably different
from a lot of archives about which you have heard this morning.
The film sector is still quite immature in lots of ways and film
is a recent newcomer to the stage in the context of the heritage
that we have been talking about this morning. Arguably, it suffers
from that perception within the cultural sector. Film has very
particular demands and frustrations as well as particular opportunities,
as you know. I argue that at the moment film archives are definitely
quite challenged. In this country we have the national film archives,
which the BFI looks after, and the regional film archives. The
national archive is the most significant archive of moving footage
in the world, and it is one of the nation's great heritage treasures.
To give an indication of size, we look after 27 acres of film
archive. As you know, film archive is inherently unstable so one
cannot just leave it for 10 years and then go back and dust it;
one must be constantly vigilant and look to conserve it. It is
an ongoing activity. Real opportunities are opening up and it
is a tantalising sector to be in. On the one hand, we are being
quite assiduously courted by a lot of commercial companies because
content is king. On the other hand, our ability to present that
material to the wider audience is completely dependent on our
ability to look after it at its core. One matter that struck me
this morning was the opening question by Mr Davies. He asked what
could be done to change the perception of archives. I am not convinced
that in many cases the best way is to champion the archive for
archive's sake. We need to look at the picture holistically; in
other words, by and large the archives are an engine for their
outcomes. At the BFI we have had some wonderful successes in the
past two years particularly with co-productions. We have done
some great co-productions with the BBC, one of which was Mitchell
and Kenyan. This stunned the BBC. For that co-production on three
consecutive Friday nights we had larger audience for archive material
than for "Big Brother", but one must put it in context.
If one had not rescued the material one would probably have spent
many millions of pounds conserving and preserving it, repairing
sprocket holes and doing wonderful digital things to it so that
it would be consumable and usable by the BBC. The public would
not otherwise have been able to access it. If one was asked what
one would like to see affirmed by government, it would be that
the link between the need to fund the core care and stewardship
of the archives should be carefully balanced with the dynamic
and equal and opposite importance of making those collections
freely available. That is sometimes which is lost at the moment.
It is sometimes convenient and easy to forget that when in the
Midlands we have something like 240,000 admissions to films from
the BFI without the investment that needs to be put into the archive
itself it would not be possible to do that. In terms of regional
film archives, Dr McKernan and Dr Gray will be able to talk eloquently
to it. The other issue, which has been a constant refrain all
morning, is that the film sector is very underfunded. I argue
that it is in a parlous state. This is not anecdotal; a whole
slew of reports over the past five years points to the difficulties
in this area.
Q120 Chairman: Perhaps the Film Archive
Forum would like to add something.
Dr McKernan: The Film Archive
Forum, of which the BFI's national archive is a part, represents
the public sector film archives in the UK. Essentially, we have
three or four national archives and eight English regional archives.
As Ms Nevill has indicated, the English archives represent a substantial
proportion of the moving image heritage in this country. Films
and television programmes that lay stress or focus upon particular
communities and are very relevant to the people in Yorkshire,
Midlands and so forth where films in the national collection might
not necessarily have the same resonance are subsisting on absurd
funding. For the last year for which we have records there has
been £260,000 of core funding through the UK film councils
through to the regional screen agencies for eight collections.
They are subsisting on approximately £30,000 to £40,000.
They are bringing in a lot more in terms of project funding and
money from local authorities and earned income as well, but at
the core there is no other body within the archives sector that
subsists on such little funding.
Q121 Chairman: You are suggesting
that you are struggling with the existing level of funding. We
also know that there is a prospect that the present level may
be under threat. If so, the outlook will be extremely bleak?
Dr McKernan: Indeed. We are faced
with the possibility of losing an archive or two at any moment.
They do subsist largely on project funding, so you may go to an
archive that looks reasonably healthy and has six or seven people
there and all but one are being funded by HLF or whatever and
it staggers on for a period and hopes that it survives thereafter.
We have not lost an archive yet during the existence of the forum.
Dr Gray: As you gather, we could
speak for ever given the precarious nature of it. It is interesting
to look at the reasons for it. As Ms Nevill said, there is significance
in film being regarded as a newcomer to the archive community.
If you look at the regional archives in England and other national
archives in Wales in Scotland, this movement started in the mid-1970s
and it has grown since then. It is interesting that each one has
spawned a set of alliances, sometimes with local authorities,
museums and record offices. What we share is an interest in local
and regional history and the way that the moving image can connect
with that history in an immediate way. The word "magic"
was used earlier today. There is a lot of magic when you go to
an archive film show because there is a sense of recognition of
an immediate shared past, and it is special to be part of that.
But to build these archives as institutions and support them will
always be a patchwork affair because it has relied on alliances
with local authorities, record offices and museums. A very significant
role is played by higher education, but it is a patchwork. Sometimes
that patchwork does not have a very good steer or leadership from
the nation. This is beginning to change because we now have the
Film Heritage Group. For the past two and a half years we are
beginning to see a more positive direction, but for most of the
history of the original film archives it has been difficult because
it has been a matter of what is done in our own regions. Only
now are we getting that kind of joined-up philosophy and thinking.
Q122 Chairman: I turn to the Bridgeman
Art Library. You will have heard a lot of the preceding evidence
this morning about digitisation, which is obviously something
of which you have enormous experience. Can you tell us, first,
your reaction to some of the things you have heard, and, second,
what do you see as the priorities of government in this area?
Viscountess Bridgeman: You may
be quite relieved to hear that we have never asked for funds from
the government but we have asked for more communication and co-operation
with the government. We have been representing and financing museums
within the UK over the past 35 years. We have made a lot of the
resources of their photographic departments viable because of
the income that we produce for them. We have 2,000 collections
and international collections outside the UK as well. We have
a lot of expertise because we operate in many other countries:
we also have offices in Paris, Berlin and New York. We talk to
the DCMS, MLA and all the relevant people about the fact that
we have an extraordinary corpus of images from UK collections
that we can put at their disposal for the required educational
remit when working with the BBC and so on. Each department is
asked what it thinks about it but they never actually come back
to us. That is really my main bone of contention. We have created
a very good commercial archive which can generate money. We rely
a lot on interns. We run it very economically. About 15 ago when
we were representing the British Library the photographic department
said that we were making more money for them than they were able
to make simply because we were a small organisation which could
act quickly on our feet. We did not have to wait for various levels
of management to decide what type of new software to acquire.
This has been a tremendous advantage to us, but it has also given
us a wealth of experience. We would very much have liked the Government
to use this and perhaps to have consulted us on what the best
way forward would be.
Ms Mather-Lees: To clarify a point
raised earlier, the collections that we represent retain the intellectual
property in their images when they leave them with us. Another
point is that we span museums, galleries, archives, and private
collections with hidden treasures, so it is not just UK public
museums; we span a wider collection of resources. One of the most
important things for us is to look at the UK digital libraries
initiative. What we would like to see are some standards being
embedded generally across the whole sector, private and commercial.
I think it is important that if we are to move forward with the
process of digitisation, firstly with file image formats and then
with the meta-data attached to the file (which has a huge value),
we should look at creating some agreed standards across the board.
We have been doing this with our 2,000 collection sources for
many years and we are always looking at new developments. I think
we have established a pretty good basis so far.
Q123 Chairman: Are you satisfied
that museums and institutions are doing enough to work with you
to maximise the value of their assets rather than coming along
to tell us that they need more money?
Ms Mather-Lees: I think that more
museums could be working with us. The 2,000 collections that we
cited are from around the world and they include individual photographers
and 500 artists for whom we manage copyright as well as reproduction
rights. We are very much self-funding. We have received a limited
amount of European funding to research meta-data and file delivery,
but we are very much self-funding. We do that by licensing commercial
rights, so we have users who are in the film and television industries,
publishing, advertising and design right across the board and
around the world. What we do is very much driven by the users,
which is important, but we would like to bring more collections
on board. We think that we do a very good job for them, and it
is good to have an homogenised database whereby for example one
can search an English artists' work and find a sketch in one part
of the world and a corresponding oil on canvas in another part
of the world. We do a valuable job in bringing those resources
together.
Viscountess Bridgeman: Museums
have been very co-operative. Some years ago I talked to one of
the museum association sponsored meetings about how museums could
commercialise their collections more. In the early days we spoke
on the whole only to museum directors or curators because there
was not a commercial department within museums. In the time we
have been operating it has been very encouraging to see museums
appointing commercial managers and museums have become much more
financially aware. I remember a time when a museum director would
not allow his images to be reproduced in colour because he said
the technology was not good enough; it could be produced only
in black and white. Things have moved a long way, but there is
still room for improvement.
Q124 Alan Keen: The Bridgeman Art
Library wants more co-operation from the public sector, and the
British Film Institute in particular wants more co-operation on
copyright from the commercial companies that own those rights.
Can you tell us a bit more about that problem?
Ms Nevill: In the national archive
we do not own the right to probably two-thirds of the material
that we hold. Obviously, the rights are vested in the studio or
makers of the films. An interesting line that we have to walk
down, because obviously the British Film Institute is part of
the greater machinery that wants to ensure the film industry exists
and thrives in Britain, is: what would be the best environment
to allow educational use of the national archive and the material
looked after by the public purse which does not at the same time
hijack the potential income that the film-makers need and get
from sales of their work? We have something called Screen Online
which is in 12,000 schools in Britain. That is a fantastic resource.
You can look at it at home on your own computer, except that you
do not get the clips. It took about six people two years just
to negotiate the rights to allow schools access to the clips,
so it not just a database. There are lots of fabulous stories
on it and there something like 300 hours' worth of clips contextually
telling one about the history of British cinema. In a sense it
is a bit of a nonsense that that cannot be made much more freely
available outside libraries and schools through some sort of educational
right, and possibly the model set up as part of the creative commons
licence of which we were a leading partner—we were the first
people to put material up there for that purpose—provides
a way forward. But the industry and owners of the rights are very
anxious about it, particularly in this country where the industry
is quite fragile. A lot of its business comes from clips and nearly
always they are the ones that people want to see and therefore
have the greatest value within an educational resource.
Q125 Alan Keen: Is it possible to
get a change in the copyright law to help in any way?
Ms Nevill: The answer is that
there must be but I think that it is a matter of balancing the
wider needs of the industry itself and the cultural and educational
use. I do not think that we have yet discovered what might be
the perfect balance, but the notion that that legislation should
be revisited would definitely have huge advantages. It really
gets in the way of our ability to get material out there on line.
Dr Gray: It may be a matter of
having a better definition of "educational use". Education
can be formal and informal. I am thinking also about the sites.
There are museums that have an interest in showing moving images.
One can think of record offices, libraries and access on line,
but it is a matter of how to negotiate that more progressive understanding
of educational use, which one would like to think would not compromise
commercial use, and trying to make a clear distinction between
the two.
Dr McKernan: Relatively few people
come to the archives to see them; it is all about taking the archive
out to people, be it online on screens, by television broadcasts
or on tour.
Ms Nevill: We have a whole department
that does nothing but negotiate rights constantly for us, whether
we are showing it at the NFT, putting it on line, touring it or
showing it internationally, or we are buying the rights. It is
an interesting business.
Dr McKernan: It is also worth
pointing out that not everything in the moving image industry
has necessarily been produced by a commercial entity like a film
or television company. A substantial amount of the films in the
film archives are amateur, from home movies back to the 1920s
and 1930s right up to what is being produced by the camcorder
generation now. They are treated and preserved in the same way;
they come under the same release agreements. When we are talking
of the national film heritage and how we can take it back to the
people, it is not purely what the industry has produced but what
we have produced.
Ms Mather-Lees: On behalf of the
image stills industry, there is a whole industry whose livelihood
depends on licensing commercial rights. Sixty% of our business
is in publishing and a significant proportion of that is in textbooks.
One is now moving towards a digital arena where we are supplying
packages on line. It is very important that we can still gain
an income from that as an industry, including our company in particular.
To let everything get out into the Internet and not get some sort
of revenue from it would be quite damaging. You are right that
it is a question of finding a balance.
Viscountess Bridgeman: There is
a good deal of discussion under way at the moment. There are many
blurred areas. I sit on the IP Advisory Committee of the Museum
Documentation Association and we discuss issues such as fair use,
which really has a very different definition in America from that
in England. We are discussing orphan works, which is very much
a buzzword at the moment, and creative commons which has been
an attempt to ease the problems with copyright. It is an exciting
time because obviously technology has moved ahead of copyright.
We are trying to work out what we should be doing, and a certain
amount of action is going on here.
Q126 Mr Hall: One of the developments
since 2000 is the creation of the regional film archives. It has
not been a huge success. One of the eight regions has not been
able to find a home and most of them are in financial difficulties.
What is the solution to this problem?
Dr Gray: Certainly national co-ordination
is a very important step because it is something that we have
lacked for far too long. Regional co-ordination is also probably
important. For far too long I believe that we have been stuck
as a sector between the creative industries and the heritage sector
and that has created unnecessary tensions. For example, the regional
screen archives which are part of the devolved structure of the
film council to the English regions see themselves very much as
working with the creative industries and promoting film production
and film training especially for young people. But this is a very
different interest from, for example, nurturing leading film heritage
organisations. A film heritage organisation in the public sector
has a very specific interest in preservation, documentation, research
and using the collection in as many ways as possible to benefit
the public. We should start to address the infrastructure problems.
From the standpoint of the English regions the lack of regionwide
organisations has not helped us because we work closely with local
authorities and so on. But a regionwide organisation, especially
for the cultural sector, does not have regional government yet.
Q127 Mr Hall: We have regional development
agencies, do we not?
Dr Gray: They have expressed very
little interest in developing cultural organisations of this kind.
Dr McKernan: We have one example
in Yorkshire which has supported the archive there.
Ms Nevill: There are some stunning
examples like the Yorkshire film archive which has managed to
put together a very persuasive plan to draw in funding from the
regional development agencies. The key reason the film archives
have been created is that, if you like, those archives are floating
around and there is growing national awareness that we need to
make certain that the material is saved. I suppose that the next
question is: what is the best structure to ensure that the material
is saved? This has brought about the advent of archives in every
region. What the BFI is leading on at the moment is a co-ordinated
approach to the creation of a strategy for the future development
of archives. We are asking ourselves some quite stiff questions.
For example, does there need to be an archive store in every region?
Would it be better and more beneficial to the public purse if
there were examples of excellence on which we could focus? For
example, it might be the BFI archive, or Yorkshire or East Anglia—areas
which already have leading expertise in storage, care and preservation.
But we would also advocate that there should be access in every
region. One can distinguish between the two. What might the models
be for that? One then has a strategy which says that one should
do a proper audit of all the archives and work out what storage
is needed for the future, what is the best place to locate that
storage and where the expertise already exists.
Q128 Mr Hall: And also where there
is public access?
Ms Nevill: It is commonality of
access. What are the best mechanisms for access? Some would be
put on line. That presupposes that if the BFI starts to look at
the notion of a proper digital asset management system that will
be infinitely scalable so that it can be used by all the regional
archives. One could then provide access that way. I think that
would be a more joined-up approach to it. We have done the first
part of the strategy. That came out of an initiative by James
Purnell when he was film Minister to do a project through the
film council. The BFI led on the archive side and came up with
the first part of the strategy and passed that to DCMS. We recognised
at that stage that as we were fairly immature within the cultural
sector we needed to get our act together, if you like. But we
did recognise that there were little crises popping up around
the country which put regional film archives in danger if there
was not some limited stabilisation funding—I think it was
under half a million—to allow a breathing space so that
nothing vanished whilst we did the background work and established
the best way forward. Nothing came of that. It went into DCMS
and James Purnell, sadly, was moved on and his successor is just
finding his way with his new portfolio. But we are having side
discussions. We had a very interesting discussion yesterday with
the Heritage Lottery Fund, looking at what might be the way forward
and what would they be looking at to have a more joined-up approach
to funding archives. A really startling factor emerged from that
conversation. Heritage Lottery Fund would like to fund film archives
to a greater extent but unless it is confident that the film archives
are sustainable—in other words, that the core funding is
there—it would be very difficult for them to look at it
as a sector and be prepared to consider joined-up bids. It wanted
to know what the bigger strategy was. But as an indication of
how far behind the film archive strategy is in getting its act
together, over the past 11 years HLF has made awards of £3.3
billion, of which only £23 million has gone to film archives
and half of that has gone to the BFI. We then had a conversation
about the obstacles that we needed to get over. One is the need
to have a strategy; second, there needs to be confidence that
the core issues are covered. For example, nobody wants to fund
chillers for film. If you do not put film in a really cold place
it deteriorates very fast. That is the most cost-effective way
of looking after film. Third, within the sector there needs to
be a huge development of skills so there is a capability both
to pull together strategies and put in HLF funding but also to
find a way to look after the film with all the basic archival
core skills.
Q129 Mr Hall: The prognosis is not
very good?
Ms Nevill: The prognosis at the
moment is a bit spooky, to use a Yorkshire word. If we were talking
about oil paintings to be saved we would say we must do something.
What we have to do collectively is to say that film is the cultural
art form of the 21st and 22nd centuries and also one that speaks
more broadly to more people. It is easier to get into people's
homes with film than with almost any other form of culture. I
shall probably be stoned as I leave this room.
Q130 Mr Hall: Some of us have our
own film archives in digital form and it goes back to the very
early stuff at the beginning of the 20th century?
Ms Nevill: Yes.
Ms Stewart: Even some recent material
is in danger; it is not just a problem for older material. We
have just restored some films from the late 1980s shown during
the London film festival. It is not the case that the problem
is confined to old material. You have heard a lot about digitisation.
We are in the same boat as the earlier speakers. We are not able
to digitise our content without permission from the copyright
holders. We have an issue that goes beyond that, which is that
unless you spend a lot of money on restorations it will not carry
the same information as film. We have just shown a restoration
of Great Expectations under the David Lean project. I can
tell you that if you watched it in digital format it would just
about be okay on your computer screen but you could not watch
it on a screen that size. The material was in danger and
so you had to spend money to make it look the way it was supposed
to look, which is different from the archive at home.
Dr McKernan: The same is true
of some digital material. An amount of material has been produced
and lost because it never gets to the archive in the first place.
Chairman: I am afraid that the clock
has beaten us. It is one o'clock and we must stop. Thank you very
much indeed for coming along. Your evidence has been very helpful.
| 
