In Focus: The Death of 16mm?

Introduction: "Here it is! Look, at it! Do you see what I see?"

SCOTT MACDONALD: The title nostalgia seems to suggest a strong longing for the past. The tendency has been . . . to assume that the film is a longing for your years in New York. At the same time, in nostalgia itself, you seem relieved that that period is gone. As a result, I've come to think of the title as suggestive of the process that you're involved in: on one level you seem to be destroying some old pictures, but in another sense you're recording them as you're destroying them, so that while you seem to be putting something into the past, you're maintaining interest in it in a different form.

HOLLIS FRAMPTON: But you see, they are not destroyed; they can be resurrected by rewinding the film.¹

Nostalgia is a longing for an imagined past. Not only does one miss something that is gone, but one's sense of loss becomes heavily imbued with emotional affect. Whatever has been lost is altered by memory, its qualities exaggerated. Over time, long lost lovers or friends seem to become more generous, beautiful, kind—or more parsimonious, ugly, and cruel.

As both an undergraduate and a graduate student, much of my film viewing was on 16mm, and as a teacher I used 16mm in the classroom for several years. Then, seemingly overnight, the films became harder and harder to find. The less I have access to 16mm film, the more I feel nostalgia for it. And so as I consider my feelings about 16mm, I have to check myself constantly. Has 16mm really always been the glorious format that I remember so fondly? Am I forgetting all the horrible, scratchy prints, with barely audible soundtracks? What about all the films that I haven't seen on 16mm (or any other format) in over ten years? Are Standard Gauge (Morgan Fisher, 1984), Report (Bruce Conner, 1967), and Serene Velocity (Ernie Gehr, 1970) really as beautiful as I remember?

I am jumping the gun here, of course, because 16mm hasn't really vanished. But if I sound mournful for something that still exists, it's because I can feel 16mm slipping away. University and college administrators are less and less willing to fund film rentals, and on many campuses the offices in charge of providing technical support to faculty have unceremoniously tossed their 16mm projectors into dumpsters. Most public libraries have discarded their 16mm collections, and distributors have fallen on hard times. Many of their weathered old prints seem to be shredding off the projector as they unwind. Major research universities continue to support 16mm (though often begrudgingly), and many professors at such institutions remain committed to showing films in their original format, whether 16mm or 35mm. Most of us, however, have no choice but to show DVDs in our classrooms, supplemented occasionally by a weathered VHS tape.

Unfortunately, in response to these material difficulties, those of us who are not at well-funded institutions often end up altering our syllabi and omitting really important films. The Smiling Madame Beudet (Germaine Dulac, 1922) for example, is crucial to any survey class on silent film; it's not only a classic example of French Impressionism, but also a vitally important feminist film. It's not available on DVD, and the VHS copies of the film that were released 15 years ago are murky at best. It would be tempting to take the easy route and substitute Jean Epstein's La Glace à Trois Faces (1927), another beautiful Impressionist film. After all, Kino has released a very good transfer of the film on DVD. Resisting the temptation to take the easy route, and driven by a feminist conviction that it was imperative to show Dulac's film, in the fall of 2005 I called a 16mm film distributor and paid out of my own pocket to rent The Smiling Madame Beudet. The friendly distributor asked me...