On the Role of AMIA in Reshaping the Field of the Moving Image

In these pages, I would like to address the unique role of the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) within the field of moving image archives in relation to the ongoing transition from analogue to digital. In recent years, I have investigated the interplay between film and media theory and film archival practice in this time of transition. I have come to believe that film and moving image media in general are transitional in nature.¹ The current transition is characterized by a high degree of hybridization between analogue and digital technology. The transitional nature of film is deeply related to the notion of film as the site of interpretive contestation. From this perspective, film is not only transitional as it changes over time but is also subject to various interpretations at the same time.

This has been the case in various instances in film history. In the case of color in silent cinema, for example, once black-and-white film became dominant in the 1930s, coloring techniques such as tinting, toning, and stenciling were abandoned by mainstream film production. Early colored films even risked disappearing retrospectively because they were often duplicated onto black-and-white film. In the 1980s, however, archives and film scholars rediscovered color in silent cinema; the practice of duplicating colored films to black-and-white film stock was challenged, and new techniques for restoring the original colors were developed.²

Something similar is likely to occur in the transition from analogue to digital. Once digital film becomes dominant and replaces photochemical film, reducing it to a niche technology, new criteria will emerge that will retrospectively redefine the role of photochemical film and reinterpret some of its technological and aesthetical characteristics. The characteristics of film, as we had known them before the digital came about, may even be temporarily neglected, as has been the case before, for instance, with early coloring techniques. As the transition from analogue to digital is ongoing, film has become a hybrid medium between analogue and digital. But transition has always been a characteristic of film, and if we look back, we realize that analogue was never a well-defined concept to begin with. It is hoped that the full replacement of photochemical film by digital film will happen after proper solutions are developed to tackle the technical problems related to digital film (e.g., long-term preservation issues, obsolescence of hardware and software, instability of standards), and AMIA will be at the forefront of helping to facilitate these solutions.

Film frame from La Dette (Pathé, France, 1910; stencil color). The film was digitally restored by EYE Film Institute Netherlands at Haghefilm Conservation in Amsterdam. The restoration was presented at the Film Biennale 2010 in Amsterdam during The Reel Thing, held in conjunction with the AMIA seminar. Courtesy EYE Film Institute Netherlands.

As film changes, so do the people working with and reflecting on it, as they are part of the same transition. Technological transitions cannot be analyzed outside their social framing. Social groups and players influence and are part of these transitions, and AMIA is one of the major players of the transition to digital within the film archival field. On the occasion of AMIA’s twentieth anniversary, I would like to offer food for thought on AMIA’s role as a very special player in the moving image field. The field of moving image archives comprises a wide spectrum of relevant social groups. It includes film archives, the commercial film industry, film and media scholars, and policy makers in the cultural sector. There are also the hardware and software manufacturers; film laboratories, some of which are specialized in film restoration; and other special interest groups supporting digital initiatives, together with a broader array of cultural institutions. Certainly no less important are the film audiences and the media users, who range from filmmakers and media artists using archival footage to the film archivists, scholars, and students accessing archives for research purposes to film enthusiasts and online users in general.

These social groups, so different in...