Archiving, Distribution, and Experimental Moving Image Histories

The processes of distribution are central to shaping not only our moving image culture— determining what gets seen, written about, and thus becomes "visible"—but also the moving image histories to which scholars have access. Experimental work, for instance, tends to attract relatively small audiences and has thus been unattractive to commercial distributors and not widely written about. Historically, its distribution has usually been undertaken by small specialist organizations, set up specifically for that purpose, operating in a subsidized economy via low wages, volunteer labor, and state funding. Sustaining such organizations—and hence the visibility of experimental work—has frequently proved extremely challenging. In the United Kingdom, the London Film-Makers' Co-op (LFMC) lurched from one crisis to another throughout its existence before finally merging with London Electronic Arts to form LUX in 1999, while several other specialist distributors that were active in the 1970s and 1980s—such as Circles and the Other Cinema—no longer exist. Online distribution has been widely seen as addressing some of the challenges of distributing nonmainstream moving image work.¹ Now, with access to only a computer and a broadband connection, filmmakers can, if they wish, self-distribute their work online and ensure its ongoing availability themselves.

The Internet has also started to break down the traditional distinction between a distribution collection (which is actively circulated to viewing publics) and an archive (which traditionally restricts public access to preserve the work). Historically, the two have served different purposes, so much so that the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) prevented accredited members from undertaking distribution (although members are often a source of prints for distributors and can lend prints to other FIAF members).² With the advent of the Internet, various organizations that have moving image archives—ranging from a national institution like the BFI in the United Kingdom to the Prelinger Archive amassed by Rick Prelinger in the United States—have started to make work from their holdings freely available online.³ Once analog work that has been preserved in a traditional archive is digitized and uploaded to the Internet, it becomes available for (in theory) anyone to view and can be actively promoted through online mailing lists and social networking sites. This blurring of the previously distinct roles of a distributor and an archive is exemplified by the Internet itself. At one level, the Internet can be viewed as a massive archive in that it functions as a form of repository, a place to store or collect material together—albeit one that does not guarantee the preservation of that work. As Pelle Snickars and Patrick Vonderau have observed, YouTube in particular "has rapidly developed into the world's largest archive of moving images."⁴ But the Internet is equally a distribution platform because, unlike traditional moving image archives, it conveniently makes material widely available.

The ease of making work available on the Internet—whether the material has been uploaded by a distributor, an archive, or a DIY practitioner—has in turn created a superabundance of easily accessible moving image material. This has started to focus attention on how users navigate their way through that abundance and/or how producers and distributors attract consumers to their particular "product." Many web-sites now include sharing, embedding, and social networking options to promote the circulation of their material to wider audiences, while others are embracing mobile or portable platforms. In a similar vein, recent research and scholarly literature addressing the digital distribution and promotion of moving image material have tended to focus on exploring the nature of the increased or enhanced access it provides. Jean Burgess and Joshua Green's book on YouTube, for instance, explores the participatory culture fostered by the platform; Emanuelle Wessels has examined the Internet marketing campaigns for Cloverfield (2008); Charlotte Crofts has explored the different ways in which digital cinema projection has been taken up in the United Kingdom, Europe, and the United States; while both Marc Stumpel and Iain Smith have examined the advent of peer-to-peer file sharing.⁵

Such interests have tended to neglect and even conceal the fact that not everything...