Saving the past of TV and film for the future

Official television and film archives exist to preserve the history and creativity of media. But even these formal institutions do not contain everything that has been produced, due to material being lost or destroyed. However, as Kevin Hilton explains, the efforts of a dedicated band of collectors is now filling in the gaps

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Published: January 2, 2025 Updated: January 3, 2025

Official television and film archives exist to preserve the history and creativity of media. But even these formal institutions do not contain everything that has been produced, due to material being lost or destroyed. However, as Kevin Hilton explains, the efforts of a dedicated band of collectors is now filling in the gaps

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Collecting is one of the great hobbies and can have cultural and historical significance in preserving important artefacts. But it can also tip over into being an obsession, sometimes leading to hoarding. Very often the contents of a collection are known only to the collector, which means that when they die and someone unfamiliar with the material has to deal with it, valuable items could be unknowingly disposed of and lost to posterity.

This is now a reality in the world of vintage film and TV programme collecting. Several prominent collectors have died in recent years and there are fears important material could have been just thrown away as their homes were cleared. This realisation led to the founding of an initiative called Film is Fabulous (FiF) with the aim of retrieving such collections, cataloguing them, restoring any damaged material and returning them to the relevant archives.

FiF came about after an open day for the film collecting community at a late collector's home in 2022, where people were confronted by film cans and other material filling the bedrooms and garage of a three-bedroom house. It was rammed, comments Paul Vanezis, who went along on behalf of the BFI. From what I could see there were some interesting items but nothing groundbreaking. However, you can't go through an uncatalogued collection in a day and the house needed to be cleared, so there was a danger everything would end up in landfill,

Vanezis is a freelance producer/director who has worked on a number of significant restoration projects, including the entire Monty Python's Flying Circus series, Morecambe & Wise and Doctor Who. He is also a collector but more focused on finding lost programmes or elements to restore existing material. While at the open day, Vanezis met John Franklin, whose interest is in feature films. John is purely into film and didn't know about archive TV, Vanezis explains. So I brought him up to speed on that side.

Realising that rare features and vintage TV shows could be at risk as more collections became vulnerable to disposal, Vanezis and Franklin began working with other enthusiasts and film historians at the Cinema and Television History Institute (CATHI) of De Montfort University (DMU) to secure and identify movies and old TV programmes held on film stock.

FiF was formalised as a project with DMU in the summer of 2023 and collections started arriving at the university towards the end of last year. Case studies began earlier in 2024 to catalogue and secure specific items. Vanezis emphasises that neither FiF nor DMU is able to act as an archive; the aim is to recover and log material, after which it can be transferred onto digital media, which may also involve cleaning or more extensive restoration work. The physical film is then either returned to the original broadcaster, if it still exists, other archives or sold at auction.

Work to restore an episode of Saber of London at R3store Studios The first case study was of a collection that had been built up over 30 years (Vanezis preferred not to name individual deceased collectors because, in some cases, the estates are still in probate). This did throw up some missing items of old UK TV, including programmes produced by former broadcasters ATV (ITC Entertainment), Associated-Rediffusion, Southern and Thames, as well as the BBC. Material that already existed was sent for auction. I did know this collector personally, says Vanezis. He was a bit of a magpie and, like other collectors, never turned down anything he was offered. We never spoke about any missing programmes he had and although I knew he had an extensive collection I didn't know how extensive it was.

Vanezis observes that most collectors like to think they know what they've got and this knowledge has seen some missing episodes, for example of Doctor Who, returned over the last 20 years. In many cases the film cans are labelled but often only with the name of a programme, not any details that might reveal buried treasure, which has meant going through almost every individual can and film.

Because the intention of the project is not to retain material long-term it does not require an involved media asset management system. Instead, Vanezis explains, the films being brought are catalogued according to criteria laid down by FIAF (International Federation of Film Archives) and the BFI. The acquired information is simply inputted to a spreadsheet, he says. The kind of information we gather includes title and subtitle, gauge and length/duration, stock date if available, condition and the owner.

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