Polish National Film Archive (FINA) installs DFT's Scanity 4K film scanner as part of major digitisation initiative

5. February 2024 News

Filmoteka Narodowa Instytut Audiowizualny (FINA), the Polish National Film Archive, has recently installed DFT's Scanity film scanner at it's facility in Warsaw.

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Established in 1955, FINA was the first movie archive in Europe, and the collection of film tapes and archives gathered in FINA is now one of the largest. Tasked with digitalizing, collecting, restoring and promoting Polish audiovisual heritage, FINA's collection includes all Polish movies including a large collection of pre-war movies.

As part of a major initiative called Digital Poland , which was co-financed by the European Union, FINA has invested in a new 4K film scanning facility, which includes DFT's Scanity 4K film scanner with WetGate technology for both 16mm and 35mm film. The new facility has so far worked on hundreds of film materials, many from the nitro collection, which were at risk of loss due to the progressive decay of the media.

Olgierd Grodzki & Piotr Wyzykowski, FINA

Tomasz Pisula, responsible for the implementation of Digital Poland , described the new 4K facility: Over the course of 17 months, we made copies of two hundred films, including seven full reconstructions. Previously, the National Film Archive performed one to two reconstructions a year.

DFT's Scanity film scanner, with WetGate technology was chosen following exhaustive research and testing to ensure that it was the most appropriate solution.

Pawe mietanka, Head of the film digitization and reconstruction at FINA explains why Scanity was the ideal choice: We needed a film scanner that could manage 35mm and 16mm film materials in good to very damaged condition. The solution needed to be uncompromising combining scanning speed and image quality, with proper respect for the film material. Although we had experience in working with other systems, none of them were able to combine speed, quality, gentleness and efficiency when working with very damaged film materials from the early days of cinema.

Pawel Smiertanka & Olgierd Grodzki, FINA

FINA will be primarily scanning 16 mm and 35 mm film materials, image negatives and positive copies. As we have an extensive film collection from various eras, our current focus is on materials that we have been unable to access so far due to their state of destruction. Our plan is to use Scanity to digitize approximately 100 feature films and 5-10 films from the cinema of the 1920s and 1930s each year, as well as ongoing archive work.

So far, after three months of working with DFT's Scanity, our operators are having a lot of fun! The scanner is very intuitive and easy to use, the interface is stable, and the quality of the scanned material is incomparable. Even materials that are heavily damaged and scratched, such as those from our 1920's and 1930's nitro collections, are scanned very quickly and cleanly using the WetGate system, which simplifies and speeds up the digital reconstruction process.

Piotr Wyzykowski, FINA

We are certainly happy with our new purchase - as it is simply very efficient and easy to use.

Author: Michael Schneider, DFT

About DFT GmbH

DFT has been at the forefront of film scanning technology for over 75 years. It has been providing solutions for film postproduction, archives and restoration with a range of highquality, leading-edge products and services. DFT is headquartered in Darmstadt, Germany.

For more information, visit: https://dft-film.com/

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