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Martin Scorsese and archivists from the Library of Congress, UCLA, MOMA, and elsewhere tell Indiewire why it's important not to leave film behind in the digital age.

A highlight of 2024’s TCM Classic Film Festival was the world premiere of a pristine restoration of John Ford‘s “The Searchers,” one of the greatest Westerns ever made and certainly — given its impact on directors like Martin Scorsese, George Lucas, and Paul Schrader — one of the most influential. “The Searchers” was photographed in VistaVision, arguably the best of the widescreen formats that emerged in the 1950s to combat television’s encroachment on the film business, and to see it projected on the big screen is a transcendent experience — especially if one is lucky enough to view the 70mm print that premiered at TCM’s fest and is currently making its way around the revival circuit (it screens in Los Angeles at the American Cinematheque on May 3 and 4).

The 70mm print is the end result of a meticulous restoration project overseen by Warner Brothers Discovery and Scorsese’s Film Foundation, who went back to the 8-perf VistaVision camera negative to preserve every bit of detail and beauty in Ford’s original frames. For Scorsese, keeping the experience of viewing a film like “The Searchers” on celluloid alive is a crucial part of the Film Foundation’s work. “The majority of all the films ever made were shot and finished on film — and there are still many people, myself included, who shoot on film,” Scorsese told IndieWire. “For the artists who made the pictures we love, the ones at the heart of cinema history, film was their canvas and their brush, their paper and their pen, the material that they handled and held up to the light, cut and spliced, and watched passing through a constant beam of light 24 times per second. It was how they created the art of cinema. So, film itself is still vital to restoration and crucial to preservation.”

Like most restorations these days, “The Searchers” benefited from a combination of photochemical and digital technologies. “It’s no longer a matter of film versus digital,” Greg Lukow, who runs the Library of Congress’ National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, told IndieWire. “That kind of thinking needs to go by the wayside. It’s really a matter of film and digital.” As Rajendra Roy of the Museum of Modern Art pointed out, “Current restorations generally are a combination of digital and analog processes: scanning film materials, digitally editing, integrating and cleaning the images, outputting to DCPs and in some cases 35mm prints. We’ve embraced the digital era while not leaving celluloid behind.”

Most archivists agree, however, that when it comes to preserving classic films, celluloid is still the ideal. “Film stock remains the most stable medium for long-term preservation,” Jeff Lambert of the National Film Preservation Association told IndieWire. “Storage is one of the most important reasons to continue to preserve and archive films on film stock. Stored in cold, dry conditions, contemporary film stocks will last hundreds of years. It is cost-effective and, once properly archived, requires little more than climate monitoring and scheduled inspections. For restoration, digital methods can be amazing tools, but for long-term preservation, analog film remains the standard for reasons both financial and practical.”

Margaret Bodde, executive director of the Film Foundation, agreed with Lambert’s point about the cost-effectiveness of film preservation. “While there may be a hefty upfront cost to preserve film on film, with digital, there’s a longer-term cost of constant migration,” Bodde told IndieWire, adding that the stability of celluloid is remarkable compared to digital formats, whose durability is still questionable given that film has been around for around a hundred years longer. “We have films from the earliest years of cinema. You can take a film strip, hold it up to light, and see the images. You can still project it. You can still put it on a flatbed and take a look at it. You don’t have any roadblocks to being able to see what is on that film. The ideal is that there’s temperature and humidity control, and that films are being inspected and cared for. But there are many, many instances of films that have been dug up from places like bomb shelters in England — they have mold on them, but you can still see that image.”

May Hong HaDuong of the UCLA Film and Television Archive concurs. “Properly stored, film can have the lifespan of paper as an archival medium, lasting hundreds of years,” she told IndieWire. “Compared to LTO tape, which has a lifespan of 15-30 years, the long-term preservation benefit of film is still unmatched. Digital preservation requires ongoing stewardship and infrastructure to ensure the integrity and health of the files created. At the end of the day — or rather, at the end of a century — the film is still recognizable.” “Digital storage mediums are costly and less reliable,” Lambert added. “Films can be stored on a hard drive, but a backup is also necessary. Constantly changing digital formats creates conundrums regarding data migration and backup plans. Instead of storing a new film negative and keeping it safe in a vault, digital asset management can be a complicated and expensive proposition.”

That said, Lukow points out that digital preservation is far more reliable at this point than many people understand, emphasizing that pieces like a recent Hollywood Reporter article on the dangers of “decaying” digital files are needlessly alarmist. “That was a lede 15 years ago,” Lukow said, noting that robotic data tape libraries, which are neither online nor totally offline, ensure that footage will not be corrupted or lost. “When our files are ingested or migrated, there are SHA-1 verifying and checksumming procedures to make sure that nothing ever goes wrong, so we feel very comfortable with our digital preservation infrastructure at the petabyte level, and I know several of the studios do as well.” Lukow is more concerned with independent filmmakers who are struggling to get their movies finished and out into the world. “They’re preparing their films for festivals, and once those festivals are over, they don’t have the resources to put attention into a proper celluloid or digital preservation.”

Bodde says that independent filmmakers should migrate their files at least once a year and make sure that they always have multiple copies in case a drive crashes; she adds that there are also relatively low-cost ways of making celluloid prints such as the Cinevator, a machine that scans digital files and outputs to 35mm positive stock. “I’m not saying that everyone should go out and do that, but you need to be conscientious,” Bodde said, adding that the Film Foundation’s website has DIY preservation guidelines for independent filmmakers. “If your film is on a streaming platform, as we all know, the platform can decide to take it down all of a sudden and you’ll discover your film is not there. Then you’re faced with trying to get your film back out there, and sometimes time is of the essence and if you haven’t already taken care of it, you can put yourself in a stressful situation trying to track your elements down.”

Lukow says that for archivists who are committed to preserving film as film, one of the great challenges — and one of his biggest concerns — is simply the dearth of laboratories that can do the work. “We built what will probably be the last wet photochemical archival preservation lab in the United States,” he said. “There are only three of us left: the Library of Congress, FotoKem, which is basically the only lab servicing the industry, and a boutique lab in Rockville, Maryland called Colorlab.” While filmmakers like Scorsese, Christopher Nolan, and Quentin Tarantino have helped keep film alive by continuing to shoot on celluloid and, in some cases, insisting on 35mm or 70mm exhibition, that only takes care of the capture and projection side of the celluloid infrastructure — in terms of preservation, it’s important to keep not only film stock alive, but also the laboratories that can do the work. “There are vendors that support the photochemical equipment infrastructure that have gone out of business, and I don’t see them coming back,” Lukow said.

Yet the hunger for film exhibition is, if anything, at its peak among cinephiles, with theaters like Quentin Tarantino’s New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles, Metrograph and Film Forum in New York, and hundreds of others around the world drawing large audiences for 35mm presentations. Making sure those audiences see movies that look as close to their makers’ original intentions as possible remains a primary goal of preservationists, and a key argument for preserving and archiving on celluloid. “Finding the source material for any film is critical in a restoration process,” Roy said. “Every generational reproduction represents a step away from the original. By the time you get to contemporary digital versions of an old movie, you risk creating a version that has little to no resemblance to the original.”

Indeed, Bodde says that one of the challenges of restoration in the digital age is making sure one doesn’t deviate from a film’s original aesthetic. “There’s a lot you can do with digital, so it’s an exercise in restraint,” she said. “You don’t want to take it to the point where you’ve removed every nuance of the grain — the actual nature of the film should still come through.” As a matter of policy, even when restoration work has a digital workflow the Film Foundation always outputs to film at the end, both for preservation purposes and to make the movies available to filmgoers who want to see them projected in their original format. “There are a lot of archives, museums, and repertory theaters that want to present film, and audiences will come out for that. It’s a way of continuing that engagement and dialogue with the audience, especially with younger generations.” Roy concluded, “We place so much value on the vision of the artist, and preserving film is the best way to ensure that future technological advances are able to represent that vision. And let’s face it, movies still just look better shot and projected on film!”

Seth Macfarlane and Martin Scorsese
Kenji Fitzgerald/Brigitte Lacombe

EXCLUSIVE: Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane is partnering, through his Seth MacFarlane Foundation, with Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation to fund the first-ever, curated restoration of historically significant animated shorts from the 1920s to 1940s.

MacFarlane is committed to saving and honoring the art form from its earliest days forward. He’s been fascinated by animation since childhood when he began drawing. He’s also an animation alum of Rhode Island School of Design. This year MacFarlane’s The Family Guy is celebrating its 25th anniversary.

“I’m so grateful to Seth MacFarlane for his enthusiasm and his support on these restorations,” said Martin Scorsese in a statement. “What an astonishing experience, to see these remarkable pictures that I experienced for the first time as a child brought back to their full glory. Imagine the reactions of children today! Because the films now seem as fresh as they did when they were newly made.”

Nine animated pics from Max and Dave Fleischer, who created Betty Boop and Koko the Clown, are among the pieces that are being restored. MacFarlane is a jazz music aficionado and The Great American Songbook, so the Fleischer Brothers’ noted use of jazz in their soundtracks, including collaborations with Cab Calloway, Louis Armstrong, and Don Redman, are a big reason why the Fleischers’ work is represented in this restoration collection.

“The work Martin Scorsese and his Film Foundation have been doing is essential cinematic preservation,” said MacFarlane. “I’m honored to partner with them in restoring their first-ever collection of storied animation.”

Also included are two stop-motion animation shorts directed by George Pal, known for his charming “Puppetoons.” The final film on the list is a Terrytoon, produced by Paul Terry.

The films were selected and restored by UCLA Film & Television Archive and The Film Foundation, in collaboration with Paramount Pictures Archives. The 12 restorations funded by MacFarlane were completed using unique original pre-print elements and/or print sources, mostly nitrate, held at UCLA Film & Television Archive. 

A program of nine restorations, titled Back From the Ink: Restored Animated Shorts, will premiere at the 2024 TCM Classic Film Festival on Saturday, April 20 at 6:30pm, with an in-person introduction by MacFarlane. Seven shorts directed by Dave Fleischer will be screened: Koko’s Tattoo (1928), Little Nobody (1935), The Little Stranger (1936), Greedy Humpty Dumpty (1936), Peeping Penguins (1937), The Fresh Vegetable Mystery (1939), and So Does An Automobile (1939). Also premiering are The Three Bears, a 1939 Terrytoon directed by Mannie Davis, and Two-Gun Rusty, a George Pal Puppetoon from 1944.

Meta documentary “Bushman” is receiving a 4K restoration and, for the first time, a multi-city theatrical release.

Director David Schickele‘s 1971 film began as a fictional comedy starring his friend Paul Eyam Nzie Okpokam, following the “adventures of a well-educated Nigerian immigrant in San Francisco,” per the official synopsis. However, after Okpokam was wrongfully accused of a real-life crime, “Bushman” shifts to being a documentary about how Okpokam was imprisoned before being deported.

Filmmaker Schickele shot “Bushman” in 1968 after returning from the Peace Corps. Schickele’s is billed as being in the docu-fictional style vein of John Cassavetes’ “Shadows.” Kino Lorber and Milestone Film & Video supported the 4K restoration, which will screen January 15 at MoMA’s To Save and Project festival.

The 75-minute black-and-white film was shelved for decades after its initial release but is regarded by film scholars as a milestone of Black representation in American cinema, especially in capturing the emergence of the West Coast counterculture of the era.

“Bushman” was restored by the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive and The Film Foundation, with funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation. Additional support was provided by Peter Conheim of the Cinema Preservation Alliance.

Kino Lorber has recently unveiled the streaming platform Kino Film Collection, available on Prime Video. The Collection features new Kino releases fresh from theaters, along with hundreds of films from its expansive library of more than 4,000 titles, with many now streaming for the first time.

“We have this fantastic library and it would be very difficult to access everything,” Lisa Schwartz, Chief Revenue Officer for Kino Lorber, told IndieWire. “It’s really just the next evolution of how people can access our films. We wanted to make sure they went into a destination where people could go and enjoy it and get the benefit of the awareness that was created in the theatrical window, in addition to physical media.”

“Bushman” will screen January 15 at MoMA as part of the To Save and Project festival. The new 4K restoration will open in New York City theaters February 2 starting at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, with more cities to follow. Check out the trailer below.

Caligari's Cure (1982) by Tom Palazzolo

A semi-autobiographical feature by Tom Palazzolo, two queer cinema classics by Michael Wallin, a subjective investigation of persona by Natalka Voslakov, and an abstract portrait of life by Ricardo Bloch and Sally Dixon will be preserved and made available through the 2023 Avant-Garde Masters Grants, awarded by The Film Foundation and the National Film Preservation Foundation. Funding is provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation.

Chicago-based artist Tom Palazzolo's absurdist feature film, Caligari's Cure (1982), is both an irreverent retelling of Palazzolo's childhood and a loose adaptation of Robert Weine's 1919 classic The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. The Village Voice film critic J. Hoberman wrote, "The brazen, comic-book mise-en-scène resembles that of Red Grooms or the Kuchars; the tacky, off-kilter sets–houses as ostentatiously ramshackled as Frank Stella’s recent sculpture, wallpaper like Lucas Samaras’s quilt-shard collages, decrepit furniture painted pale pink or dusty green–are a kind of arty-idiot Toonerville Trolley Americana." Chicago Film Archives will preserve the film and make it available alongside previously preserved Palazzolo films.

Natalka Voslakov's Time Capsule with True Bird Flight (1982) will be preserved by Pittsburgh Sound + Image. A poet, writer, filmmaker and all-around creative force in Pittsburgh in the late 70s, Voslakov mined the Pittsburgh art, film, and music scenes for inspiration and collaboration. Often using her life as subject matter, her Super 8 films exemplify the punk essence of the Pittsburgh scene. A freeform interrogation of performance and persona, Time Capsule with True Bird Flight was partially photographed by filmmaker Peggy Ahwesh, one of Voslakov's key aesthetic accomplices.  

The Walker Art Center will preserve Phototropism (1985) made by noted avant-garde film curator Sally Dixon and her husband Ricardo Bloch.Inspired by the work of Jonas Mekas and Stan Brakhage, Dixon began to informally organize film screenings at the Carnegie Museum of Art. After leaving Pittsburgh, Dixon moved to Colorado to join her friend and collaborator Stan Brakhage. There she met Bloch. Phototropism is a portrait of the couple's garden that uses rayograph-style imagery in a more formalized manner than the personal "film poems" Dixon had created in the past. 

Decodings (1988) by Michael Wallin

The Canyon Cinema Foundation will preserve two films by Bay Area Filmmaker Michael Wallin. A pioneer in San Francisco's queer avant-garde cinema scene, Wallin began making films in 1968 while studying under experimental film legend Bruce Baillie. Decodings (1988) is a poetic found-footage essay on remembrance and loss in the AIDS era. Black Sheep Boy (1995) takes the form of a deconstructed erotic fantasy invoking the work of queer film icons Kenneth Anger and Jean Genet. Canyon Cinema Foundation will distribute the new 16mm prints created through this project.

Over the course of 20 years the Avant-Garde Masters Grant program, created by The Film Foundation and the NFPF, has helped 34 organizations save 219 films significant to the development of the avant-garde in America thanks to the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation. The grants have preserved works by 87 artists, including Kenneth Anger, Shirley Clarke, Bruce Conner, Joseph Cornell, Oskar Fischinger, Hollis Frampton, Barbara Hammer, Marjorie Keller, George and Mike Kuchar, and Stan VanDerBeek. Click here to learn more about all the films preserved through the Avant-Garde Masters Grants.