To preserve film is to project it

Slought is pleased to announce "To preserve film is to project it," a conversation about networked archiving and the preservation of Japanese experimental film, on Friday, February 3, 2017 from 6:30-8:30pm. Organized with Collaborative Cataloging Japan (CCJ), the event will feature presentations by Alexander Zahlten and Go Hirasawa, and will begin with a series of screenings from 6:30-7pm of rare 8mm works, including Motoharu Jonouchi's Gewaltpia Trailer (1969) and Adachi Masao's Galaxy (1967).

In contemporary archiving practices, the method of the network and the use of the digital technology have established familiarity as a significant strategy for gathering records while assuring wide access to the content. A wide range of organizational principles predominate, such as formal and large-scale regional or national initiatives, "dispatch" style process with designated researchers collaborating with one another, or publicly-created collections using crowdsourcing or submission of cultural heritage images, sounds, and videos. Moreover, the act of archiving has often been decentralized and distributed to anyone with the inclination to gather traces of the past for historical study, preservation, and future development.

In the case of Japanese experimental film and video, archivization has been limited by the capacity of established institutions. Networked methods have the potential to balance insufficient resources, infrastructure, and planning on the part of professional archivists and institutions. The task of documenting and creating access has been taken up by independent scholars, curators, archivists, and small organizations. The event at Slought will build upon the work of two such scholars and archivists, Go Hirasawa (Meiji Gakuin University) and Alexander Zahlten (Harvard University), who have both worked to restore and distribute under-represented works.

The event will build upon the question of how Japanese experimental film can inform non-centralized methods of archiving. Hirasawa, a specialist of Japanese underground films, has worked with many filmmakers whose works were produced in the context of anti-establishment movements of the late 1960s and 1970s, and have not received attention from major film archives in Japan. He will speak about works by Motoharu Jonouchi, and a small screening program in Japan that led to international presentations and proceeds supporting restoration and preservation projects. Zahlten will introduce his project of digitally preserving and circulating 8mm films from Japan, including those stored with the PIA Film Festival in Japan, which began in 1977.

While these outcomes are visible to the archival communities involved, the legacy of Japanese experimental film and video remains largely inaccessible to the larger public. Please join us for this conversation on research, preservation, and visibility and Japanese experimental film.