Anna May Wong (right) with co-star Sessue Hayakawa (left) festooned in film in a studio portrait issued to publicise Daughter of the Dragon (Paramount, 1931). Photograph from the collection of Roger Smither Cellulose nitrate - the material that made cinema possible, and which has caused so much pleasure and so much pain to film archivists - will be honoured and commemorated by a book to be published for the Congress of the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) to be held in London in the year 2000. The ambition is that the book should be a truly international, collaborative effort, in which archivists and friends of film history from all over the world will share their stories, their experiences, their legends, their discoveries, and their emotions. Apart from one superb offering each from colleagues in Germany and Italy, all the material so far has come exclusively from the English-speaking world - from Australia and New Zealand, from Canada and the USA, from England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. Countries which have played a hugely important role in film culture have yet to make any impact on the project at all - there is nothing from the majority of film-making countries in Europe, nothing from the great film-making cultures outside Europe and North America. Is an enthusiasm for nitrate a strictly Anglo-Saxon-Celtic phenomenon, or does the rest of the world not understand how fascinating such a book could be? It is fervently hoped that this article will inspire readers from all over the world to submit additional material - all contributions are anxiously awaited, and, as has been said before, please do not assume that any candidate for inclusion is "so obvious" that you do not need to mention it - it is much better to have the same idea nominated a dozen times than to risk losing it altogether. Working with nitrate Although we still have a long way to go, we are starting to build up a composite picture of the experience of working with film in the nitrate era - behind the camera, in the laboratory, in the studio, and in the projection box. A projectionist recalls the pointlessness of British regulations that stipulated that projection rooms had to be equipped with buckets of sand and water, and a ‘Pyrene’ (carbon tetrachloride) fire-extinguisher: "I never could imagine any instance when you would use sand and water in a mechanical and electrical environment, and the Pyrene gave off toxic fumes. However, all was not lost as the sand buckets were usually full of ‘dog ends’ from the smokers, and the Pyrene was empty because people used it to get stains off their clothes!" The editors would like more stories from those who worked with nitrate - especially from those who worked in laboratories and studios, and away from big western cities. We also need to bring the story up to date, with accounts by those who have worked with nitrate within film archives. The cost of nitrate Some contributors have sent stories of cinema tragedies, such as the 1926 Dromcollogher disaster in Ireland, with a death toll of almost 50, or the 1929 tragedy at the Glen Cinema in Paisley, Scotland which took the lives of 70 children. Almost 20 years later, visitors carelessly smoking in a film-handling environment would still be told "Would you mind dropping that and putting your foot on it, sir - remember Paisley." Unfortunately, other countries have equally grim stories to tell. The editors would welcome copies of published accounts of fires involving nitrate film which have resulted either in the loss of human life or in the loss of a significant element of film heritage. We also wish to gather details of all nitrate fires at film archives. ‘Nitrate Auteur’ A different category of nitrate fire anecdote concerns films where a fire in the cutting room is supposed to have affected the timing of completion or otherwise to have influenced the shape of the finished film - a phenomenon we have named ‘Nitrate Auteur’. Such episodes are reported of Flaherty’s first attempt at what was to become Nanook of the North, and in the making of Carol Reed’s The Third Man. Closely linked to these are stories of films where a director or producer is supposed to have deliberately burned some or all of the picture - like Frank Capra’s claim in his autobiography The Name Above the Title to have consigned the original opening reels of Lost Horizon to the studio incinerator. ‘Nitrate Won’t Wait’ Archivists have offered stories about nitrate film found or donated in unusual, alarming or amusing circumstances - in an article in the current issue of FIAF’s Journal of Film Preservation, Janet McBain of the Scottish Film and Television Archive recalls taking in a film that had been stored in a hen-house, sometimes known irreverently as "the guano deposit". Many archives have successfully run ‘film search’ projects with the slogan NITRATE WON’T WAIT, though Bob Rosen has recalled that when he visited a store wearing a brightly coloured badge with this text the cashier read it, then looked at him sympathetically and said "Yes, I know: my brother was hooked on it." Bob is still uncertain just what substance the cashier had in mind ... Nitrate myths and legends Some amusing, if occasionally alarming stories have been offered that are best described as anecdotes (or mythology!) about the use of nitrate film in non-cinema contexts - for example, to improvise fireworks or ‘smoke bombs’. A special sub-category covers the conscious use of old nitrate in special effects for new films. Thanks to Martin Koerber, the book will be able to offer interesting news on the legend that the mist effects for the famous ‘flight on Mephisto’s cloak’ sequence in Murnau’s Faust were achieved by burning nitrate film. The permanence (or otherwise) of the film record Some contributors have offered quotations from actors, writers, directors, producers and others in which they express their thoughts on the transience or permanence of film as a medium. Sarah Bernhardt is supposed to have said that her role in a film about Queen Elizabeth was her one chance of immortality, though Basil Dean, writing in 1937 thought on the contrary that "Acting is an ephemeral thing always; it is best not to seek to make it permanent." Apart from texts illustrating opinions on the desirability (or otherwise) of using film to keep a permanent record of an event or a performance, contributors have supplied observations from early film archivists, or their predecessors, about the practical problems of film preservation - in 1915, the film trade journal Motography published a story from British sources on fears about stored film being irretrievably damaged by the growth of fungus. The Filmography and the Bibliography We have also welcomed suggestions for additional titles to be included in our filmography and bibliography of films and books in which the special characteristics of nitrate film make a contribution to the story-line. An important nomination for the filmography has been Luigi Comencini’s film La Valigia dei Sogni, while we have been pleased to add to the bibliography Flicker by Theodore Roszack, which includes (for the archivist) a chilling description of the cremation of a film collector on a funeral pyre of his nitrate reels. Both bibliography and filmography remain very short, however, and more suggestions are urgently needed. There may also be scope to add a listing of poems with nitrate references ... Pictures too The project does not only need textual contributions - we need more illustrative material as well: film stills from important nitrate films (or restorations), photographs, line-drawings and cartoons. Though we are open to any suggestions for illustrations, we have ourselves identified a need for more material in the following areas. If you cannot make a textual contribution to the book, you might consider submitting some pictures. From the nitrate era itself, we need interior and exterior views of industry film laboratories, cutting rooms, vaults and libraries; pictures of insouciant cameramen, editors or other technicians working while hung about with nitrate, or with nitrate liberally sprinkled on floor, or smoking while working; star/studio publicity photos with film used as a prop; views of projection boxes (whether alarmingly free of precautions, or impressively set about with them), and of projectionists at work; scenes of the deliberate destruction of nitrate film (whether to prevent piracy, to clear "redundant stock", or to recycle/recover silver and other materials); depictions of film fires, or the aftermath of film fires, including memorials on the sites of such fires. Bearing in mind the afterlife of nitrate in film archives, we are also looking for portraits of archivists, pictures of preservation staff at work, internal or external views of archive film vaults (perhaps with famous visitors, though such additions are not essential), and pictures of containers or vehicles used for film transport. We need more examples of deteriorating nitrate film - not so much whole reels/cans, as individual frames or sequences of frames (especially from identifiable films). We are interested in visual records of deliberate fire tests on film and on vaults, and of the aftermath of archival film fires (again including memorials on the sites of fires). We would also welcome examples of can labels and warning signs used by archives, and logos and publicity used for public awareness campaigns - ‘Nitrate Won’t Wait’ or ‘Last Film Search’, etc. If you are moved to make a contribution, please make the editors’ lives easier by observing the following procedures: Please send a photocopy or transcript of each suggestion (a reference alone is not enough) and remember to include a clear indication of its source. If it has been published, then the full details of the publication should be supplied, as copyright issues will have to be cleared. If you are supplying a memory of your own, then please add a note saying that you are willing to have the story published, and saying how you wish to be cited. If the story concerned is one given to you by a third party in a letter or taped interview, or found by you in a paper or sound archive, then it will be necessary to know that the originator or custodian of the story will also agree to its publication. The publication will probably be an English language one, but suggestions may also be made in French, German or Spanish. If your source is in a language other than these four, please try to supply a translation. [This article first appeared in FIAF’s Journal of Film Preservation, No 57, December 1998.] Links UNESCO's Memory of the World Programme Safeguarding the documentary heritage, a virtual exhibition UNESCO's activities in favour of audiovisual archives        Contact: Roger Smither, Film and Video Archive, Imperial War Museum, London, United Kingdom