Newly-launched portal highlights richness of European film heritage
In this week’s Arts we look at Europe’s film heritage as compiled in a unique project organised by the Deutsches Filminstitut. Called the European Film Gateway (EFG), the project only recently came online. It makes available to users extensive digitalised documentary and other film material, trailers, original posters and much more, all compiled by participating European film archives and film houses. The Czech Republic’s own National Film Archive was one of the many institutions involved.
“Well, it was a long and hard process and hard work: all told it took about two-and-a-half years, together with our colleagues from 16 film archives across Europe. Putting all that together was both stressful but of course also very rewarding; my personal feeling was of happiness to get the job done but also a little bit of pride. It wasn’t easy to get data from 12 different countries together.”
We will also of course discuss some of the content shortly, but let me ask you first what is the primary aim of the project and who is it open to?
“I will answer the second part first: it is open to everyone. There is no restraint regarding access, we don’t charge and there no royalty fees whatsoever. We are very much about free access. As for who we are targeting, it’s basically anyone who is interested in the European film heritage be it a researcher, journalist, a student or curator, or just someone who has seen a movie on TV or in the cinema and just wants to get a bit of background on what they’ve seen.”
“Yes, at the moment we have almost 500,000 objects online from all the different content providers. It may be unprecedented even in the world.” Are there periods which are predominant in the archives?"
Do you focus more on any one period, such as the Silent Era or the very beginnings of film? “It’s very much across the board. You have content that even comes from the pre-cinema era, pre-cinema technology and products like the Magic Lantern slides, which the Cinematheque Francais contributed – which is one of my favourite collections. But you also have material from today, stills and trailers and documentaries on current film production.
“I need to issue one sort of warning: you won’t find many of contemporary films themselves on the European Film Gateway. They are still in distribution and because of our open access stance that wouldn’t be possible. If you want to watch films on EFG, many of those will be from the early era of cinema.”
What was cooperation with the Czech side like, from the Czech National Film Archive: I imagine they were happy to be on board?
One follow-up question regarding the censored film project: what were some of the reasons for censorship? Was the material erotic in nature?
“Some of it was. There was censorship because of erotic content and because of political content... In that repository you have documented all kinds of reasons why films were censored. The repository is important also because often the censorship documents are all that remain: the films themselves have been lost, so that is obviously important for film historians and others.”
“No. The technology of digitalisation simply wasn’t there.” How would you compare viewing this material online compared to seeing it on the big screen? For many the original experience (of Silent Era films) is no longer accessible to many of us...
“Luckily, in many cases – at least concerning material we have at EFG – the original experience has not been lost. Many of the original films remain in the archives: they are safeguarded there. Of course, you cannot compare the experience of watching an old film in the cinema and watching it on a computer screen. But that’s not our purpose: we want to provide visitors with a learning opportunity to find out more about the European film heritage and eventually they can end up in a cinema themselves watching classic films from the Silent Era, which is a great.”
What has the feedback been like so far?
“We haven’t been up that long but we have received some response. Sometimes people say they have hundreds of films or footage they’d like to add; or someone is more critical or constructive and asks why they can’t find something they’d like to see. There is also an online survey up now because we want to know a little bit more about what visitors think.”
To learn more please visit www.europeanfilmgateway.eu
