Film archive catalogues, previously Japan Foundation 16mm prints

[Lawrence Bird]

Just an example from one other country (or perhaps two) : the National  
Film Board of Canada and the Cinémathèque Québécoise both have on-line  
catalogues, which seem to be extensive, well-organized, and  
accessible; though the Cinémathèque makes it clear that in many cases  
they only make films available for purposes of research.

Lawrence Bird,
PhD student, McGill University


On 5-Sep-08, at 5:22 AM, Roger Macy wrote:

> Thank you for the continuing thread 'Japanese governmental agencies/ 
> film culture promotional policies', but can I confine myself to  
> clarifying the position on film archive catalogues?
>
> On Sep 4, 2008, at 1:56 AM, Mark Nornes wrote:
> > They won't show you a list—neither will any archive out there—but
> > they're happy to tell you know if they've got prints of the films
> > you are interested in.
>
> Mark Roberts said:-
> The situation in Japan strikes me as the exception, not the norm.
> Every archive and film library that I've visited in America and Europe
> has a catalog, most are on-line, and they didn't vet each inquiry that
> I made. Have I just been lucky?
>
> Eija Niskanen said :-
> Places like national film archives (say the Finnish National
> Audio-visual Archive) operate on public tax payers' money, so they
> have to have a certain openness, including their catalogues.
>
> My experience has been that very few film catalogues are available  
> online - but I would be delighted to receive corrections or more  
> counter-examples.  For example the Cinémathèque française, when you  
> look up 'collections', you see a picture of their redoubt, but no  
> catalogue.  The same in the less picturesque UK.  But a good example  
> to consider, because they hold both objets d'art and films is MoMA,  
> (NY).  Just as for all the major art galleries I know (except the  
> National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo), they have a full on-line  
> catalog of their art collection, completely illustrated, but show no  
> catalog of their films.
> If this were mainly to do with rights, you might expect the reverse  
> to be the case - most of the art collection of MoMA and other modern  
> art museums have unexpired rights and their commercial divisions are  
> frequently in the business of maximising their revenue from those  
> rights.  Whereas no one is yet advocating illustrated, let alone  
> playable, film catalogues of these archives.
> Roger

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