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5. Rethinking Partnerships and Funding
Partnerships
Large and small alike, public archives agree that the defining preservation problem is money. As the sheer magnitude of film deterioration becomes evident and user demands multiply, where can archives raise the funds to improve storage and better serve the public?
The current system of film preservation funding, if indeed it can be called a system at all, is a patchwork of federal money, institutional outlays, foundation grants, and private donations. For over twenty years, federal funds have supported duplication of decaying film, largely nitrate fiction film, onto newer filmstock through the internal program of the Library of Congress and the grants awarded through the National Endowment for the Arts. These federal programs have not kept pace with rising costs. Allocations in 1992 plummeted to less than half of the 1980 level, when adjusted for inflation.
Local funding has not bridged the gap. Film archives, like most public organizations in the 1990s, are squeezed by shrinking budgets. Among the specialist archives surveyed for Film Preservation 1993, only half received funds the previous year from their own institutions for laboratory work. Most archives' preservation efforts depend largely on private gifts and grants. Grants, however, are difficult to secure, particularly with the small number of corporate and private foundations targeting film preservation as a primary funding area. While preservationists sense wide interest in preserving American films, there is currently no on-going mechanism for harnessing national support.
The Librarian of Congress and the National Film Preservation Board, recommend a different approach to funding: one that will recognize the distinct public and private responsibilities in preserving American film and build partnerships to support preservation activities in the public interest.
As so often noted in the 1993 hearings and comments, the major film companies now have ample financial reason to improve storage, automate inventories, restore key titles, and maintain their libraries. The preservation policies for commercially owned materials in public archives, designed in the 1960s and 1970s when studios valued older
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