Bits & Pieces. the limits of the film archive
Bits & Pieces is the collection of unidentified film fragments used by Jan Bot to generate its films. It was started in the year 1989 by Eric de Kuyper and Peter Delpeut. This essay, written by Delpeut and originally published in Versus Magazine in 1990, is a manifesto of the vision behind this rare collection. A seminal piece for those exploring alternative approaches to the curation of (film) archives.
written by Peter Delpeut
translated by Nico de Klerk
In every profession there are topics of which one does not speak. I do not want to imply that this silence signals a penchant for esotericism, or that matters are kept in the dark for reasons of (false) shame or some moral inhibition. No, what I mean is topics that are simply embarrassing. Topics, that is, that undermine the system, the infrastructure of a profession’s very foundation and are therefore silently (yet with binding force) pushed aside.
Within the film archival profession one such topic is film fragments, those brief pieces of film that begin somewhere in the middle of a shot and end equally abruptly (with no warning, and implacably). Sometimes it is possible to identify such a snippet as part of a larger whole, as a fragment of a known film. More often, though, the archivist is left empty-handed. Suddenly, he finds himself the keeper of images of fishing boats, their pennants fluttering from the mast, or of a view of an unknown street in some Asian country, or simply of a man and a woman who enter the room of a majestic house (but no kiss, no plot, just the space and two people). And always, just as these scenes come to a point where he might begin to understand something of what these images recorded, the piece of film mercilessly slips off the viewing table. There is even no death after this life, no body, no funeral. What remains is an anonymous nothing: a vast, meaningless tract of land.
Pieces of film with no title, no credits. No filmmaker’s name, no identifiable actor or actress. No positive indication of a country of origin. Anonymous film fragments with (at the Nederlands Filmmuseum, but probably elsewhere, too) such prosaic titles as Fragment of a German feature, Unknown fragment, or more poetic ones such as Man and woman near the water and Traveling in the tropics.
I think that, roughly, a quarter of the film materials held at the Nederlands Filmmuseum consists of fragments like these. And I suspect (but, as noted, one does not speak of this) that this situation hardly differs from other film archives.
There is, then, not a small quantity of film materials about which barely anything is known. Every film archival professional knows this ‘Realm of bits & pieces’, but prefers not to think about it. On the pretext of “no name, no title, no right to survive” this troop of bits & pieces has been shelved in the vaults. Most of this material consists of perishable, unstable nitrate prints, and will therefore irrevocably waste away. Forever lost in oblivion. With no name, no passport, these pieces of film are not only bereft of legal status, they are not even orphans, as they are written off before they were written in. With no identity, they are excluded from every discussion and, hence, from every selection. Unlike what other nitrate materials may expect, they have been denied being copied to safety prints with no due process of law.
Why are these bits & pieces being perceived as a displeasing problem?
Primarily because they are not identifiable. Fragments with no clear, well-defined signature make archivists insecure. Because they don’t fit the catalog system (surely, they are entered into it, but like the closed film cannisters that disappear into the vaults for time indefinite there is no reason to assume they will ever be taken out or asked for). Whatever title has been given to these pieces of film has an extremely arbitrary status. And arbitrariness equals the abyss of uncertainty, a free fall with no parachute. After all, the questions these fragments trigger can hardly be answered with any degree of certainty (and from a position of safety). Is it fiction? Is it documentary? Does this image come from a newsreel? Is this working material? Is it a shot from a feature film or a mere take, or a test? Questions to which these fragments are unable to provide the facts; they scare the computer (like they scare the computer in our heads).
Fragments with no clear, well-defined signature make archivists insecure.
Why, then, talk about this topic, the film fragment? Why, then, handle this disagreeable, annoying discard? Isn’t it enough to note that film fragments exist as archival entities, but have no use? That even the time they have recorded, now, in front of our eyes (and hence on our shelves and in our computers) is a waste of effort? Indeed, isn’t the only reason to handle them, for the time being, with care the hope (so often so idle!) that among this refuse there might be a lost fragment of a well-known masterpiece? (That one piece of the puzzle that completes the official history of film — isn’t that the film archivist’s ultimate dream?)
Of course, I wouldn’t have dwelt on this insignificant topic, the film fragment, had I found even one of the abovementioned questions conclusively answered with a mere shrug of the shoulders.
Let me put it this way: I think that reflecting on the problems posed by the film fragment as an archival entity can be inspiring and important for our (e)valuation of the archive as a whole: its function, its purpose, its rationale, its endurance, its influence, and aura. As well — and this is actually a phase that precedes all these social (and, thus, political) values — the film fragment can be a maxim for those who manage, organize, and use the archive as an implement; in short, for those who work in and with the archive. In other words, the film fragment poses the question of the politics of work.
Reflecting on the problems posed by the film fragment as an archival entity can be inspiring and important for our (e)valuation of the archive as a whole: its function, its purpose, its rationale, its endurance, its influence, and aura.
But let me first ask, and answer, a simpler question. Why is the film fragment an interesting phenomenon, to say the least, for the film archivist?
First of all, the film fragment is an extreme, a border case, and as such (as in any extreme case) it can pressurize and challenge the way we think about film archiving, about the work routines (and the work) of film archives. From the moment an archivist realizes that a substantial part of the archive consists of ‘loose ends’ he can no longer approach it with prejudicial opinion (like ‘meaningless’ or ‘useless’).
But there is another reason to approach the bits & pieces with caution: the simple fact that there are wondrously beautiful fragments among these materials. That alone would be reason enough to meet the problems bits & pieces present the archivist with (from storage to cataloging to preservation to disclosure and access) resourcefully.
It is the latter reason, the discovery of wondrous materials among this succession of loose ends, that ignited the discussion about the issue of bits & pieces within the Nederlands Filmmuseum. In 1987, soon after [then Deputy Director] Eric de Kuyper assumed the responsibility for selecting materials for preservation, it became clear to him that any cannister of unidentified film might be a treasure trove of images. Before long surprise was not a random occurrence anymore, but rather a daily routine.
Film material hardly ever, or never, survives in the state in which it once, clean and smooth, left the film lab. Time, in every possible way of destruction and loss, gnaws at film prints. Not seldom its voracity is such that only a dozen meters (or a few multiples of it) have reached the ‘safe’ haven of a film archive. While a loss, this residue of the combined forces of coincidence and willful indifference often has a fascinating attraction. What once had begun life as part of a larger whole, time, in its strange ways, made into an indefinite image fragment valuable in and of itself.
For instance. Stuck between pale gray images of a good-humored family that ostentatiously boards a rowing boat and somewhat later drifts along the lawn of a teashop there is a sudden wide shot of a harbor: a busy quay, bales of jute are being derricked, a stately cruise liner is being moored, a plume of black smoke billowing from one of its funnels — detail after hand-colored detail as in an old postcard. The teeming crowds, the ship’s regal mooring, the soft, sweet colors: twenty meters of surreal life.
Or. What is left of what looks like a German farce from the 1910s, men and women spastically frolicking over each other in a spa. But time has infused new life into all this drollness: as in a digital video manipulation the characters are wreathed by dazzling color formations, the image changes from purple and yellow to green, faces are bleached, hollow specters race across hot water baths, a frightening X-ray in a rainbow run riot. In technical terms this is called solarization; for those who know how to look the colors take on a life of their own, changing shape as in a liquid lightshow. Time appears to be more inventive than a German experimental filmmaker of the 1960s could ever have been.
As well. A three-minute rapid gunfire of silent, but dramatic close-ups of characters in a Venetian setting, an imposing blackfaced performer regularly reappearing. Exceptionally quick exchanges of looks (as in a present-day trailer) take you through an Othellian world. Time (but how? or who?) has re-edited Jannings’ famous Othello (that much was identifiable) into a three-minute film of consisting of not much more than one intriguing close-up after another. Shakespeare compacted into a stock cube.
Images with no signature (no staged beginning, middle, and ending); but who cares about title or director when surprised by a cinematographic treat? Those who work in film archives?
As a matter of fact, those who work in film archives do care about this. And for good, and honorable, reason. Identification and storage of data do not, of course, merely serve the internal beauty and completeness of a cataloging system. They first of all serve communication among film archives, which is most effective with titles that can be resolved to ‘known’ entities. A French archive will not gather much from a title like musical duo, but more from the designation “Pathé film, early 1910s” and the French title amour et musique. It is an exchange system on the basis of which, for example, the uniqueness of a print can be established and, hence, an appraisal within preservation priorities.
Identification, cataloging, however useful, make the archivist forget that looking, and enjoying looking, are after all the fundamental conditions to collect films in museum archives.
For external and internal communication purposes identification work is beyond discussion. But to what extent does identification direct the archivist’s look when he evaluates these materials? Whenever a piece or reel of film is being viewed in an archive there is often a sense of what to expect: a title on the cannister’s sticker, credits in the opening images, a few data retrieved during a previous viewing. These facts that precede the viewing are bound to color the archivist’s look, direct the look to identifiable entities. This way of viewing is purely a form of cataloging, of subdividing the image into a film catalog’s categories (director, country of production, year of production, genre, etcetera), categories that buttress film historiography, too.
The film fragment lacks these identifying indices and confronts the archivist with a startling limit: the limit of his own look. Film fragments, those insignificant snippets of film, throw the archivist back on his enjoyment (or its opposite) of the image as image. The film fragment returns the archivist to where his work began: with the combination of looking and pleasure.
The issue of the film fragment points up that the archivist’s professional look is almost exclusively directed by rational, film historical categories. Because vis-a-vis the fragment the archivist feels empty-handed (even when they are full of pure film material), frustrated in his wish to place the fragment, recognize it, or discern elements in it that can be neatly entered into the catalog of film history. Mere pleasure, or annoyance, or put differently, mere aesthetic satisfaction would make an unhappy professional out of an archivist.
Identification, cataloging, however useful, make the archivist forget that looking, and enjoying looking, are after all the fundamental conditions to collect films in museum archives. In all its extremeness the film fragment unreservedly restores the notion that film images are made for enjoyment (in every sense of the word).
The above is by no means an academic issue. Its implications are far-reaching, especially for selection procedures and the criteria of conservation practices. Because within those practices the unidentified fragment is hors catégorie, but in a negative sense. The film fragment is undiscussed (except, of course, when it is a piece of a famous but lost film). Nonetheless, these materials confront the archivist with the question: “Do I merit to live on, even I, with nothing more to show for than my image?” Each film poses this question to a greater or lesser extent, but for the fragment the archival world (and film historiography) has no rational alibis or excuses for a positive or negative answer. For the fragment, the only valuating guide is his look, his enjoyment, the cinematographic shock produced by the fragment.
But is there any room in the film archive for the Lustprinzip? Is enjoyment in a film museum’s archive sufficient for preservation? Or do only the categories of film historiography, the historical entities of information to documentation apply? Surely, the latter always operate within an archive, but are they permitted to dominate the archive exclusively? This is what the fragment, or rather the forgotten troop of cinematographic beauties bereft of rational alibis, brings up for discussion. If indeed one wishes to consider the fragment as a piece of preservable film in and of itself. If not, there is no discussion — a practice widespread, incidentally.
If the only alibi to preserve a fragment is the pleasure of the archivist’s look, it follows that its disclosure and exhibition are obligatory. The archivist who wishes to work with the material cannot but share his pleasure with the audience. The alibi of private pleasure needs to be supported by collective pleasure. Or, if indeed we do need alibis for preservation (if they do need to be pronounced — public opinion repeatedly asks for it), then the alibi of wishing to exhibit these beautiful and intriguing images suffices. No historical or instructive alibis, just the love for the image and the wish to share it with the audience.
The archivist who wishes to work with the material cannot but share his pleasure with the audience.
The Nederlands Filmmuseum has diligently tried to give shape to this in various ways.
A typically didactic and educational project was the reconstruction of Op hoop van zegen (the good hope; the Hollandia company version of 1918) with a film fragment and about thirty stills from the film. The fragment had been preserved (it being one of a few remains of the national film history of the period), yet considered unpresentable. Stuck between the stills and a few explanatory text panels that primarily reconstruct the storyline, it nevertheless proved possible to be moved by those few surviving images (about 100 meters). An incidental circumstance (yet almost as important) was that this reconstruction allowed the audience to literally experience the cruelties to which the film heritage had been subjected by time and history. While audiences were served the mere remains of a meal, still they could get a sense of its taste.
A similar project is being carried out with fragments of fashion newsreels of the 1910s and 1920s.
Another possibility we have been experimenting with are thematically arranged, so-called compilation programs. Particularly in the case of early travel films (train rides, boat trips, car rides, a camera gliding along valleys, brooks, and mountains, along faraway and less faraway places) this appears to produce fascinating film journeys.
A third and more prestigious approach are the so-called Lost and Found programs (like the ones performed in our own theater and at the festivals of Rotterdam and Bologna), in which the film fragments are part of a spectacle coupé of musical, theatrical, and filmic effects. Surprise, astonishment, magic are the operative terms here: they are attempts to reanimate the film image’s magic power, both substantively and formally. Programs were made about the image of the féerique (from Méliès to American B-movies), of the melodrama (accompanied with torch songs), of the documentary (with the sounds of trains, ship horns, water waves), of the French Revolution (in an atmosphere evocative of a cabaret), and other themes. The possibilities are endless, even though each of them is very effortful.
A final possibility, simple but as yet untried, is a continuous screening of this material. Now that the whole issue begins to take shape, the ‘Bits & Pieces” constitute a specific category of the Nederlands Filmmuseum’s preservations, in which all the fragments are being more or less randomly ordered. It is rather simple now to make sequences and combinations for screenings, for each of which we can determine how this (mostly silent material) can be accompanied. But it doesn’t always need to be a musical accompaniment; here, too, the possibilities are well-nigh endless.
Central in all these performances is the cinematographic persuasiveness of the film image as image: stories are begun or suggested, but they are always incomplete, open-ended, and only continue inside spectators’ minds.
Summarizing and concluding I would like to propose the following.
The presence of the film fragment in a film museum’s archive confronts the archivist with a thus far accepted limit. Crossing that limit can teach him that his look has often been exclusively dominated by the rational categories of film historiography. The film fragment and the work performed on it can challenge him not only to approach the bits & pieces, but the entire collection, differently. The films should be a matter of pleasure first, and of identification (and all its related rational activities) only second. This procedure may provoke the film archive into approaching film history (because what else does a film archive store) from an aesthetic rather than a historical position. Then, films would be the carriers of an affective relation, not merely of historical fact. This means that the screenings of archival films, too, are first of all presented as enjoyable and entertaining, rather than historical, facts. Perhaps this also provokes other choices, other selections within preservation schemes. Perhaps the archivist should consider himself, besides a keeper and a guardian, a filmmaker, too, an editor of a beautiful, perpetual film. Perhaps then the film heritage (its history and its material existence) will be cherished in a truly cinematographic sense.
