| New York Times: Sunday, January 5, 1997
PRESERVING AND MAKING AVAILABLE AMERICA'S FILM HERITAGE
Preserving and Making Available America's Film Heritage Joe Lauro
calls his film archive A.R.I.Q. Footage Inc. "a home for orphan
films" and is just as passionate about saving newsreels, industrial
films and American music footage as Martin Scorsese is dedicated
to the preservation of the theatrical release. "Film is in my blood,"
Mr. Lauro said. "I know it intimately. It's beyond my job. It's
something that is really in my soul, understanding film loving it
and trying to do something with it." When it came time to choose
softball, basketball or volleyball teammates in his Massapequa grade
school, Mr. Lauro was always the last on picked. Like many outsiders,
Mr. Scorcese included, Mr. Lauro who now lives on Shelter Island,
found refuge in movies and television and it has paid off.
One of the largest film archives in the country and leading resource
of American music footage of any type in the world, A.R.I.Q. boasts
more than 35 million feet of film. Mr. Lauro figures about 65% of
the film is owned by A.R.I.Q. but they also "represent" many collections
to which they license small excerpts.
New, or shall we say old, film and video arrive at A.R.I.Q.'s
offices in East Hampton Goodfriend Park daily and is eventually
transferred on to state of the art video and loaded into the computer
library on a shot by shot basis, where every scene is described
in detail.
"Basically the entire 20th century, every aspect of it, is on
film and its not just Greta Garbo in a feature film," said Mr. Lauro.
"It could be the Ford Company who created propaganda films to sell
their cars. They were made for the moment, but when you look at
them now they are an incredibly telling story about the American
Dream."
"If someone calls up and says, I'm doing a documentary on automobiles
in America, we'll not only have shots of automobiles," said Mr.
Lauro, "we'll have the manufacturer's films that show every aspect
of the automobile from the manufacturing of steel to the thing on
assembly line and auto mobile safety." To prove his point, Mr. Lauro
turns to his computer, punches in the world "Ford" and up comes
509 mentions in 207 films. He is then able to send his prospective
clients a list from which they can choose.
Mr. Lauro compares the hundreds of television station now in existence
to that of a beast need to be fed new image for their programs.
"We give all this ephemeral, strange material new life through out
clients," he said.
The Arts and Entertainment Network receives key archival material
for their Biography series from A.R.I.Q. Among other A.R.I.Q. treasures,
the music channel VH1 aired clips of Curtis Mayfield in a documentary
and the Public Broadcast Service brought the rights to footage of
a teen-age Lena Horne singing at the Cotton Club for yet another
documentary.
Outside his office, Mr. Lauro pulled and antiquated open reel
videotape of the Grateful Dead at Roosevelt Station in 1976 out
of a box, a product of a new contract with John Scher, a concert
promoter.
"A lot of the stuff goes right from the camera into a box and
into a warehouse," said Mr. Lauro. "The arrangement works out well
for the owners who are not doing anything with the films anyway."
Mr. Lauro acquires sole clip rights to the films and the owner
get 50% of the profits. "Owners are willing to let us handle material
because we have the equipment to organize and restore the material
or transfer it to safety film," he said. Although A.R.I.Q. which
stands for Associated Research and Image Quest, represents well-known
footage like "The Ed Sullivan Show" and "Steve Allen Show" as well
as the Pathe Film Library and Movietone newsreels, it is the random
collection that come to Mr. Lauro from the dumps that excite and
sadden him the most.
Mr. Lauro attributes the everyday "collector" with saving the
industry. "You think about people who collect art and their house
is full of art," he said, "but there is a story for every soul and
there are people who collect big old video machines who keep them
in their garages in New Jersey," Mr. Lauro points to "unenlightened
studio" who "threw stuff out they didn't care about or need anymore,"
and the collectors who "showed up at the dump with their trucks"
to salvage the discarded films.
"First known footage" is a phrase Mr. Lauro is fond of and claims
to have a lot of. Say, for example, "they first known footage of
a black marching band playing gut bucket blues" he lent to the jazz
museum in New Orleans. "They flipped out," Mr. Lauro exclaimed.
Locally, A.R.I.Q. has the "first known footage" of a Montauk Lighthouse
keeper that Mr. Lauro will send to various historical societies.
A 1929 clip of a Coney island public swimming pool shows "three
odd looking guys" clowning around a bevy of bathing beauties by
the diving board turned out to be "the first known footage of the
Three Stooges."
"Some of the films hasn't been seen since the day its been shot
in the 20's and that material is the most cherished because it documents
American life and it's deteriorating," Mr. Lauro said. "Unlike the
Hollywood film, it shows people on the streets talking and doing
what they did in 1923. It¹s really turning into an important historic
record."
Nothing lasts forever, including celluloid image. Cellulose nitrate
and camphor, the material used to make film stock up until the 1950's
eventually fades to dust- unless they footage goes up in flames,
a likely occurrence since the same materials are also used to make
explosives. "We're constantly battling the ravages of time," sighs
Mr. Lauro. "We'll never be able to get in back once its gone."
The push for film preservation has taken on a lot of momentum
in the past five years. Big-time directors have become immersed
in saving or restoring old motion pictures. In 1990, Martin Scorsese
formed the Film Foundation: Film Makers for Film Preservation with
Woody Allen, Francis Coppola, Stanely Kubrick, George Lucas, Sydney
Pollack, Robert Redford and Steven Speilberg as board members.
The film Foundation and other institutions dedicated to film preservation
like the University of California at Los Angeles, the American Congress
are mainly concerned with raising awareness and money to protect
the film archives of major motion pictures studios, in other words
Hollywood movies. "Many of the archives are aware of the orphan
films," said Margaret Bodde, administrator at the Film Foundation.
"The Library of Congress has many they want to transfer to new celluloid
safety stock." Ms. Bodde said that although the Film Foundation
has raised more than one million dollars for film preservation,
their man thrust is not fund-raising but to encourage studios to
work with their archives and create public awareness.
The National Film Preservation Act of 1996, passed by Congress
and signed by President Clinton on Oct. 11, 1996, proposes to do
two things. Title I reauthorize the National Film Preservation Board,
retained from 1992 legislation for four years to continue the work
already begun on the implementation of the national film preservation
plan for another seven years. The work includes selecting up to
25 "culturally, historically or authentically significant films"
each year for the National Film Registry and obtaining archival
material on those title for collection in the Library of Congress.
An annual appropriation of $250,000 will be maintained and Title
II allows the foundation to accept and match small fight with Federal
Funds not exceeding $250,000 per year. David Francis, librarian,
is hopeful, however, that the amount raised before the bill kicks
in October 1999 will up the ante and more money will be appropriated
in the year 2000. Title II proposes the establishment of the National
Film Preservation Foundation whose objection will be to raise funds
for the national film preservation plan and to "promote preservation
of and public access to American film heritage." "The foundation
will concentrate on those films not preserved by commercials interests
(public domain, education, historical footage, documentaries, etc.),
i.e. not the Hollywood feature films which have commercial owners
and therefore Œpreservation benefactors.'" Public and nonprofit
institutions throughout the United States who possess film collections
will be eligible to apply for grants and establish guidelines for
those grants.
The film preservation plan, completed by 1994, created a new federally
chartered foundation to raise money to preserve films, particularly
newsreels, documentaries, independent and avant garde films, socially
significant amateur footage and regional historical materials.
Mr. Scorsese, by the way, is making a documentary on the blues
and may be interested in the first know sound footage of a black
marching band, or perhaps footage of the 1928 Marti Gras, courtesy
of A.R.I.Q. |
