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National Film Center in Tokyo is the only film archive which joined FIAF (=La Federation Internationale des Archives du Film) from Japan (*Fukuoka Film Archive joined in 2004), and NFC is internationally not that famous but there must be so many film fans in the Tokyo area who often visit its theater, where you can see rare films at a reasonable admission price. The tasks of a film archive are, however, not only screenings/exhibitions but also various others like collecting, restoring, and preserving films. We asked the curator of NFC, Hidenori Okada, about being an film archivist and about film preservation work.

1. Before becoming a film archivist

Today I’d like to ask you about the profession of film archivist.

I didn’t mean to be a film archivist when I first came to NFC.

Really?

I didn’t know film archivist was a profession, that’s no.1. There’s no place in Japan where you can be a film archivist even if you wish, isn’t that right? No.2 is I originally wanted, if I could, to be a programmer, so I realized the importance of archival work for the first time when I started working at NFC. In this country, motion pictures mean “seeing” and “criticism” from head to tail, still it’s limited with only some technicians or at least, a small number of people, who understand how to deal with films “physically”.

Have you ever thought about working in the motion picture field other than at NFC? For example, how about when you were a student?

If I have ever thought about it, probably writing, I guess._ But I don’t have such talent, so I applied to a place called the Japan Foundation, hoping that I might do something about programming. I’d worked there for five years and eight months, and in the final two years, my job was to introduce Japanese films to foreign countries. But I felt like it was too safe, and was wanting to get more into the films. I was defined as somebody who knows about films very well, and actually it was a meaningful job, and I enjoyed it, that’s for sure, but I wasn’t really satisfied.

What made you so keen on films?

I felt like exposing myself to all kinds of art forms when I got to University, but then realized that I was totally inclined towards cinema, so, well, probably my body was that kind of body. Even so, I assume that I, as were many people in my generation or a bit older I guess, was shocked at Shigehiko Hasumi (former head of Tokyo University)’s criticism. He was my tutor at the Uni, as well. He was already famous at the time, but still he was one of the professors, so we could still argue with him in the class. There was a kind of tension between the students and him, which was rather stimulating. If somebody referred to a film he had never heard of before, he got annoyed and said, “Where did you see the film!?”. That kind of thing happened sometimes.

I believe your graduation thesis was on Jean Renoir.

That’s the past I’m ashamed of. My major was French, so I had to write something about France. I was fond of French films from the start, and was somehow stuck on them, but amongst others, Jean Renoir was outstanding, I thought, and I chose him as my theme. But when I was looking for a job, I had no doubt that film was my hobby. I might write something in the range of my hobby, but never make it my living for good, and I wouldn’t be able to do that, even if I wished to, however I ended up at NFC, writing about films.

Were there any changes after you had become conscious about being film archivist?

I wonder if I’m really conscious…? First of all, there was only Mr Okajima (the curator of film at NFC), who had been introducing the idea of film archiving and its importance to Japan. He was single-handedly writing to spread that idea in the film industry in Japan. The struggle is, in the end, missing something from both sides. On the one hand, people think, “they only think of keeping films”, that kind of misunderstanding. Probably they cannot figure it out clearly as a concrete image that “they can see films because they have been kept”. There are so many problems which cannot be solved by personal perspective.

2. What is a film archivist?

I guess for the readers of this website, there would be a simple question like, “what is a film archivist?”

More than anything else, film is material, that’s the thing. Any kind of art is dependent on the some kind of material, and film is no exception. Whether you realize it or not, that’s the bottom line. Everybody starts from their affection towards films, but that affection might shift to a materialistic way, such as library science or preservation science of motion pictures. However, the tasks you have to go through, such as techniques you have to gain and persistent efforts you need to make, are quite often kept at a distance by ordinary Japanese film fans, which is just a tragedy, I think. Nobody tells you what’s interesting about it, either.

How do you define archivist?

Amongst other film historians, you know there are some of them who make filmographies very consistently and in detail, for example. That kind of person is I think full of potential as an archivist. Much more so than I.

Do you think film archivist as a profession can exist in Japan?

Somehow in NFC, it’ll be possible, however, Kyoto Cultural Museum, for example, has such an important collection named “Daisuke Ito Bunko”, and when you realize the importance of making a catalogue of it, or when you visit a film collector’s place and face up to the tremendous number of films and feel like “I have to do something about it!”, that’s the time you become an film archivist, I think.

Tell me about your impressions of foreign archives, on your visits abroad.

I don’t yet have enough experience abroad, but last year I visited Belgium and Holland. What made me think from that was, of course every country is struggling, but at least they have a division of labour to some extent. NFC was opened purely as a theater when it began in 1970. That was what the nation expected. But if you show films, they get damaged, and you have to do something. This can be done by nobody but NFC in the end. We have to do screenings, preservation, and cataloging at the same time, so we added such options one by one, which has resulted in our present state. I mean, the same person is doing every kind of job. So now I’m doing organiser of film festivals, and film researcher, and film archivist, and everything is not 100%. In that sense this position is surely a bit difficult, and I think only a person who enjoys chaos can do this job.

What kind of position you think NFC is missing?

Everything. Programming should be done by a programmer, cataloging by a cataloger, preservation by a preservation expert, and so on, We should divide our jobs. Probably not in the near future in Japan, but it should be done someday, for sure.

To let people know more about the importance of film preservation, do you have any good ideas?

That reminded me of Cinematheque Royale de Belgique when they were facing the budget cut by the government (see NFC newsletter no.37, June-July, 2001). The head of the cinematheque herself was tearing up the deteriorated Rossellini’s “Voyage in Italy” as a performance. Film archivist as director. Anyway, we probably have to do some kind of appeal or campaign like the case in Australia (see “Growing Up and Reaching Out- Archiving Milestones Seen From Australia” in “REDEFINING THE TASKS OF FILM ARCHIVES”, NFC). But there’s no strength in the present NFC, I have to admit. I hope in the near future, we will realize the need to explain the crisis of Japanese film preservation, that’s what we should do. I wish we could get the specified position where someone can devote themselves to such a task.

Do you recall any particular archivist who impressed you most?

I don’t know so many archivists, but well, Mr. Alfonso del Amo Garcia was unforgettable. He is an archivist at Filmoteca Espanola, and also an activist who got arrested during the Franco era. In the 90s, he published a catalogue of all the films about the Spanish civil war. Like, a book with 1000 pages “Catalogo General del cine de la Guerra Civil” . When I found it in the film bookshop in Madrid, I felt faint. Of course he has a deep love of films themselves but more than that I was impressed by his ambitious attitude or challenge to fight against history. He was a leader of the workshop at the FIAF conference in Madrid about the production of film stock in the world, that’s where I got to know him (see NFC newsletter no.26 July-August, 1999), because I took part in the symposium from Japan without knowing enough about FIAF. At that time I met Gian Luca Farinelli from Italy, who is a top class archivist in Europe and did a paper on Ferrania’s history, and Eric Lone from France, who is of the same generation as me, author of a paper on early film production in France. Really interesting gathering, indeed. Mr. Del Amo, head of the symposium, was very skinny, quite an ordinary-looking person, but his eyes are shining sharply and quietly. He taught me that the work of a film archive is connected to the fight against history.

Speaking of the FIAF conference, it’ll be held in Seoul this year (2002) and Hanoi in 2004. Does NFC plan to do something special for them?

I’m not in a position to say anything about it, but of course we’ll cooperate. Once it was definite, the energy toward it, the power of the organization, backup from the nation would be quite something in Korea, I assume.

Since it’s going to be the first FIAF conference in Asia, I suppose it’s going to be a great chance to promote the importance of film preservation in Japan.

Yes, and recently we are trying to make a group among Korea, China, Taiwan and HongKong.

Is it going to be something like SEAPAVAA (South East Asia-Pacific Audio Visual Archive Association, which Ray Edmondson is taking part in, Ray Edmondson, ScreenSound Australia , the National Screen and Sound Archive, Canberra)?

SEAPAVAA is a group within South East Asia and Oceania, and it’ll be not the same. It’s more important for Australia on the political level; they have to be a friend to South East Asia from the start.

I remember you said before that if another archive from Japan joined FIAF, it’s going to be interesting.

Firstly, the atmosphere and the meaning of the screenings would be changed, I expect. The daily screenings for the public are somehow connected to an international movement. If people realise this, and realise the importance of film preservation, that would be exciting. Plus, you have to meet certain conditions to be a FIAF member, which means we are under pressure as we have to do something for FIAF to continue as a member. If there are some other members in Japan, we might be compete with each other in a good way. Rome, Bologna, Friuli, Torino, Milan…. There are many archives in Italy joining FIAF. That makes me realize something. I think that the idea of too much depending on NFC itself is quite old-fashioned. I know that every archive is in financial difficulties, but the tendency of storing everything like documents in the national archive is not always preferable, and if there’s somewhere else trustworthy, then nothing is wrong with that. Having a collection gives confidence to each place, and it’s more important to think this ambiguous centralisation over. That’s my opinion.

3. His role at NFC

As you work at place like NFC, I’m sure you have a wide range of possibilities, but on the other hand, do you think you have some kind of limitation?

I believe the job I’m doing now is all meaningful, but in Japan there’s no autonomy of the archivist. The work is not well divided. You cannot collect films without a good relationship with the studios, and on the other hand, you have to take a strict attitude to being an archivist. You have to have three or four different faces on, which is rather tragic.

It’s a bit difficult to explain, but are you sometimes trying deliberately not to bring up your preferences on your archival decision? For example when you are making a screening program?

No way. I use my preferences. I show the films I think should be shown, using my pride as a curator, which is not a bad thing at all.

I’ve heard that NFC has changed to an independent administrative agency. Let me know if there’re any practical changes.

Our budget was cut out from the national budget, so the income and expenditure have started to be linked. It used to be like this: admission was going to the state coffers, and the budget was separate. But from now on, there should be the idea of benefit assessment. It means, as long as we get some amount of money from our customers, we have to find a use for it, so to speak, “We’ll use this money on such and such a preservation project”.

If you are going to get a budget for the purpose of film preservation, what kind of project will you set up?

No idea where the money comes from, but I want to do blanket preservation work for Japanese Culture Film or Documentaries. For example, create negatives from the films with no negatives at the moment, or use wetgate printing (making a print using liquid with the same reflection rate as the film so that scratches are not copied onto the new print), or blow up from 16mm films to 35 mm. In addition, whatever the title is, I want to ask a preservation lab abroad for the quality restored print of silent feature films.

When you cannot preserve everything, there’s a priority problem coming up, right?

In this case I put top priority on post war industrial films or educational films. I want to discuss with people who are in documentary productions to choose which ones should be preserved first. We have to talk to the sponsor firms as well, I suppose. Or maybe simply, the oldest first, that’s is another way of looking at it. It means, the really old films are only in NFC, so we have to get a budget for it and preserve them ourselves. That must be really wonderful.

Including newsreels?

Of course. The world of our newsreels is fantastic but unfortunately, even quite a lot of newsreels in the postwar era have been lost. Someone I know from a production company told me how acetic (Vinegar Syndrome) their newsreels are.

Can you tell me the most impressive incident since you became an archivist?

Well, naturally the discovery of films is quite impressive, such as me finding a part of “Hikyo Nekka” (Dir. Kozo Akutagawa, 1935) in Yokosuka, but I’ll talk about the access to NFC from outside. I was impressed by the cooperation work for NHK’s documentary “The Human Drama of 20th Century Japan”. This is a series of 45 minute programmes where you can see rare footage of history in all prefectures in Japan, and quite a lot of footage was used from the NFC collection. I was even helping them search for the films all day long. That period of time was a really precious experience for me. I strongly felt that this program was possible only because the films remained…. So, besides the meaningfulness of collection or preserving, I discovered for the first time in my career that I can do such things for our patrons. In addition, since there’s no lab at NFC, meaning that I talk about duplication and restoring work with other companies like IMAGICA or IKUEISHA, I’ve learned a lot from communication with lab people. And one more thing. Something which helped the activities of NFC to be understood in a different way was the screenings of Japanese documentaries, “Glimpses of Nippon 2001: A Japanese Documentary Tradition”. I took part in the programming from 1998 and 2001 again (see NFC newsletter no 35 Jan-March, 2001), and not only ordinary audiences but a lot of people from documentary companies and staff members who were the core of Japanese documentary history came to see the films, and through those opportunities, we built up relationships and got to trust each other gradually, I believe. At that time, each company’s negatives were stored at the lab for free, but these days it’s inevitable to charge. No way to throw them away, but no chance to strike a new print, and if you deposit them with a private vault company, it’ll cost a bomb. If only they can use it freely as a copyright holder, it might be not too bad to deposit them at NFC… that kind of new way of thinking appeared. This is reasonable, or one of the good uses of NFC, I think. I well understand that passing things over to somebody else is rather worrying. But to make a convergence of each other’s interests and prevent the loss of films is one step forward for us. The relationship between the film industry and the nation is different from country to country. In some European countries, the government was so keen on funding film production and preservation is included in that system already, however the Japanese post war film industry was a completely free market and there was no role for the government to play. Nevertheless, now each side can have this much constructive discussion, which impressed me very much.

I’m sure we could listen to a lot more interesting words from you but I’ll close there for today. Thank you so much for so many precious stories.

After the interview

At GEH motion picture department, where I learned archival work, archivist was a generic term for curator of film, film technician, preservation officer, vault manager, cataloger, programmer, shipper, projectionist, theater manager, etc. In NFC, at least projectionist has its own title, however other full time staff are all curators and archivists at the same time. As Okada-san pointed out in the interview, they cannot concentrate solely on curatorial work. You can say GEH is focusing on collection and preservation, and on the other hand NFC is mainly for screenings. It might take longer to create liaison-like positions in Japan between film curators and lab technicians, although the level of film curation and lab techniques is quite high. Through this interview I very much understand how, despite the lack of money and staff numbers, each NFC curator is trying their best to play various roles. Lastly I’d like to thank Okada-san who positively accepted our request for this interview, and apologise for causing him so much trouble.

January 16th, 2002 at Cozy Corner in Ginza, 21:00pm- Interviewer: Kae Ishihara, Ayuno Okamura