How a new moving image conservation research laboratory will help safeguard our cultural heritage

It might be surprising for some, but art conservators currently have a greater range of techniques to investigate the Mona Lisa, painted over 500 years ago, than their film counterparts do to work on films created four centuries later. Moving images technologies are significantly less understood than objects that are several centuries older. However, that is all about to change.

Today, the UKRI Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and BFI celebrate the launch of the Research Infrastructure for Conservation and Heritage Science (RICHeS) programme, a major £80 million research and innovation investment from the UKRI Infrastructure Fund and delivered by AHRC. The RICHeS programme will support the latest technology and scientific equipment needed to unlock the potential of existing heritage collections and provide access to untapped cultural assets to safeguard and grow the UK’s £29 billion heritage sector for future generations.

At the BFI National Archive we’re establishing a £1 million Moving Image Conservation Research Laboratory (MICRL) to safeguard UK moving image collections at the BFI and archive partners across the UK. This unique facility will be equipped with state-of-the-art instrumentation dedicated to the scientific analysis of film materials, to improve understanding of material composition and deterioration processes of film, video and paper-based collections.

It’s an innovative part of the 31 heritage science projects across the UK that will share £37 million from the first tranche of funding through the programme. Along with Tate, The National Trust, Historic Environment Scotland and the National Gallery, we’re among the 100 partners from across all four nations of the UK and overseas that combined will create a genuinely world-leading network of heritage expertise.

Together these projects will ensure the UK maintains its international reputation as a cultural heritage superpower. Building our new state-of-the-art research lab facilities will also drive innovations in other areas including sustainable building practises, bio-imaging, carbon-dating and materials analysis. 

Nearing the end of its ninth decade, moving image preservation has always been based on two activities: storage (keeping it safe) and duplication (through photochemical film printing, videotape copying, and, finally, digitisation). Both are essential for reproducibility, the fundamental nature of moving image forms. If we want to keep and show moving images, they must be reproduced, usually in media and materials very different from the original formats. 

Storage of moving image collections have greatly benefited from advances in conservation research, led by the Image Permanence Institute among others, and the BFI National Archive’s Master Film Store is one of the best examples of this globally. But film reels, video tapes and their related paper-based collections, in all their dazzling complexity, can only be fully protected when the material composition and status of those objects are established and understood.

Next year, the BFI National Archive will celebrate its 90th anniversary. Like its other peers, major international film, television and related paper-based collections, it was established in the aftermath of cinema’s transition to sound, a period when the founders of what we refer today as ‘screen heritage’ needed to act fast to prevent almost total loss of cinema’s first 30 years, as well as look into the future of collecting of the art form.

Approaching this anniversary, we are delighted to start building this lab, the first of its kind in the UK and, we believe, internationally. Specialists and researchers will be able to explore films and videotapes in completely new ways. Among other benefits, it will increase the accuracy of restoration in colour, so that the systems 50 or 100 years old will be recreated as audiences saw them originally. MICRL will be a part of the AHRC RICHeS network, opening its doors to other UK and international collections and researchers, and becoming a vibrant hub of international moving image research, engendering new networks and connections.

MICRL has three organising research strands: materials analysis; investigation of interventive treatments; and colour research:

• Material analysis techniques generate evidence of how objects were made, of their original use and change over time. Spectroscopy, x-ray fluorescence and an array of analytical systems can reveal secrets within heritage objects of all kinds. But these techniques, commonly used in other heritage sectors, have rarely been applied to film and related collections. MICRL, equipped with a range of instrumentation, will change it by generating knowledge about films from various eras to inform preservation planning and decisions regarding use of precious resources.

• The second research strand will establish and foster interventive chemical treatments as part of preservation workflows, using them to prepare damaged film reels for printing or high-resolution scanning. MICRL will develop and supervise the use of such treatments at the BFI Conservation Centre, which will be made available for items from other UK collections. We will also investigate relevance of this approach for video tapes.

• Finally, the lab will be equipped for colour research to support increasingly accurate restoration, recording and presentation of cinema’s splendidly diverse coloured eras. Colour research of heritage film materials is of key importance to support accurate identification, restoration and presentation in contemporary media. The diverse tints, tones and dyes throughout cinema’s history are ripe for scientific examination and modelling to reproduce them for new audiences. For example, how would a Technicolor print with the carbon arc projectors of the 1940s have looked on the screen – and how can we display that now for contemporary audiences? This kind of analysis and research would mark a step-change in reproduction of obsolete colour systems.

Moving images are important; they tell stories that have societal impact, that transform and transport audiences, and map societal change. The MICRL project has begun today and the lab will open fully in two years. Hosted at the BFI National Archive Conservation Centre, it will sit in the middle of ongoing film, video and paper conservation activities. MICRL will enable national and international collaborative research, bridging heritage science, industry, and filmmakers, transforming strategies for care, and sustaining audience engagement across generations.