Final Report on the Volunteering Project at the National Film Archive of Thailand (NFA)
November 10, 2005This volunteering project was started as an initiative by Ray Edmondson, the National Film Archive of Thailand, the Thai Film Foundation and myself. The main goal was professional development. The main areas I was involved with were preservation management, cataloguing, inspection standards, general guidelines and policy issues.
I had visited the archive in April 2004 for four days to find out what fields I could help with, if any. Due to the fact that this was the first time I had undertaken such a project, some of the goals and plans formulated were possibly overoptimistic, some did not match my qualifications well under the circumstances.
Last years__ discussions with some of the staff members about raising public awareness have certainly helped and unlike then, the archive participates and organizes public screenings on weekends now. Due to numerous reasons they only show dvd or vhs copies of their holdings, but it is a start. I went to a screening of NANG NAK (1999), a famous Thai ghost story that exists in over 20 versions. This latest version was one of the most successful films in Thai cinemas, beating even TITANIC in box office numbers. One member of the audience brought a home made vcd with excerpts from many other versions, scans of posters and programming notes. This was a good example of how the public involves itself. The Archive opened its Museum within the past year where some of the screenings are being held. Also the attendance of the workshop held at the premises of the archive on June 25th and 26th showed a general interest and concern for the problems of the institution. However, without knowing too much about the political climate in Thailand, I did get the impression that public pressure is not always a useful mean to better the situation of an institution. The ultimate success of the greater visibility of the archive remains to be seen, as does the success of the volunteering. Only by returning will we be able to know in what ways the volunteer actually does make a difference. This, amongst other things, will hopefully be the result of my next report on this ongoing long term project.
Description of the Institution
The Film Archive is part of the Fine Arts Department, a section of National Archives, therefore has to report to two levels on activities. Staff are chosen within the entire department by a length of service system (one receives promotion by the amount of time spent in a permanent position rather than particular qualification).
There are 3 sections within the Film Archive: the paper and documentation department, the access and cataloguing department and the preservation department.
The paper and documentation department is housed in the same location with the National Archives in central Bangkok. The photo/stills collection is kept there too. Seven people are currently working there. The access and cataloguing department and the preservation department have been moved seven years ago to Salaya, a University city 35 km of Bangkok, where they occupy five buildings. Thirteen people work in Salaya, of which four have a permanent contract. The rest of the staff gets it renewed every year.
1. The Filmmuseum: this project was started four years ago and was officially opened towards the end of 2004. It consists of two floors, one which is being used for changing exhibitions and one floor for permanent exhibition that displays scenes from famous Thai films. It is a small building which was constructed in the style the house of a production company. Scenes from famous films include NANG NAK, the bar from COUNTRY HOTEL and the tiger drawing from TROPICAL MALADY. In addition it presents the filmmaking process from start to projection with objects like an old printer plus a small movie theater. The Museum is only open on Saturdays and the opening hours end with the screening of one classic film. The archive published a list of __The 100 Thai films every Thai person should have seen__ and screens them in Bangkok at the building of the National Archives.
2. The new vault, completed inlate 2003: one office space, one acclimatization room, one vault with moveable shelfing, one inspection room for a maximum of 5 people.
3. The old vault is two storeys high. Top floor: nitrate vault and acetate vaults. In the hallways one finds the videomaterials. First floor: digital department, film transfer onto VHS. Ground floor: new incoming material (one huge room filled to the ceiling with different kinds of material). There is a strong vinegar smell throughout the building. Workspaces for filminspection are on the ground level. Even though the building is only a few years old, it is in relatively poor condition. Budget has been secured for a renovation of the building, as the new vaults are already full and the move is not entirely completed.
4. The film laboratory building: The archive has a small laboratory for b&w processing only, with one staff member.
5. Access and Cataloguing building: one floor with vhs copies, cataloguing cards, office spaces for 4 people and three reference places for the viewing of vhs. There is also one container that holds the technology collection.
Weekly Diary
Week One: May 9 to 13
Even though I had planned to spend the first week on rehousing and rewinding the nitrate collection at the National Film Archive (NFA), two things changed the plans right away.Firstly the fact that a lot of new films had come into the archive within the past 12 months so that the backlog problem had increased tremendously. This immediately became my number one task for my stay there.
Secondly a new staff member started working the same day and Dome Sukvong asked me to give her some basic training for film inspection & handling. Chao was a film student who just graduated and showed interested in working at the archive. As her knowledge of English was better than that of most other staff members it was decided that she would help out as a translator. I am sorry to say that she could not stay with me throughout my entire period there as I think this would have helped a lot in exchanging knowledge with the other staff members. For example: the plan to work in the laboratory of the archive we had to drop due to the fact that we couldn’t find anybody to help with translation.
So our first task was to set up & find a proper work space for the two of us. Space is scarce as in most archives – it gets used up by incoming films. There is no designated workspace for vinegar or mold infested films so that we were looking for a space that can hold more than two people and can be ventilated well.
Week 2: May 16 to 20
At the Public Relation Department Archive and Museum (PRD).
The Archive and Museum was started by Ms Kannika 5 years ago. With incredible energy she managed to convince the Department of the importance of keeping its history. There are 83 Radio stations and 11 TV channels to be taken care of, some of which have started their own archives, some haven’t.Whether the PRD Archive and Museum will become the central archive of all stations or remain a smaller unit remains to be seen.
I was invited there to give some basic training for film inspection & handling and make suggestions for the future of the filmarchive. The situation is that material has been collected and kept, but nothing has been done with it. There are some preliminary inventory lists, but they have not been kept up to date so that one has a collection but no archive yet. The filmcollection represents a relatively small part of the entire colllections, the biggest part currently being vinyl LPs, Umatic tapes and slides. The challenge is to start the archival work so that parts of it can be made accessible within the next two years. Work on a database has been started by anotehr volunteer, and towards the end of my time in Thailand we had another meeting on databases and cataloguing, which I hope was also helpful. No doubt fostering access will make the visibility of the institution bigger and therefore strengthen the position of the Archive & Museum.
We spent the first day looking at equipment and what would be needed. Shopping was the next thing on the list and the afternoon was spent cleaning and setting up work spaces. On Tuesday I gave an overview on film preservation and handling. On Wednesday and Thursday we started winding through films. Three staff members were participating, plus Chao who helped by translating. None of them has any background in working with AV material. I did suggest that at least one of them should get more and ongoing training either by spending time at the NFA or possibly through SEAPAVAA.
Week 3: May 23 to 27
My translator Chao had to return to an unfinished project at the documentation department of the NFA in Bangkok, so that I concentrated on the backlog. Dome and Tong (another filmtechnician) picked emergency films in very bad condition for me. I worked on a 35mm print of a feature film from the 70s in extremely damaged condition and heavily color faded. It is the only 35mm material surviving of this title. This is a short week, as the 23rd is a holdiday. On the weekend it was decided to hold a workshop towards the end of my stay over two days, explicitly for people who want to help/volunteer in the archive.
Week 4: May 30 to June 3
I moved from the __vinegar workplace__ that I set up with Chao to the general inspection room. One table is almost always free due to other duties of the film inspecting staff so that I actually had a work table. This had the benefit of me working in the same room as everybody else. I started with the inspection of more 16mm films. On Tuesday, I started working on a 1997 film called THE KING OF MUSIC of which the archive received 34 prints. As it is an important film concerning the Royalty, it did get priority. And since space is scarce it was decided to only keep the 3 best copies. The first reel I checked I already encountered problems I have never seen before:
The film was printed on Agfa polyester stock, which broke apart when winding through it. So as my job consisted of finding the 3 best prints I decided to wind through one reel of each rpint fairly quickly and put the prints in better condition aside for later checking. But besides 3 prints all have the same problems. Those 3 are printed onto Kodak plyester stock from 1997. None of them shows any of the decomposition signs that the other ones have: the pink layer developing on the emulsion side (the prints are also lacquered, but I don__t know what with) and on other parts red spots. All prints have been kept under the same storage conditions, in what I would describe as accelerated age testing conditions. A storage building in Bangkok, with lots of windows and no airconditioning, in which temperature and humidity were extremely high. We are still trying to find out what happened but it might be a case of cyan dye fade. I did send some samples to the archive in Australia where Mick Newnham is performing some tests.
Week 5: June 6 to 10
Dome Sukvong pointed out a carton full of Kodachrome boxes that had been under termite attack. The contents is a film which is assumed lost: NOKNOI (Little Bird)1964 featuring Mit Chaibancha and Petchara Chaowaraj, the most famous screen couple of Thai Film history. There is a so called 16mm period in Thai cinema from 1947 to 1972, in which most films were shot on 16mm reversal material and dubbed afterwards to keep costs down, so that the surviving material is silent.
There were 92 boxes in different conditions: 19 boxes seemed heavily damaged, 59 looked clean from the outside and 14 reels were entirely without box. I inspected and rehoused them, after which we also tried different methods to clean the termite carton residue off the film without any success. From the research I did in the evenings, it seems that there are no cleaning methods that will work. In the end I had to cut out the worst sequences and put them in a separate can in order to at least make a transfer to dvd of the better material possible.
Week 6: June 13 to 17
I continued inspection of the outtakes, and then turned to several home movie collections. It became clear that nobody really had time to prepare material for me to work on so that I was trying to do as much as I could myself. However, there was a language issue. It is difficult to find out what is most urgent when one can not even read the notes on the cans. Also, there are so many problems and urgent cases that setting priorities is very difficult. I started considering a risk assessment project for next year, which would make it possible for people to work on material more systematically.
Week 7: June 20 to 24
Inspection, cleaning and rehousing of a home movie collection of the famous Thai singer Tina Aguilar. Also preparation of the workshop.
On the 22nd of June I assisted at a press conference: Lend a Helping Hand to the NFA: The biggest filmlaboratory in Thailand has been bought by Thomson Services and is today part of Technicolor labs. The managing director is Paul Stambaugh is well known as a filmpreservation and restoration enthusiast. Technicolour decided to do a special kind of sponsorship for the Thai Film Archive: they will work on two films each year for the archive. This is particularily important since the archive has no color technology facilities itself. To present and promote this a press conference was held (see articles in the Bangkok Post and The Nation available online). Bangkok Post (www.bangkokpost.net) 2005.06.23: First two films chosen for restoration The Nation (www.nationmultimedia.com) 2005.06.24: Technicolour to the rescue of old movies
Weekend 25 & 26 Workshop: Audiovisual archiving basics.
14 people partcipated on the first day. The first thing we did was to watch 10 minutes from a Thai “restoration” vcd from a film called THE BANDIT again with Mit Chaibancha (the model film for TAH FALAH JONG, Tears of the Black Tiger. The term “retsoration” is used on the cover of the vcd. It is a transfer from a very worn and color faded print with a newly added soundtrack. I asked people to write down what they see in terms of print problems and we watched it again at the end and discussed the problems together. I then gave an overview of the history of audiovisual archiving with some examples from the region and pointed the people to organizations such as FIAF, SEAPAVAA and AMIA. We discussed the different traditions in archival awareness, the necessities to preserve ones cultural heritage, which as I am informed- is a relatively new notion in Thailand. Next I talked about the different work areas/positions/duties in an AV archive. A tour of the archive was given by Dome Sukvong. From the work areas we moved to ethical issues. Chalida Uabumringjit from the Thai Film Foundation translated, and it is no doubt due to her translation that we got very lifely discussions on ethical issues, since she could add a lot of examples from Thai experiences. Some issues became very complex due to different concepts, for exampleteh notion of conflicts of Interest. There does not seem to be a Thai language equivalent, possibly because work and private life do not get separated in the same way (if at all). The last afternoon we spent on film & magnetic tape handling, but due to the lack of time and space I could only demonstrate. The outcome was that most people wanted to start working as volunteers in the archive, two of them made appointments for the upcoming week already. It was also decided that a workshop like this should be held every year for everybody. It was unfortunate that most of the staff members from the archive did not find it interesting enough to participate, as well as the fact that the staff from the PRD Archive and Museum was on a field trip.
Week 8: June 27 to July 1
Three more trainees from the workshop started. We started on some basic film handling and Dome Sukvong explained some cataloguing and film registration to them, as this is another area of the archive with a big backlog.
The last two days are spent with finishing up and cleaning and good bye parties with lots of food.
Conclusion
I believe that the National Film Archive of Thailand is an example of how important it is to understand that stability, growth and public awareness of an institution are an ongoing process – a one off publicity campaign will not suffice. In my opinion, the main problem is really an organizational, political one: no decision can be made within the Film Archive itself. This leads to a problematic staff structure as well as major equipment problems. For example: if the Film Archive has to give access to the collection and does not want to risk the originals, some transfer/duplication will have to be made. The archive has one viewing table that has been adjusted to be used as a telecine, therefore most films are available on vhs copies. Most TV stations (as clients for stock footage) would have wanted Beta tapes, but it took 15 years for the administration to sign the budget for it, at which point Beta was already being phased out and new equipment had to be asked for.
Political climates are not something that a volunteer can or should, in my opinion, mingle with. The main goal of volunteering is to exchange knowledge and also to support motivations, remind people of their reasons for being. The Archive needs mental support to keep on struggling for independence. Currently too many decisions are being made that go against the responsibility of the institution for the objects in their care. The international community can support the struggle for independence with visits, interviews and volunteering. But the volunteer her/himself in this case can help mainly by simply working on areas that need it most. This of course goes hand in hand with the qualifications of a volunteer. To mention just one example, if I would have been a laboratory expert and had some years of experience in this field, I might have been able to work with the technician without speaking Thai.
Another issue I came across was preservation management, in trying to find out workflow and other organizational problems and suggesting different solutions. Sometimes an outside view can help in finding more efficient ways to handle the problems. In this I am convinced that a risk assessment could be very useful. I will further investigate and discuss this with the staff at the NFA in the following months.
One of the major problems I did encounter – not unexpectedly – was language. On some occasions this did become an issue, especially if one of the set goals is teaching and exchanging of knowledge and experiences. I feel that this will be an area that will also improve next time, as both sides are more used to each other and can better converse without spoken language. There are of course cultural differences that come into play here and might have made me overly careful in trying not to make mistakes, which made me more of a distanced watcher than part of the everyday procedures. Over the two months this relationship changed, but I felt not yet enough. Spirit House at the Preservation Facilities of the NFA in Salaya, Nakhorn Pathom, Thailand. It is a model of a traditional movie theater in the country side in Thailand.
From other volunteering projects one can learn how difficult it is to set clear and coherent goals before beginning and I think this will be the major challenge for an umbrella organization: to help in setting up these goals and knowing what can realistic be achieved and what can not. It has to be understood that the main goal is to use the abilities of the volunteer in the most efficient way for the most pressing needs of an institution. But to learn about what an institution really needs migth take time. From my current knowledge I would say that there are three things needed for the NFA:
- International support.
- Hands on workers (one could think of an internship program for one of the programs for filmarchiving like NYU or GEH in addition to the volunteers that are starting now)
- The ability to make their own decisions and pick their own staff which equals independence from the National Archives and the Fine Arts Department.
Acknowledgments
This project would not have been possible without the ongoing support of Ray Edmondson, Paolo Cherchi Usai, Chalida Uabumringjit and Dome Sukvong. I would also like to thank the International Federation of Film Archives and The South East Asia Pacific Audio Visual Archive Association for their financial support.
Author: Brigitte Paulowitz Filmarchivist. Worked at Haghefilm Laboratories in the Netherlands as Quality Controller, at the Austrian Film Museum as Head of the Archive, and at the German Filminstitute as Researcher. Student at the L Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation in Rochester, USA in 2000-2001. Intense movie goer since the mid 80s, preferably silent and/or Asian cinema.
