In the past decade, the discourse around digital cinema has flourished and given birth to a long series of ontological and phenomenological reflections around the status of the medium in the digital age. Can digital cinema still be called ‘cinema?’. Does cinema conserve its indexical nature, or is digital cinema just a simulation? What are the effects of the proliferation of screens, and the consequent loss of the centrality of movie theaters as the place for consumption of moving images? With my essay, I would like to investigate the status of digital preservation within the world of digital cinema. How is digital preservation different from analog preservation, if at all? And how are digitally restored moving images different from a film shot digitally? If a digital image is a simulation of reality, rather than a trace left by it (as the analog image supposedly was), what is the status of the digitization of an analog photographic image? I will argue that digital preservation forces us to reconsider the analog-digital opposition, and provides a framework through which to rethink not only the present state of cinema, but also its past and the future of its history.
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Simulating the Past. Digital Preservation of Moving Images and the ‘End of Cinema’
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Simulating the Past. Digital Preservation of Moving Images
and the ‘End of Cinema’
Sabrina Negri, University of Chicago




Abstract

    In the past decade, the discourse around digital cinema has flourished and given
    birth to a long series of ontological and phenomenological reflections around
    the status of the medium in the digital age. Can digital cinema still be called
    ‘cinema?’. Does cinema conserve its indexical nature, or is digital cinema just
    a simulation? What are the effects of the proliferation of screens, and the con-
    sequent loss of the centrality of movie theaters as the place for consumption of
    moving images? With my essay, I would like to investigate the status of digital
    preservation within the world of digital cinema. How is digital preservation dif-
    ferent from analog preservation, if at all? And how are digitally restored moving
    images different from a film shot digitally? If a digital image is a simulation of
    reality, rather than a trace left by it (as the analog image supposedly was), what
    is the status of the digitization of an analog photographic image? I will argue
    that digital preservation forces us to reconsider the analog-digital opposition,
    and provides a framework through which to rethink not only the present state of
    cinema, but also its past and the future of its history.


   The introduction of digital cinema has fuelled a lively debate in media studies
for the past couple of decades, fostering a renewed interest in the ontology of the
medium. While some scholars speak of a continuity between analog and digital
cinema, mostly focusing on similarities at the level of camera optics, projection
and spectatorial experience in a movie theatre, others see a clear rupture on the
basis of an ontological difference between the photochemical and the digital
moving image, to the point that digital technology is seen as the end of cinema as
we know it.1 This essay is an attempt to rethink the issue through the lens of one

1
  In the first group of scholars we find, among others: John Belton, ‘Digital Cinema: A False Re-
volution’, October, 100 (Spring 2002), 98–114; Tom Gunning, ‘What’s the Point of an Index? or,
Faking Photographs’, in Still/Moving: Between Cinema and Photography, ed. by Karen Beckman
and Jean Ma (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008), pp. 23–40. Representatives of the second
group are, among others: André Gaudreault and Philippe Marion, The End of Cinema? A Medium
in Crisis in the Digital Age (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015); Lev Manovich, The

                                        Cinéma & Cie, vol. XVI, no. 26-27, Spring/Summer 2016
                                           Sabrina Negri


element that has rarely been put on the table: the digital preservation of analog
moving images — that is, the digitization of analog film and the manipulation of
the resultant file in order to achieve a result that looks as close as possible to what
the original film was supposed to look like in its assumed pristine condition.2
I will argue that the hybrid status of digitized film forces us to reconsider the
analog-digital opposition, and provides a framework through which to rethink
not only the present state of cinema, but also its past and the future of its history.
In particular, I will examine the way in which digital preservation challenges our
perspective on some of the issues that are at the core of the debate surrounding
digital cinema, namely the ontological difference between a film and a file and
its consequences on the issue of indexicality. I will also argue that part of the
discourse on digital cinema is founded on an implicit understanding of analog
cinema as a stable concept — a view that is questioned by archival and restora-
tion practices.

    It is often taken for granted that, when we talk about digital cinema, we are
referring to moving images captured with a digital camera and projected digitally
in a movie theatre, or else presented on a smaller, personal screen. This approach
is limited by the fact that it is almost exclusively concerned with the production
of new moving images. In addition, it conveniently creates a ‘before’ and ‘after
digital’ that can have misleading consequences on our understanding of cinema
history. In other words, it implicitly generates the fantasy of a comfortable and
safe past where all images had a photochemical basis and an unproblematic in-
dexical relationship with the world. Besides creating this mythical space, this
kind of discourse crystallizes cinema’s analogical past and closes it off beyond
a hypothetical digital threshold that, as blurred as it may be, divides it from the
uncertainties of the present and keeps it untouched from the current tumult.
    Supposing that such an idyllic situation ever existed, it is far from being unaf-
fected by the contemporary technological turmoil. Most theoretical studies on
the effects of digital technology on cinema have overlooked its employment as a
film restoration and preservation tool.3 In their book The End of Cinema? A Me-


Language of New Media (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001); D. N. Rodowick, The Virtual Life of
Film (Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press, 2007).
2
  However still limited, the awareness of the importance of digital preservation within the ontologi-
cal discourse surrounding cinema is fortunately growing. Notable works include Rossella Catane-
se, ‘The Digital Restoration of Film’, in BiD: textos universitaris de biblioteconomia i documentació,
33 (December 2014) <http://bid.ub.edu/en/33/catanese3.htm>; Leo Enticknap, Film Restoration:
The Culture and Science of Audiovisual Heritage (London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2013). For a
broader discussion on preservation of time-based media, including but not limited to film, see Pre-
serving and Exhibiting Media Art: Challenges and Perspectives, ed. by Julia Noordegraaf and others
(Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2013).
3
  I use the terms ‘restoration’ and ‘preservation’ as indicated by Paolo Cherchi Usai in his book
Silent Cinema: An Introduction (London: British Film Institute, 2000), pp. 66–67. Cherchi Usai
defines ‘preservation’ as ‘the overall complex of procedures, principles, techniques and practices
necessary for maintaining the integrity, restoring the content, and organizing the intellectual expe-

46
                                         Simulating the Past


dium in Crisis in the Digital Age, André Gaudreault and Philippe Marion briefly
mention preservation as one of the fields in which digital technology is employed,
but do not differentiate it from digital cinema production at a theoretical level.4
This treatment of digital preservation is a mistake insofar as it overlooks the hy-
brid nature of digitized images and throws them into an undifferentiated group
labeled simply ‘digital’.
   Alternatively, John Belton limits his discussion of digital preservation to the
issue of conservation of digital files, giving voice to concerns that archivists have
been expressing for years: digital storage is not a viable means of conservation as
it subjects the materials to a much higher risk of obsolescence and decay.5 This
problem has been discussed at length in technical literature but hardly ever has
it been approached theoretically. After all, there is not much to theorize upon:
that digital files have a much shorter lifespan than film is a fact proved by numer-
ous studies.6 All archivists and scholars can do in this respect is to advocate for
the continuation of film stock manufacture and for more reliable digital storage
systems.
   There are other aspects of digital preservation that deserve a more thorough
theorization, but so far few scholars tackled the issue. The main reason for this is
probably to be found in the longstanding separation between archival practices
and academic thought. Unsurprisingly, the works that more directly attempt to
draw a theory from archival practices come from scholars who are also archi-
vists and restorers.7 But I believe that there is a more profound reason behind


rience of a moving image on a permanent basis.’ ‘Restoration’ is a more specific term, and is part
of the preservation process: it ‘is the set of technical, editorial and intellectual procedures aimed at
compensating for the loss or degradation of the moving image artifact, thus bringing it back to a
state as close as possible to its original condition’. Unfortunately, there is no official consensus on
the use of these terms. ‘Preservation’ and ‘restoration’ are often used interchangeably, sometimes
to indicate simply a duplication with no curatorial intervention. On terminological confusions and
their marketing value, see Vinzenz Hediger, ‘The Original is Always Lost: Film History, Copy-
right Industries and the Problem of Reconstruction’, in Cinephilia. Movies, Love, and Memory,
ed. by Malte Hagener and Marijke de Valck (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2005), pp.
133–47.
4
  Gaudreault and Marion, p. 6.
5
  Belton, p. 114.
6
  See, among others: The Digital Dilemma. Strategic Issues in Archiving and Accessing Digital Mo-
tion Picture Materials, ed. by Milton Shefter and Andy Maltz (Hollywood: Academy of Motion
Picture Arts and Sciences, 2007) and The Digital Dilemma 2. Perspectives from Independent Film-
makers, Documentarians and Nonprofit Audiovisual Archives, ed. by Milton Shefter and Andy
Maltz (Hollywood: Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, 2012); Howard Besser, ‘Digital
Preservation of Moving Image Material’, The Moving Image, 1.2 (Fall 2001), 39–55; David S. H.
Rosenthal et al., ‘The Economics of Long-Term Digital Storage’, in The Memory of the World in the
Digital Age: Digitization and Preservation Conference Proceedings (UNESCO, 2012), pp. 513–28.
7
  See, among others, Paolo Cherchi Usai, The Death of Cinema: History, Cultural Memory and the
Digital Dark Age (London: British Film Institute, 2001); Giovanna Fossati, From Grain to Pixel:
The Archival Life of Film in Transition (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2009); Jan-
Christopher Horak, ‘The Gap Between 1 and 0. Digital Video and the Omission of Film History’,
Spectator, 27 (2007), 29–41.

                                                                                                     47
                                            Sabrina Negri


this absence, and it has to do with that fantasy of a safe space of analog cinema
that I mentioned earlier. Digital preservation disrupts the stability of our pho-
tochemical past, and forces us to reconsider it with potentially uncomfortable
consequences.
   As John Belton points out with respect to the digital turn, it would be a
historiographical mistake to create a parallel between two different moments
of technological change, as the conditions in which these changes take place
are continually changing.8 Nonetheless, I believe that we need to identify and
clarify the ways in which the digital shift is different from previous, seemingly
similar moments. If we look at this shift from a preservation perspective, the
newness of this latest transition appears in all its clarity: unlike the transition
to sound, colour, or widescreen, digital technology affects the nature of past
moving images as much as future ones. Here we find the aspect that embodies
the real revolutionary force of digital technology applied to moving images. The
question ‘What is cinema going to be in the future?’ should be asked side-by-
side with another question that specifies and redefines it: ‘What is the future
of cinema’s past?’ Digital technology applied to preservation wipes away the
threshold dividing an analog past from a digital present. If those scholars who
see the digital as the death of cinema are right, then we should be ready to not
even have a corpse to lament. The preservation of analog films on digital carriers,
concurrently with the switch from analog to digital technology in most exhibition
venues, de facto takes out of circulation photochemical copies of the same title
— if digital cinema is not cinema, then digital preservation erases our cinematic
past as much as it renders impossible a future. The key characteristic of digital
technology is therefore its power to act retroactively, operating a re-writing of
film history that shakes the foundations of the very idea of ‘cinema’.
   At the present stage, of course, only a small percentage of analog films have
been digitized. Even though their number will certainly grow in the future, it is
unclear whether we will reach a point where all films made in the analog era will
only be available in digital formats.9 A number of factors are at play, including
the future availability of film stock for photochemical preservation. As much as
this scenario might sound apocalyptic, it is possible that it may become reality
in the distant future. Either way, the influence of digital preservation on film his-
tory is an understudied issue that deserves a theoretical formulation to guide us
beyond the conundrum of the disappearance of film history with the disappear-
ance of film. An analysis of preservation techniques under the light of the theo-
retical problems posed by the emergence of digital cinema is therefore beneficial
both for archival practices and for the advancement of theoretical questions.
Although I am aware that the entity ‘cinema’ is composed of several different


8
 Belton, p. 100.
9
 The shift to digital technology also poses issues of availability and access. In a way, digital preser-
vation is also re-writing the canon of film history. On this very fascinating subject, see Horak, ‘The
Gap Between 1 and 0’.

48
                                     Simulating the Past


elements, I will focus on aspects that are more directly affected by the practice of
preservation: the passage from film stock to file formats, and the contextual shift
from photochemical to digital images.
   As Dan Streible points out in an article with a seemingly tautological thesis,
digital film is not film. It is a file.10 Streible elaborates on the consequences of this
distinction and on the reasons why it is important to maintain it so as ‘not to lose
important historical knowledge and awareness’.11 That there is a historical differ-
ence between a film reel and a digital file is apparent to everyone, but the theo-
retical consequences of this distinction take us into more prickly territory. The
most discussed issue with regards to digital images is the potential disappearance
of the indexical relationship between a photograph and the object it represents.
Tom Gunning summarizes the terms of the problem very clearly:

         The indexicality of the photograph depends on a physical relationship between the
     object photographed and the image finally created. The image on the photographic
     negative derives from the transformation of light sensitive emulsion caused by light
     reflecting off the object photographed filtered through the lens and the diaphragm. In
     a digital image, however, instead of light sensitive emulsion affected by the luminous
     object, the image is formed through data about light that is encoded in a matrix of
     numbers.12

   Gunning rejects the conclusion that a digital image loses its indexical re-
lationship to the object represented, and therefore claims that the so-called
‘truth claim’ of photography remains virtually untouched in the digital age.
However, he acknowledges that digital technology offers extraordinary means
of manipulation of the image, to the extent that its indexical and iconic rela-
tionship to its referent may be stretched to the point of rupture. Although ma-
nipulation was certainly possible in the photochemical age, the ease and range
of modifications offered by digital technology are unprecedented. Nonethe-
less, Gunning maintains that this potential for fakery does not jeopardize the
truth claim of digital images, but rather opens up new possibilities for creative
manipulation. However, I believe that the digitization of analog images com-
plicates this discourse and forces us to reconsider the notion of ‘indexicality’
itself. With this in mind, I will approach the relationship between digital pres-
ervation and film history in two areas: the range of manipulation that digital
technology allows and the distinction between film and file that Streible insists
upon.
   The relationship between an analog film and its digitization gives new mean-
ing to what I previously dismissed as a tautological claim. A digitized image may
retain an indexical relationship with the object represented, but it complicates

10
   Dan Streible, ‘Moving Image History and the F -Word; or, “Digital Film” Is an Oxymoron’, Film
History, 25.1-2 (2013), 227–35.
11
   Ivi, p. 229.
12
   Gunning, p. 40.

                                                                                             49
                                     Sabrina Negri


the concept of index in its relationship to the film it digitizes, or at least with
parts of it. Before being an index of the world, a film is a film: namely, it carries
information that go beyond its so-called ‘content’, or the object it represents. In
other words, digitization does not reproduce film-specific elements such as edge
codes, type of emulsion, colour system, chemical composition of the film base,
etc. Digitization reproduces the image recorded on film, but does not reproduce
the film itself with all the information it carries with it. Film is both image and
artifact.13 Although some argue that digital cinema lacks this duality, digital files
also have a twofold nature: they are stored on a material carrier that undergoes
a process of decay just as film does, although much faster. However, the dual
nature of films and files overlaps only at the level of content; as artifacts, their
nature is radically different.
   The issue of manipulation complicates things even further. Here D. N. Rodo-
wick’s concept of ‘digital event’ as simulation, discussed in his book The Virtual
Life of Film, is helpful.14 ‘A digital event’, he writes, ‘is any discrete alteration of
image or sound data at whatever scale internal to the image’.15 The peculiarity of
the digital event stands in the undifferentiated nature of the pixels that compose
the captured image from those that compose the synthesized additions to it. The
consequence, as Rodowick writes, is that ‘The basis of all representation is virtu-
ality: mathematical abstractions that render all signs as equivalent regardless of
their output medium. Digital media are neither visual, nor textual, nor musical
— they are simulations’.16
   Image compositing, as Rodowick acknowledges, is not a digital exclusive;
matte shots and superimpositions are common examples of analog compositing.
But the digital event is something different insofar as it combines captured imag-
es with computer-generated ones in ways that collapse ontological differentiation
between the two. When dealing with fiction cinema, this peculiarity has purely
ontological implications, opening up an enormous array of creative options for
filmmakers. However, if the same technique is applied to digital restoration, I
believe it is necessary to shift the emphasis from ontology to ethics.
   At this point, the truth claim of photography needs to be re-examined with
respect to the manipulation of digital images in the restoration process. Digital
technology offers to the restorer a creative freedom that was unforeseeable in
the photochemical age. Once the print source is digitized, the resulting file can
be manipulated indefinitely before it is transferred back either to film stock or
to a digital carrier. Certain kinds of manipulation were just not possible with
photochemical restoration; severe colour film fading, for instance, could not be
corrected with analog means. Digital technology also allows the reconstruction
of parts of the frame that were lost in the print source due to decomposition or


13
   See Fossati, pp. 104–05.
14
   Rodowick, pp. 163–74.
15
   Ivi, p. 167.
16
   Ivi, p. 11.

50
                                       Simulating the Past


mechanical damage to the emulsion — an operation that was also impossible in
photochemical printing.
   Given the extent of potential intervention that digital restoration offers, can
we say that a digitally manipulated file is truthful to its print source? This ques-
tion can have several different answers depending on our definition of ‘truthful’
and on the object of investigation. If we refer to the physical print source, then
a digital restoration is definitely not truthful, and it is not supposed to be. What
is being restored is not the print source but rather the idea of what that print
source looked like when it was in pristine condition.17 In other words, digital
restoration is a simulation based on an educated guess. This is where ontology
and ethics become intertwined: digital simulations offer the possibility to over-
correct, adding elements that were never there or removing unwanted details.
Archival ethics prevent restorers from intervening on a file with a different goal
than restoring the ideal look of the film, but not all restorations are carried out
by archives. Private companies’ ethics might be guided by different principles.
The risk is that of a proliferation of simulations that have little in common with
how the film looked like before the restoration. But the concept of simulation
has farther reaching implications than its malleability to the will of the restorer.
Manipulating the image digitally means mixing captured elements with synthe-
sized ones in an undifferentiated way: digital restoration creates a series of digital
events. In other words, it creates a simulation without differentiation between
past and present.
   As this power is unprecedented in the history of film and film preservation,
it is important not to overlook elements of continuity between photochemical
and digital restoration. According to Giovanna Fossati, all restorations are
simulations regardless of their output carrier.18 Modern film stock simulates
the look of obsolete film technologies — the restoration of a Technicolor print
will necessarily lose the technological peculiarities of Technicolor insofar as
the technology to reproduce it is no longer available. In this respect, what I
said about the loss of a complete indexical relationship between a film print
and its digital copy also holds true in the case of a ‘film-to-film’ preservation.
Elements that are unique to a print, such as edge codes, chemical composition of
the emulsion or film stock, splices, scratches, and so on, cannot be reproduced.
This is a necessary consequence of the twofold nature of film, which gives the
illusion of infinite reproducibility but renders impossible the reproduction of
the material nature of individual objects. Reproduction is intrinsically an art of
simulation. Film preservation unveils the complexities and the incoherences of
that historical period that too often is labeled as simply ‘analog cinema’. The


17
   Here, I am referring to the restoration of the image quality of a print. Other, more complex types
of restoration involving editorial decisions with regards to the completeness of a mutilated text
would deserve a separate discussion, although the principle of ‘restoring an idea’ would hold true
(probably truer) in these cases too.
18
   Fossati, pp. 140–45.

                                                                                                  51
                                    Sabrina Negri


peculiarity of digital technology, therefore, stands not in its act of simulation
of analog technology, but in its placement of the output of the restoration in an
eternal present, where images from the past and contemporary interventions are
indistinguishably blurred in a flow of pixels and can be reproduced indefinitely
in this new form.
   Digital preservation changes our relationship with the history of moving im-
ages; in a way, it re-historicizes them by placing them in an undifferentiated pres-
ent. But digital preservation also offers a lens through which to look at the his-
tory of film in a way that destabilizes our preconceptions about the analog past of
cinema, and its potential for simulation reveals the many forms that ‘simulation’
assumes as an act intrinsic to the creation of faithful reproductions. The nature
of digital images also reconfigures our perception of analog film technology: their
‘presentness’ contrasts with the historicity that each film print carries with it. And
here is where I would place the last, fundamental distinction between analog and
digital images: whereas the former have the potential to carry the sign of their
history, the latter are forced to live in a permanent present. Digital files must
migrate to new carriers at least every five years to prevent digital decay. The mi-
gration is completely lossless as concerns the information embedded in the file,
yet implies the loss of the carrier that used to store it. Conversely, unlike what
happens when a photochemical print shows sign of decomposition, a file that is
even only partially corrupted cannot be played back. The passing of time can-
not leave traces on digital objects. It can leave them untouched or destroy them
completely.

   The consequences of digital preservation might not be immediately visible in
the experience of cinema; in a movie theatre, very few spectators will be aware of
the changed condition of the object they are experiencing. Actually, digital res-
toration offers a much more precise simulation of the look of old film stock than
photochemical reproduction does, somehow enhancing the spectatorial experi-
ence. In this respect, I believe that digital technology offers a perfect example
of the resilience and flexibility of the concept of ‘cinema’ rather than decreeing
its end. At the same time, though, an approach that considers only the look of
digital images and the similarities between analog and digital projection risks
overshadowing the complexity of the interplay between film, digital technology,
and history that I have sketched out so far.
   A historiography of digital technology has yet to be written, but it faces dif-
ficulties that are radically different than those posed by photochemical artifacts.
What will happen to analog cinema when all its copies will be digitized is un-
certain, but the diffusion of digital images across a plethora of screens might
in return foster a new awareness of the physicality of film in a way that brings
cinema closer to other visual arts. The future of film might be in its relevance as




52
                                       Simulating the Past


an embodiment of a set of technological peculiarities that are not reproducible.19
Digital images would therefore be copies that do not mirror the technological
complexity of the original (or originals) just as the reproduction of the Mona Lisa
on a computer screen cannot be considered a substitute for Leonardo’s painting.
This approach would help us avoid the danger of considering analog cinema as
a safe, stable and undifferentiated space that is defined exclusively in opposition
to digital technology. Similarly, we should be aware of the risk of considering
digital technology in similar terms, overlooking the technological complexities
that the term ‘digital’ overshadows. The hybrid status of digitally preserved film
invites us to go beyond a simple analog-digital opposition, and forces us to go
back and explore the complexity, the conflicts, and the contradictions within the
seemingly stable and coherent space of analog cinema that the digital revolution
so conveniently created.


Acknowledgments

  I am deeply grateful to Adam Hart and D. N. Rodowick for their generosity
and their invaluable feedback. Any errors are my own.




19
   See Michele Canosa, ‘Per una teoria del restauro cinematografico’, in Storia del cinema mondia-
le. Teorie, strumenti, memorie, ed by. Giampiero Brunetta, 5 vols (Torino: Einaudi, 2001), v, pp.
1069–118 (p. 1086): ‘Ciascun esemplare di film diventa un unicum, cioè autentico. […] L’autenti-
cità non è connaturata ai prodotti tecnicamente riproducibili, e dunque ai film, ma a questo punto
possiamo sottilizzare: non lo è immediatamente. L’autenticità vi si aggiunge (è un valore aggiunto).
Perché accada deve prodursi una distanza, uno scarto e un gesto di riconoscimento – che sono
esattamente le condizioni del restauro’.

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