Journalism of Courage
Rough,uncut shots of a balmy Indian afternoon on a wide,gurgling river,filled the screen. While the footage,though in technicolour,had a decided vintage feel to it,the accompanying sounds comprised distant murmurs and gushing noise of the river.
In the next shot,noted French director Jean Renoir was seen lounging around on a small boat. This was shot in the late 40s,when Renoir was scouting for location in India with the critically-acclaimed Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray.
The report raised important concerns about the longevity of digital motion picture materials created by the major Hollywood studios as well as other valuable digital data managed by large commercial,scientific and government organisations.
We basically wanted to examine ways in which key players in the movie business and other major industries currently store and access important digital data, said Andy Maltz,director,Academys Science and Technology Council. We realised that the 35 mm film on which the movies and documentaries were earlier made,had a shelf-life of over 90 years. But with the changing technology and the advancement in filmmaking,most of the data is stored in hardisks and other equipment,which have a very short life-span and are prone to several viruses, he added.
Milt Shefter,a jury member on the panel of the Academy Awards (Oscars),said that films,documentaries and photographs are a vibrant form of cultural history. While using advanced technology has made films as well as filmmaking more accessible to common people,the onus of storing and archiving data is on no one, he said.
Shefter said the report is already available in language such as Brazilian,Portuguese and Korean,among others. The Marathi version was made in association with the Maharashtra government and will be launched in Mumbai on Tuesday.
The second part of the report is called Digital Dilemma 2 and focuses on the more acute challenges faced by independent filmmakers,documentarians
and non-profit audiovisual archives.
