Christina Stewart, Assistant Media Archivist at University of Toronto Media Commons, looks at 35mm film of David Cronenberg’s Crash, in Toronto on April 17.Laura Proctor/The Globe and Mail
When the Cinémathèque Québécoise in Montreal was offered the video archives of Québécois television channel Musique Plus, Nicolas Dulac and his acquisitions team reluctantly turned it down.
On offer were tens of thousands of magnetic videocassettes of shows aired from 1986 to 2019: CD review segments, in-studio band performances and thousands of music videos among them. Critics called the decision to not take the material elitist, alleging the Cinémathèque deemed the content too popular or low-brow. But that was not the case, Dulac says. They simply could not handle a collection that large.
“We would love to preserve everything, all of cinema, all of television made in Quebec,” he says. It was turned down for pragmatic reasons: costs, resources and space – concerns for any film archive.
Founded in 1963, the Cinémathèque’s storage facility in Boucherville, Que., is nearly at capacity, housing more than 480,000 items, over 70,000 of which are film and video elements. It is one of several Canadian institutions dedicated to preserving and providing access to Canada and Quebec‘s film heritage, alongside TIFF’s Film Reference Library, Library and Archives Canada, the National Film Board of Canada, the University of Toronto‘s Media Commons and others.
The preservation of Canada’s audio-visual history relies on these archives, but those who run them say they are struggling with a lack of funding, resources and postsecondary programs to bring in new archivists.
Recently, they’ve also been calling attention to the Trump administration’s cuts to funding and jobs in the U.S. library and archives system, which have raised alarms within the archivist community worldwide. “These cuts make people wonder whether the collections of archives and libraries are safe,” says American film archivist Rick Prelinger.
Film reels stacked inside the cold storage vault.Laura Proctor/The Globe and Mail
In early April, Prelinger posted on Instagram: “If your funding has been halted and you need film scanning, it‘s possible we can help. Please get in touch.”
In the 1970s and 80s, Prelinger saved more than 60,000 educational and industrial films which were meant to be thrown out because their cultural value was misunderstood. Those films now form the San Francisco-based Prelinger Archives, accessible via the Internet Archive. Prelinger says a common misconception is that archives are where media goes to die, where materials sit on a shelf and accumulate dust. That is not the case.
“Media archives are full of potential,” he says. “They can actively intervene in the flow of culture and life.”
In the early 2010s, funding cuts to Library and Archives Canada and other cultural funding bodies by the Harper government prioritized digitization. While digitization ensures broader access through streaming platforms, cinemas and home-video labels, the archived data are always at risk. Hard drives and servers sometimes fail.
For this reason, Louis Pelletier, who teaches film history and preservation at the University of Montreal, insists funding for the preservation of original photo-chemical film elements remains a priority. “If you don’t take care of the actual objects on which the audiovisual contents are recorded, you won’t have anything to work with in the future,” he explains.
Loaning physical film prints is also labour-intensive: a copyright must be verified, an archivist inspects the print – checking splices and acidity levels – and then the loan team has to ensure it is shared with an institution capable of handling it at an archival level. All of this comes at a significant cost, further stressing already strained budgets that have not kept up with inflation.
The master’s program at Toronto Metropolitan University is one of the few programs in Canada to focus exclusively on film preservation.Laura Proctor/The Globe and Mail
“I’m grateful for the financing we get from public institutions, but funding remains an issue for everyone in our field,” says Dulac. He calls for unrestricted financing that‘s not tied to specific projects – a common funding model in the cultural sector – so they can focus on their core mandate of safe-guarding and preserving Quebec‘s audio-visual heritage. “It‘s a vicious circle. We need more money, so we ask for more projects, which requires more human resources, making it harder to accomplish our main mission.”
Not that digitization on its own is a bad thing. Pelletier notes that technological advancements and cheaper film-scanning equipment have enabled mass-digitization projects that were impossible 15 years ago. “Canada was a significant producer of amateur, educational and industrial films,” he says. “These materials were often overlooked for preservation.”
In both its digital and analog archiving, the Cinémathèque also prioritizes obscure documentaries, animation, experimental and feminist films. Dulac notes that the excellent preservation work done by archivists at CBC, NFB, as well as Elephant Films, which preserves feature films, has allowed them to concentrate on titles that might lack the commercial value of other initiatives but are culturally significant.
But while modern and affordable technology have helped digitization efforts, maintaining antiquated equipment for obsolete film and video formats remains a challenge for every institution, even at Library and Archives Canada, the country’s largest audio-visual repository.
Pascal LeBlond, manager of visual and sound archives, says playback equipment needs constant upkeep. “Rubber belts dry out, and spare parts for obscure formats are hard to find. And expertise is disappearing.”
Jimmy Fournier, director of technology at the NFB in Montreal, says ensuring Canada’s archivist programs teach the fundamentals of film-handling, preservation and the operation of predigital, mechanical equipment is crucial.
Canada’s postsecondary institutions feature renowned archive and library sciences programs, but with the exception of a master’s program at Toronto Metropolitan University, few focus exclusively on film preservation. “Often, candidates need to leave the country to refine their skills,” says Dulac.
University of Toronto‘s Media Commons is one of several institutions dedicated to preserving Canada’s and Quebec’s film heritage.Laura Proctor/The Globe and Mail
He says the Cinémathèque is keen to welcome future archivists and offer training, but its equipment and resources are limited and already in great demand.
Maryam Manzoor, an archive assistant at the Muslims in Canada Archives at the University of Toronto, is completing a master’s degree and wants to work in film preservation. She says the lack of opportunities discourages students. “We need more funding for archivist jobs.”
Manzoor, president of the university’s student chapter for the Association of Moving Image Archivists, also wants institutional archives to do more outreach. “It‘s the archive’s responsibility to maintain interest in their holdings,” she says. Citing ArQuives, Canada’s LGBTQ archives, which holds regular queer trivia nights, Manzoor adds, “People see that visibility and want to volunteer and be part of the community.”
In 2022, the Canadian Film Institute and the French Embassy in Canada collaborated on a study to discover what are the main challenges faced by the preservation field, film distributors and exhibitors. Wendy Huot of the Screening Room cinema in Kingston participated, sharing that she would show more Canadian films if there was “an inventory of classic Canadian films that are available for theatrical bookings, with details about who holds the rights, formats available and booking fees and conditions.”
Paulina Abarca-Cantin, a content programmer who also participated in the study, agrees. “Once preserved, who are we preserving them for? They need an audience, and a bridge to that audience,” says Abarca-Cantin, who co-organizes the annual Save-As conference on Canadian heritage film preservation and distribution.
While overseeing the Canada Media Fund’s Encore+ YouTube channel from 2017 to 2022, Abarca-Cantin oversaw the release of numerous classic Canadian films – including The Wars (1982), based on Timothy Findley’s acclaimed novel, which had been unavailable for decades. Encore+ was shut down in late 2022. While The Wars is now accessible on the Stratford Festival’s streaming platform, many other films preserved through the program are no longer available.
The 35mm film of David Cronenberg’s Crash at the University of Toronto Media Commons in Toronto.Laura Proctor/The Globe and Mail
A restoration of David Secter’s Winter Kept Us Warm (1965), a pioneering work of Canadian queer cinema, was screened at the Save-As conference in March. Drawn from elements preserved by Library and Archives Canada, the restoration, supervised by Canadian International Pictures, was funded by Telefilm’s Canadian Cinema Reignited, a $660,000 program commissioned in 2023 to restore 23 Canadian films. The homegrown home-video label plans to release Secter’s film later this year. Co-founder David Marriott says the relationships with the archives is vital to their mission of ensuring access to Canadian film history.
“They absolutely understand the imperatives of film archives,” says Dulac. “They’re patient, they respect our expertise and we respect theirs.”
Abarca-Cantin hopes to see more archives enter into these types of collaborations. “It only takes one or two people with the will and desire to make things happen. And of course, the funding.”
