Unlike archiving most other artifacts and objects, film preservation has always been heavily dependent on industry practice. The complicated and vast machinery involved in shooting, duplication, processing and projection of new films has been the same ones used for preserving and presenting film heritage. The recent shift from analogue to digital technology in capture, post-production and distribution of cinematographic works has led to the biggest challenges ever faced by the global archive community. The digitisation of heritage films has the potential of providing access on an unprecedented scale, as new platforms have emerged to facilitate access and the fact that digital copies are not subject to same wear and tear as analogue film elements. But there are severe financial, legal, curatorial and technological challenges to overcome in order to fulfill this potential. The industrial shift to digital technology has led not only to dwindling photochemical laboratory capacity, film stock supply and 35mm projection equipment, which threatens the preservation and access to film heritage in original formats, but also to declining demand for scanning equipment, resulting in the fact that the window of opportunity for high-quality digitisation of analogue films is already closing. Unless necessary funding is put in place very soon, 115 years of film heritage may become forever inaccessible in the future.
