The Digital Restoration

Restoring Chantal Akerman's Films #2

Restoring films today is a digital process that still requires physical preparatory work on the film reel. Before digitization, the film reels are inspected to ensure they are complete and in good condition. The film is first cleaned in a specially designed washing machine. If necessary, minor repairs are made, such as fixing the perforations on the edges of the film to facilitate its passage through the scanner. Once digitized, we obtain a series of digital images corresponding to the individual frames of the film. In the case of Toute une nuit and many other films, this means 24 images for every second of film. The restoration team works on this series of digital images.

The goal of restoring a film is to present it to the public in its original state, as it was at its initial release. We remove what time has added to the film, such as dust, scratches, or color alterations resulting from the use of the material and changes in the chemical composition of the film over time. To achieve this, restorers use a set of specialized software tools and equipment. Although technology has advanced over the past ten years, the fundamental objective of their work remains unchanged: to restore the film to its authentic appearance, while considering the limitations of the film used and the possibilities offered by digital technology.

Ideally, a restoration project starts with the best image and sound materials. For the image, this generally means the original negative, the one that was in the camera during filming. For Demain on déménage (2004), a relatively recent film, the negative was in good condition, facilitating its restoration, but this is not always the case. Chantal Akerman’s older films have been handled longer to make copies, leading to physical deterioration of the material. In the case of Les Rendez-vous d’Anna (1978), restored before Demain on déménage, the negative was not in good condition because it had been abraded. This process involves removing a thin layer of the negative and was applied to films to remove scratches on the surface. It is therefore a very invasive intervention, leaving stains on the image. During the digital restoration, it was necessary to correct the traces left by this process on the film.

Sometimes, there isn’t even a negative available. In such a situation, other sources of material must be sought. For La Paresse (1986), a short film by Chantal Akerman that is part of a collective film, CINEMATEK initially had no preservation materials. However, when CINEMATEK organized a Chantal Akerman retrospective in 1996, Gabrielle Claes, conservator at the time, borrowed a copy from a German television channel and made a preservation copy for long-term storage. During the film's restoration in 2019, CINEMATEK's search revealed that the German copy had been lost. Thus, the copied film preserved at CINEMATEK is the only known existing copy of this short film. Without this 1996 copy and its subsequent preservation, the film would be lost today. However, since it is a copy of a copy, the quality of the images the team works with for restoration is not the same as the quality of images from a negative, impacting the final restoration result.

The quality of a restoration's result depends on the quality of the source material. To eliminate scratches and other defects from an image, it is necessary to have adjacent images that are still in good condition. Ultimately, the restoration process involves copying parts of images and pasting them over damaged parts of other images to eliminate defects. The more damaged the original film is, the more difficult it is to find intact references for this operation. When repairing part of the image is not possible, it is sometimes better to leave it as it is. Restorers work with great precision to ensure that automatic software does not inadvertently alter the image, such as by replacing defects in one image with defects from other images. Restorers continually monitor and correct their technological tools to preserve the purity of the original image. This balance between maintaining the authenticity of the initial image used for restoration and achieving the ideal of a flawless image requires restorers to interpret and reflect on the specificities of each restoration project.

Finally, the transition from analog to digital fundamentally changes certain aspects of the image. For example, digital images can have different contrast limits compared to their analog counterparts. When the light is very strong in an image on film, such as a very bright sky, the film becomes transparent, allowing the projector light to pass directly through. However, the same image in its digital version can show what is called digital noise in these areas. These are irregularities that can be seen where there should be a uniform color surface. Restorers are well aware of the particularities of transitioning from analog to digital and implement strategies to reduce such undesirable effects in the digital image. It’s a work of compromise since the digital image differs from the analog one, but it's a reasoned concession. The challenge of transitioning from analog to digital lies in finding the right balance to make the film visible again.

The third article in this series on the restorations of Chantal Akerman's work will delve into the color grading of films and the implications of transitioning from analog to digital for a film's colors.

The restoration of Demain on déménage is supported and financed by Belspo, the Centre du Cinéma et de l’Audiovisuel of the Federation Wallonia-Brussels, the European Union – NextGeneration EU, and the National Lottery and its players.