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Post by Ollie W on Feb 26, 2011 15:30:45 GMT
Apologies if this has been covered before - I'm sure it has but the forum search function doesn't seem to work.
Paul - did the Armchair Theatres you saw in the Cyprus archive ever get recovered by either whoever owns the rights to them or the BFI? I do hope so. If so, is there a list of which ones they were?
Thanks
Ollie
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Post by Paul Vanezis on Feb 26, 2011 16:53:21 GMT
did the Armchair Theatres you saw in the Cyprus archive ever get recovered by either whoever owns the rights to them or the BFI? I do hope so. Sadly not. I told Steve Bryant about it at the time...and reminded him about it afterwards on numerous occassions. As far as I know nothing was done about it and the films were destroyed. I seem to recall that Camilla at 'Raiders of the Lost Archives' contacted Cyprus recently and she was told that all the material from 'the grave' aka the basement room where the film was stored had been disposed of. Sad really, I counted approximately 60 editions and it's very unlikely they would be the same 60 or so that survive today. Regards, Paul
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Post by Deleted on Feb 26, 2011 17:57:02 GMT
That's madness! The BFI were always talking up Armchair Theatre as one of the jewels in the crown of UK TV and yet they just ignored these recordings until recently, when it was obviously too late. I truly despair of our archiving system and I can't convey how angry I am about this bit of news.
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Post by Gary Robinson on Feb 26, 2011 19:24:59 GMT
Awful news, I bet a few people on here would have gladly picked these up with permission to do so,utter madness.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 26, 2011 21:07:33 GMT
What can't be forgiven here is that it was so many editions that were just sitting there and not just an odd episode or two. This would have been a find on a scale as great as (if not greater) than the Library Of Congress haul recently (which the BFI were happy to bask in the glory of)! It's exactly the sort of "dream find" that they always claim to look for when they're pushing out publicity blurbs for the various treasure hunts they are a part of. It makes initiatives like Missing Believed Wiped look like a sick joke. The BFI are a waste of space. And i'm being polite there.
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Post by Rob Moss on Feb 26, 2011 22:54:25 GMT
I think we have to remember that the British Film Institute's main remit is for cinema. Clearly this lost opportunity is very unfortunate, but back in those days, television wasn't as high a priority for the BFI as it is these days.
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Post by Paul Vanezis on Feb 27, 2011 1:16:35 GMT
It makes initiatives like Missing Believed Wiped look like a sick joke. The BFI are a waste of space. And i'm being polite there. Hi Laurence, I wouldn't go that far. Also, I'm kicking myself for not chasing it up personally, but it was difficult enough getting the BBC films back. Unlike the 'Doctor Who' episodes, the 1989 discoveries weren't returned for over a year. I thought I'd done the right thing contacting Steve, but maybe I should have gone direct to Weintraub who had the rights at the time. Anyway, we can't cry over spilt milk. Onwards and upwards. Paul
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Post by Greg H on Feb 27, 2011 3:34:59 GMT
What a sad tale. I wonder what stories will never be told again because of this? Its a shame that in the latter portion of the 20th century and the 21st attitudes still arent what they should be to preserving archive television. A great pity. Such is life.
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Post by Robert Belford on Feb 27, 2011 7:59:08 GMT
That's awful. The truth is material is being destroyed or lost all the time. Those days aren't over. Slightly off-topic, an archive of 12m photographs apparently under threat because the administrator doesn't have the cash to return them to the photographers: blog.melchersystem.com/2011/02/25/the-fire-this-time/Returning to television, do you think an enormous amount of TV will be lost because some day there will be no equipment left to play tapes that haven't been transferred? I'm thinking of a similar situation to that which exists with nitrate film in the film industry. There are simply not the funds available to transfer it and eventually most will turn to syrup. I know the BBC has migrated its archive. But what about all the other companies in the UK, Europe and around the world that may have 2 inch Quad or 1 inch? Also the life of standard tape is reckoned to be 50 years? That's not to mention the home video formats - camcorder and off-air recordings. I wonder how many millions of VHS tapes have been destroyed in the last ten years? Perhaps containing unique bits of continuity or even whole programmes.
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Post by Peter Stirling on Feb 27, 2011 11:14:13 GMT
I think we have to remember that the British Film Institute's main remit is for cinema. Clearly this lost opportunity is very unfortunate, but back in those days, television wasn't as high a priority for the BFI as it is these days. Not quite. I dont want to go on like a stuck record as I have mentioned it before but.. Around 1969/1970 there was an awareness that TV needed to be archived. In fact one of the reasons of this new awareness was the fact that when an immensly popular show like The Power Game was requested for repeat showings it was found that the whole lot had already been wiped (obviously the TRs were found later in export markets) The BFI were given a budget to do this and a committee of public figures was set up that would meet every 3 months in the 1970s to discuss what next to put into the TV archive. The idea was that it would be impossible to archive everything but all notable work should be saved. So for example in the case of No Hiding Place out of say 250 episodes, A fair few would be ephemeral of no lasting merit and few more would be clunkers so therefore it should leave (say) around a hundred odd that should be kept. When this committee was meeting Stars on Sunday was in full flight on the TV.The committee had decided that much of this should be kept as in say a hundred years it would be a good bench mark of changing religious attitudes and entertainment in the 1970s whereas previous generations (who did not have TV) would have been 'entertained' in their place of worship. Another programme the committee thought should be kept entirely was HineSo who knows what happened between then and now?
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Post by Tim Disney on Feb 27, 2011 14:03:45 GMT
This is most distressing news and something that could make me very angry too if I spent time thinking about what might have been in that selection of Armchair Theatre material All that said, 60 plays would have been a major recovery indeed. I still believe that the U.S is where we might find the next haul. In around 2002 I located around 25 film recordings of Armchair Theatre in Los Angeles and shipped them all back to the U.K. They were all duplicates of existing episodes, most of the film recordings were struck between 1969-71, so by making a broad assumption, it would appear that many of the plays were either destroyed some time before the demise of ABC, or were not part of the sales catalogue of the time. However, these plays ranged across the entire history of the series, so it would appear that it was more likely to have been availability of masters, rather than union agreements, that defined the choice of material available for sale. There does seem to be very conflicting messages about the BFI's attitude toward television. I think that at one point they did have very little regard for television as a medium, but I believe that they now appreciate the value of television preservation. I would certainly agree that this hasn't always been the case. However, to echo Peter's points above and in defence of the BFI, the organisation was partly responsible in establishing an understanding of television's cultural and historic value within the industry and shaming the upper echelons of BBC management into forming an archiving policy. I'd also like to acknowledge that there were people within the BBC itself who understood this value too, but faced complicated internal, financial and logistical systems that were almost impossible to surmount single-handedly. The BFI along with BBC personnel in what was then known as the BBC Film Library helped to bring about the 'Briggs Report,' after which a proper archiving policy was eventually formed and saw the appointment of Sue Malden as the first official Archive Selector. I dread to think how little television we would have today if it wasn't for the likes of BBC Enterprises and the commercial companies international sales and distribution. I still get a shiver when I think of all those ABC VT's and quite likely an entire run of Public Eye sitting at Elstree Film Studios up until around 1976.
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Post by Robert Belford on Feb 27, 2011 14:45:41 GMT
Does anyone know if there was ever a recording of 'Underground' - the episode from 1958 during which an actor died? I assume it doesn't exist now?
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Post by Andrew Doherty on Feb 27, 2011 16:25:58 GMT
The early BBC 'Z Cars' episodes were recovered from Cyprus; so it comes as a stunning shock that 'Armchair Theatre' productions were also in existence in Cyprus, but were allowed to be junked.
Once again, a 'golden opportunity' lost, which makes the desire to look into the UCLA an even more desirable proposition as mentioned in my previous posting.
Yours,
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Post by Deleted on Feb 27, 2011 23:11:41 GMT
I'm kicking myself for not chasing it up personally, but it was difficult enough getting the BBC films back. I thought I'd done the right thing contacting Steve, but maybe I should have gone direct to Weintraub who had the rights at the time. I wouldn't say it was your fault in any way though, Paul. You passed on the information about the discovery but the BFI weren't doing their job properly in allowing something as important as this (and in such quantity) to be junked - simple as that. If i'd thought that my tip wasn't going to be acted on, i'd have also spoken to Weintraub to be on the safe side. You weren't to know how things would pan out with hindsight though. That's awful. The truth is material is being destroyed or lost all the time. Those days aren't over. do you think an enormous amount of TV will be lost because some day there will be no equipment left to play tapes that haven't been transferred? I'm thinking of a similar situation to that which exists with nitrate film in the film industry. This has happened already. There is a clear parallel between the urgency to transfer nitrate film and 405 line VT masters. For example, the early Callan episodes held by the BFI on this format. Inferior optical conversions were made some years ago but when it came to the Network DVD release recently, it became clear that the BFI had by now junked the originals and these inferior copies were all that remained! I now worry about the few ABC Public Eye episodes they sit on (and other material) in the same way. The BFI officially recognised TV as a medium worth preserving in 1959 (yes, you heard right!), with the introduction of a selection process. But over 50 years later they still aren't treating it properly or equally to cinema, despite declared public ambitions and intentions. Their publicity blurbs have always talked in regrettable terms about the loss of so much TV (but it was TV they could have helped to save if they really cared, as with the Rediffusion library, which they passed up to a large degree). They publish books such as The Television Heritage, A For Andromeda To Zoo Time and Missing Believed Wiped which visibly show the organisation as being seen to care about television preservation. They have been recording large amounts of material off-air to broadcast standard since the '80s (and must therefore be amassing vast amounts of recordings of a medium which they are in reality still treating as a second class citizen). Yet at the same time they pass up what amounts to a treasure trove of a programme they themselves regard as one of the most important series ever made! You have to ask who these people think they are serving.
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Post by Paul Vanezis on Feb 28, 2011 10:39:07 GMT
You have to ask who these people think they are serving. Well, in this case I do think an error was made, but there are all sorts of issues which need to be considered, not least budget and time. I'm also of the opinion, although others do not agree with me, that you can't and shouldn't keep everything. Whilst you can always make an argument to keep something, those arguments aren't always based on need or artistic value, but more likely a gut feeling that it is sacrilige to dispose of something which so many people made an effort to make. Television and film have proven to be disposable product. I don't think that is likely to change. What we can do is put our best efforts into preserving what we have and securing copies of those programmes worthy of saving. Who decides what is worth saving is always going to be a contentious issue. Paul
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