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Post by Douglas Wulf on Jun 19, 2013 2:17:45 GMT
Back around New Years of 2007, I posted here about a bunch of old film prints in the Zambian TV archives that I had found described online.
Apparently, those prints were eventually checked and there was nothing of interest to be found. I was quite disheartened.
In 2007 and 2008, I tried as best I could to keep the idea of checking in Zambia and elsewhere in Africa alive by doing a number of things with fellow fan Brian Wilson, to include doing a phone interview with BBC archivist Sue Malden, the transcript of which we posted online. Brian Wilson wrote a newspaper article for a newspaper read online in Africa.
Well, nothing seemed to come of it. Yet, I have wondered ever since if just maybe this Zambian/African idea was possibly being checked out. At least, I have continued to hope, checking this website perhaps twice a day or so.
One day, I would be very curious to know if my posting on this website back at that time might have helped to inspire or promote further searching in Africa in some small way.
Thanks,
Douglas Wulf
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Post by Deleted on Jun 19, 2013 2:55:36 GMT
Back around New Years of 2007, I posted here about a bunch of old film prints in the Zambian TV archives that I had found described online. Apparently, those prints were eventually checked and there was nothing of interest to be found. I was quite disheartened. In 2007 and 2008, I tried as best I could to keep the idea of checking in Zambia and elsewhere in Africa alive by doing a number of things with fellow fan Brian Wilson, to include doing a phone interview with BBC archivist Sue Malden, the transcript of which we posted online. Brian Wilson wrote a newspaper article for a newspaper read online in Africa. Well, nothing seemed to come of it. Yet, I have wondered ever since if just maybe this Zambian/African idea was possibly being checked out. At least, I have continued to hope, checking this website perhaps twice a day or so. One day, I would be very curious to know if my posting on this website back at that time might have helped to inspire or promote further searching in Africa in some small way. Thanks, Douglas Wulf Are you posting this cause of this? www.bleedingcool.com/2013/06/18/the-doctor-who-missing-episodes-rumour-gains-a-little-more-weight-three-tons-worth/
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Post by Douglas Wulf on Jun 19, 2013 3:23:31 GMT
Well, it's just that I've been wondering since 2007 about the status of Zambia and the search for Doctor Who. Back then, I was very involved. Such as doing this interview ... lostdrwho.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=interviews&action=display&thread=18But as time wore on, I ran out of ideas for Zambian leads to follow. Still, I've been checking on this website every day for the last six and a half years and hoping for some further news. Therefore, if there are any developments, I'll honestly be very curious to know!
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Post by Deleted on Jun 19, 2013 3:27:23 GMT
Well that good. Not giving up hope for missing episodes turning up in Zambia-Africa
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Post by Douglas Wulf on Jun 19, 2013 3:42:21 GMT
Here's the article that Brian Wilson wrote and I edited. I don't think the link were it was originally posted in Africa is still active. It appeared back in May, 2007.
Irreplaceable audiovisual materials from Zambia, Africa, Britain, and elsewhere will be lost forever unless an immediate effort is made to save them. There is good reason to believe that some of the most sought-after television programmes in the world may be among the endangered audiovisual archives of Lusaka, Zambia.
In 2003, a workshop sponsored by the International Federation of Television Archives (FIAT) discovered that audiovisual materials in the National Archives of Zambia as well as the Radio and Television Archives of ZNBC were in grave danger of destruction due to improper storage. The FIAT report by Dr. Branko Bubenik noted between 5 to 10 thousand boxes of 16mm films that were unlabelled and uncatalogued in the ZNBC archive. Many of these films had become infected by vinegar syndrome, a process by which film decays due to the effects of heat and humidity.
Four years have passed, but a source of funding has still been located to finance an effort to catalogue, preserve, and transfer these materials. A large amount of Zambia’s audiovisual history will be lost if nothing is done.
However, there is hope for international interest to save these films. This is because in the 1960s and 1970s, Zambia purchased many television programmes on 16mm print from the British Broadcasting Corporation. The BBC subsequently purged many of its older programmes from its own archives, a decision that the BBC has subsequently regretted. It is thus possible that the only prints in the world of many lost BBC programmes may be among the endangered Zambian film archives.
An excellent example is the Doctor Who, which portrays the adventures of a traveler in time and space from an alien planet. It is the longest running science-fiction television programme in the world. The BBC destroyed large number of the early episodes of this popular show and only a fraction of these episodes been recovered from foreign television archives over the years. There are currently 108 episodes of this show still missing from the BBC archives.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Zambia purchased and broadcast Doctor Who and at least 73 of the episodes broadcast in Zambia were episodes that are today missing. This means that Zambia received more missing episodes of Doctor Who than any other nation in Africa. Only Australia, Singapore, and New Zealand received more of the missing episodes worldwide. However, a detailed search of the Zambian archives has never been made to discover if any of the 73 missing prints are among the large collection of threatened 16mm prints now housed at ZNBC.
Please write to ZNBC and FIAT at the addresses below to encourage a fund to be established for a complete audit and restoration of the ZNBC and National audiovisual archives. Many fans of lost British television would be eager to contribute to such a fund and, in the process, the television past of Zambia, Africa, Britain, and elsewhere might be saved.
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Post by Paul McDermott on Jun 19, 2013 5:04:39 GMT
Interesting read douglaswulf, thanks for the repost to the thread.
Seems a bit odd to me that we have Kickstarters for all kinds of (to me) silly Who-related malarkey, but this sort of thing - hunting for and preserving old footage - isn't so equipped.
Not that I'm saying that Kickstarter or the like is some kind of gold standard of probity or that this is the best or only or right way to do this.
Still, a lot of the quieter fans out there appreciate the difficult work involved in finding and restoring old material, be it Who or otherwise.
For all I know, it's probably all done on a faintly remembered description of the smell of an oily rag, and quite aside from the challenges and conflicts that can often arise in any job, let alone this one.
If there was or is some kind of international charitable fund to assist with this sort of thing, that hewed to solid standards of accountability and lawfulness, surely we'd all happily chip in on a regular basis, regardless of odds?
There's smart diligent people working in this field, all over the world. Undoubtedly there's good reasons why this is a non-starter. Commercialization and ownership of finds, probably?
But if there was some tangible way we spectators could help in sustaining the process, aside from keeping quiet when big stories like the one we've all heard of in recent days come out (irrespective of its veracity), that'd be great to learn of.
Just buying the stuff when it's released seems a bit inadequate somehow! Maybe if this is a Solved Problem only a total noob like yours truly would ask, a Forum FAQ would avoid one looking a berk in his initial post?
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Post by Douglas Wulf on Jun 19, 2013 5:23:02 GMT
Interesting read douglaswulf, thanks for the repost to the thread. Seems a bit odd to me that we have Kickstarters for all kinds of (to me) silly Who-related malarkey, but this sort of thing - hunting for and preserving old footage - isn't so equipped. Not that I'm saying that Kickstarter or the like is some kind of gold standard of probity or that this is the best or only or right way to do this. Still, a lot of the quieter fans out there appreciate the difficult work involved in finding and restoring old material, be it Who or otherwise. For all I know, it's probably all done on a faintly remembered description of the smell of an oily rag, and quite aside from the challenges and conflicts that can often arise in any job, let alone this one. If there was or is some kind of international charitable fund to assist with this sort of thing, that hewed to solid standards of accountability and lawfulness, surely we'd all happily chip in on a regular basis, regardless of odds? There's smart diligent people working in this field, all over the world. Undoubtedly there's good reasons why this is a non-starter. Commercialization and ownership of finds, probably? But if there was some tangible way we spectators could help in sustaining the process, aside from keeping quiet when big stories like the one we've all heard of in recent days come out (irrespective of its veracity), that'd be great to learn of. Just buying the stuff when it's released seems a bit inadequate somehow! Maybe if this is a Solved Problem only a total noob like yours truly would ask, a Forum FAQ would avoid one looking a berk in his initial post? Thanks for your feedback! Yes, the idea of funding went nowhere and there may be good reasons why I couldn't be set up easily. However, it was an idea I wanted to suggest, and I'm sure others may have suggested it too at one time or another. At that time, I was trying to think of some possible solution because there were many 16 mm film prints apparently in Zambia, they were described as being damaged by vinegar syndrome with age, and I wasn't sure if somehow financing would be a big roadblock to checking them out.
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Post by Paul McDermott on Jun 19, 2013 5:53:47 GMT
No worries! It's just that when you hear about the loss we discovered after the fact in Sierra Leone, your heart sinks. Naturally I think that many of us mere viewers want to help try to prevent that happening again, if we can. Budgets would surely be tight in this line of work, and having sufficiently capable folk adequately resourced to do the job properly might not be so easy to attract or retain, either. Finding lost vintage B&W material matters to us, but for the bean counters it probably pales in comparison to the much easier box office returns of newly made material of the socko-boffo variety. I doubt the operating budget for locating and restoring old material would run to a cheap commercial, let alone a new series ep. Maybe I'm completely wrong, but I think that if the Restoration team suddenly had a humungous haul of lost material to work on, they'd go spare without additional resources. I'm sure that they'd be overjoyed, but there's only so many hours in the day and old deteriorating prints don't get any less smelly or stop decaying just because you have a lot of work to do at the same time! Apart from that, I wonder how much they realize how grateful we are for what they are doing, for us, for those who came before and those yet to be born? Hence the pondering of a fund. Whilst I want to see that "new" ep of Underwater Menace as much as the next guy, I worry they get fed up with "where is it?" every few minutes from impatient, thoughtless types. If nine, or nineteen, let alone ninety more missing eps were ever found - in addition to Out Of The Unknowns, Sky At Nights, and who knows what other lost treasures - I think it'd be a lot harder at the office than many might initially suppose. And then there's the Equity situation, and probably a zillion other things. Terrance Dicks talked about having aspirin and booze in a desk drawer as part of his script writer kit but some days I think that just wouldn't cut it...
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Post by Douglas Wulf on Jun 19, 2013 18:43:24 GMT
OK, just to be fully accurate. I actually posted at Ian Levine's website. I posted about African countries generally on 27 Dec 2006: 09:28:33 ... ianlevine.forumco.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1864&whichpage=1And then I posted about the 16 mm films in Zambia on 29 Dec 2006: 09:47:24 ... ianlevine.forumco.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1864&whichpage=2And then it was synthpopalooza who reposted that info here on 01 Jan 2007: 11:47 AM ... missingepisodes.proboards.com/thread/3593/missing-episodes-zambiaI knew that New Years 2007 had something to do with it! And then LanceM said that he had contacted Chrispin Hamooya of the National Archives of Zambia previously, so perhaps all this was know previous to any of my posts. It just seemed that the wheels started turning on the topic of Africa around that time, so I've been curious for a long time now about how it might have happened exactly. I also got several emails at that time from people in Africa and going to Africa who had read those posts, so I wondered if this might have connected up some dots. Honestly, it doesn't matter to me either way, but it's just been something I've wondered about. I'll be very curious to know more at some point.
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Post by Douglas Wulf on Dec 2, 2013 21:46:03 GMT
One of these days, I hope to hear the full story about Zambia simply because I've been wondering about those Zambian film prints for nearly seven years now. Things like this twitter account annoy me because I can't tell if there is any reality behind it, or if it is just someone kidding around ... twitter.com/truthnomoreI'll certainly be so happy when this 'omnirumor' time is finally entirely over. If episodes are back, that's wonderful! If episodes are not back, that's just how it is. The waiting and speculation is tiring though.
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Post by Jaspal Cheema on Dec 2, 2013 23:07:30 GMT
One of these days, I hope to hear the full story about Zambia simply because I've been wondering about those Zambian film prints for nearly seven years now. Things like this twitter account annoy me because I can't tell if there is any reality behind it, or if it is just someone kidding around ... twitter.com/truthnomoreI'll certainly be so happy when this 'omnirumor' time is finally entirely over. If episodes are back, that's wonderful! If episodes are not back, that's just how it is. The waiting and speculation is tiring though. I beginning to feel exactly the same way-too many threads and too much speculation!Checking these boards umpteen times a day is preventing me from doing what brought me to this forum in the first place-watching and enjoying 60's and 70's Dr.Who!Why spend so much time waiting for episodes to be returned when there is a wealth of stories from that period to watch over and over again?The speculation is starting to become a grind,and in my opinion,a waste of time which can't be right!
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Post by Greg H on Dec 3, 2013 1:54:39 GMT
The speculation is starting to become a grind,and in my opinion,a waste of time which can't be right! You too huh? I have been getting weary of this thing for a while now. It will be great if anything else has been returned, the rumour mill is still tedious though. I know for a fact lots of people with Aspergers syndrome are drawn to who (and I count a couple people with Aspergers as very close mates) and some of those guys who are completely and utterly convinced are going to be so destroyed if it all turns out to be anything less than 90. It is a bit of a pity people don't consider the angles when presenting rumours as fact. (only the first line of this was directed at you Jas )
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Post by Paul McDermott on Dec 3, 2013 2:05:30 GMT
One of these days, I hope to hear the full story about Zambia simply because I've been wondering about those Zambian film prints for nearly seven years now. Things like this twitter account annoy me because I can't tell if there is any reality behind it, or if it is just someone kidding around ... twitter.com/truthnomoreI'll certainly be so happy when this 'omnirumor' time is finally entirely over. If episodes are back, that's wonderful! If episodes are not back, that's just how it is. The waiting and speculation is tiring though. I beginning to feel exactly the same way-too many threads and too much speculation!Checking these boards umpteen times a day is preventing me from doing what brought me to this forum in the first place-watching and enjoying 60's and 70's Dr.Who!Why spend so much time waiting for episodes to be returned when there is a wealth of stories from that period to watch over and over again?The speculation is starting to become a grind,and in my opinion,a waste of time which can't be right! Maybe just take it back a notch? Remember the friends you have here, don't be afraid to take breaks, shoot the breeze and think about Who a bit laterally. Carnival Of Monsters shows lateral thinking can pay off, and this is a bit easier than climbing down a Miniscope's air intake shaft! As for what's coming when, if anything ever, the recent clip of Phil on the news has got people a little tingly. Even silly old duffers who probably should know better, like me. Still, carefully applied and in small doses, hope can be a soothing balm for a troubled and troubling world. As to the constant drumbeat of "rumours rumours rumours" like the buzzing neon sign of a nightclub burning through your retinas as you try to sleep in a cheap hotel room, try this: Jaspal (as Victoria): You probably can't remember those rumours. Me (as the Doctor): Oh yes, I can when I want to. And that's the point, really. I have to really want to, to bring them back in front of my eyes. The rest of the time they sleep in my mind, and I forget. And so will you. Oh yes, you will. You'll find there's so much else to think about. So remember, our lives are different to anybody else's. That's the exciting thing. There's nobody in the universe can do what we're doing. You must get some sleep and let this poor old man stay awake. Don't worry Jaspal - no need to change. (cough) I hope!
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Post by John F Brayshaw on Dec 3, 2013 3:13:08 GMT
All I can add is you got to slog it out and keep an open mind
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Post by David Cann on Dec 4, 2013 17:58:48 GMT
And then it was synthpopalooza who reposted that info here on 01 Jan 2007: 11:47 AM ... missingepisodes.proboards.com/thread/3593/missing-episodes-zambiaI knew that New Years 2007 had something to do with it! And then LanceM said that he had contacted Chrispin Hamooya of the National Archives of Zambia previously, so perhaps all this was know previous to any of my posts. I remember reading that article of yours at some point in 2009, when I was still a lurker I do seem to remember some threads involving a lot of posts about Zambia, though like you said, I think the consensus that came back in the end was that the uncategorised films had been checked, and there was no missing Doctor Who (or indeed other shows like Dad's Army, Adam Adamant, etc) amongst them. Not sure who checked them, when they did it, or what actually was there though. Does anyone know if this information was ever released?
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