By Alex Zakrzewski

From Churchill’s Island – Courtesy NFB

Churchill’s Island holds the unique distinction of being the first Oscar-winning Canadian film and documentary. Produced by the National Film Board (NFB), it was also until recently, literally rotting away in vaults and archives across North America, forgotten by the generations of filmmakers it unknowingly influenced.

Thanks to the NFB’s commitment to film conservation, Churchill’s Island is in the process of being restored, digitized and preserved in new media formats for film enthusiasts everywhere to appreciate.

A 20-minute newsreel, Churchill’s Island was produced in 1941 during the Second World War as part of two separate NFB film series called Canada Carries On and The World in Action.  Albert Ohayon, curator of the NFB’s English collection, explains film series such as these were screened theatrically before feature presentations and were an important means of informing and mobilizing the Canadian public for the war effort.  Having personally viewed nearly 7,000 films during his 27-year tenure with the NFB, Ohayon says Churchill’s Island “stands head and shoulders above films that were made in that era.”

The film uses captured enemy footage and first-person interviews (both a rarity at the time) to bring home to Canadian audiences the determination of a besieged England.  “The film is very striking visually and the message is very, very strong,” Ohayon says. “England is under siege but the people are working together to counter the threat of the Axis powers.” Even 70 years later, it’s difficult not to feel moved as the booming voice of narrator Lorne Greene reassures audiences that the English people themselves “stand once more at the watchtowers and the bastions of Churchill’s Island.”

Ohayon explains that because of its international focus, The World in Action series also found an audience in the United States.  But as powerful as the film’s message was, people weren’t interested in revisiting it after the war, he says. As a result, Churchill’s Island and other NFB war material was left to languish in vaults and archives. The effort to save the film is part of the NFB’s plan to restore, digitize and preserve on new media formats some 13,000 titles dating back to 1939.
[pullquote]“The film is very striking visually and the message is very, very strong.”
- Albert Ohayon, NFB[/pullquote]
Richard Cournoyer, laboratory and conservation supervisor, explains that the first step in any project is compiling all available film material.   Images captured on 16mm or 35mm film went through a series of processes between the original camera negative and the final version sent to theatres. One of the immediate problems Cournoyer and his team have faced with Churchill’s Island is tracking down all the available material which is spread across the NFB vaults, the National Archives and the Academy of Motion Pictures in Hollywood.

All material is then examined for damage, fungus, and what Cournoyer calls “vinegar syndrome” – acidic molecules that infect the film causing decay detectable by a vinegar-like smell.

The next step is to create a Digital Source Master (DSM).  Each DSM contains a film’s component parts (sound, image, effects) and segments (titles, subtitles, credits) in all existing languages.  Images are digitized using one of two devices, an Arriscan scanner or a Datacine.  The sound is digitized using Pro Tools.  Two separate teams work to treat and restore image and sound separately, and as close to the film’s original state as possible, before synchronizing the components.  The result is a Digital Master (DM), which along with the DSM is saved to the NFB archives and kept should future restoration and improvement be needed.  Once the DM is complete, it’s compressed into a mezzanine file from which the film can be exported onto a range of digital formats including DVD, web download and mobile platforms.

Cournoyer says that the preservation process has come a long way since the NFB’s conservation efforts began in 1991.  He laughs when recalling the initial method for detecting “vinegar syndrome” was a student hired to go around smelling the film cans.  “We stopped that because it might be dangerous,” he says.

The NFB’s film preservation efforts can be at times controversial.  Thomas Waugh, professor of cinema studies at Concordia University and an expert on documentary film, is critical of certain aspects of the restoration and digitization process.   While Waugh agrees that important pieces of Canada’s film heritage should be preserved, he questions the artistic merit of some of their choices – including Churchill’s Island.  “The fact that it won an Academy Award does not necessarily mean it’s a very special and wonderful film,” Waugh says.  “It’s like an everyday film from the NFB and it’s wonderful in that respect but it doesn’t stand out from the others.”

Artistic tastes aside, Waugh says the main problem with the NFB’s restoration and digitization efforts is language.  During the digitization process all language versions of a film are scanned, restored and archived, and then made available to audiences. However, Waugh says that not enough is done to make films originally produced in only one official language available in both, if only with subtitles.  “The restoration activities should be taking a remedial approach to this,” he says. “They shouldn’t be trapped by the original linguistic policy of the NFB.  What they’ve done so far in making up for historical errors is pretty disappointing.”

Cournoyer says it is too soon to say when Churchill’s Island will be fully restored and digitized. Material and technicalities aside, the NFB is also a production house – Cournoyer and his skeleton staff of seven have to split their time between conservation and working on the new productions.  He says it takes his team nine hours of work to preserve just one hour of film.  Despite these difficulties, Cournoyer takes solace in the fact that once everything is digitized, it will be preserved hopefully forever. “It’s going to take us twenty years to do that if there’s no problems, no surprises, no end of funding,” he says.  “Ideally, we need special funding, but nobody has that.”