During her research, Constance discovers that the destination of the Alice Guy film is not an exception. At this time the two tiers of the film's films premiered in cinemas on the screen. The nitrates of cellulose are highly inflammable and the gases that destroy the explosives. Plus a pellicule vieillit and s'endommage, plus the température d'autocombustion low. « Films flammes », des désastres en puissance. Leur conservation is delicate mais qu'importe, il n'était pas question de les épargner à l'époque. Les films étaient avant tout des produits de consumption ; The public has a new lease of life, recycles the silver and cellulose for the production of other films, and destroys the pellicles for the liberation of the place.
A film in five minutes with three cents meters, one by one before a bobbin. Pour a long-métrage d'une heure, il faut mille deux cents mètres de pellicule, soit three bobines de quatre cents mètres. The cinema is encombrant.
The arrival of the speaker at the occasion of purging the bobines muettes, passées de mode. Puis une new pellicule, moins flammable, a porté le coup fatal: depuis 1961 il est interdit d'utiliser du nitrate.
Divertissement, industry, the film n'était pas an object de patrimoine. This sont des passionnés, au début des années 1930, qui ont arpenté les marchés aux puces, les cinémas en faillite et les brocantes. Les premières archives de films ont été l'œuvre de particuliers, des collectionneurs amoureux qui sauvaient les pellicules des Bennes et de l'oubli, les abritant dans leurs placards et leurs baignoires.
Constance les imite, c'est la première fois qu'elle se rend au vide-greniers de son quarter. Deux boîtes à chaussures délavées sur la table d'un marchand. À l'intérieur, des photos jaunies, des visages de face. À deux doigts, Constance les parcourt toutes. L'une après l'autre, des enfants en rang dans la cour d'une école, des couples sur fond noir un nourrisson dans les bras, des mariés devant des églises de village. Son majeur rabat un enfant en slip blanc qui plisse les yeux, les pieds dans la mer, son index passe une famille, men derrière, femmes assises, nuances de gris et de surexposition. Jamais la même teinte ni le même format, ses doigts butent contre des bords en dentelle de carton.
Ce qui réunit ces gens dans this boîte à chaussures, c'est d'avoir habité la même région et de faire partie du temps révolu. These photos are on a garden with soin, qu'on sortait du buffet when on availability envie de se rappeler, de se souvenir, pas des instantanés mais des temps de pose longs, qui fixaient des moments importants, sur lesquels on ne souriait pas. The sentence "c'est du passé" permet à des vendeurs de les vendre, à des acheteurs de les acheter et à ces images de se retrouver dans des cafés, des halls d'hôtel ou des salles de bains.
Sous ses doigts, all ces gens rassemblés par le hasard, preserves par amour puis par nostalgie puis par exoticisme. Elle lutte contre la somnolence induite par la succession de black et de blanc, de visages de face. Elle veut les voir, all et toutes, leur accorder le respect d'un regard, avant de passer au suivant. Quand son attention flanche, elle revient en arrière, regarde à nouveau, can continue.
Constance researches Alice Guy. Parmi the boxes, the classes and the boxes of biscuits. En quête d'images d'époque, des bouts, des bribes pour composer son film, a court-métrage où on la verrait gravir le mont Blanc. Elle retient son souffle, quelque part, quelque chose pour elle, sur les tables, parmi les objets étalés, mille fois returns, inspectés mais jamais pris, a photo, a letter, a pellicule. Elle cherche des fragments de 1900 pour rapiécer l'Histoire. Numériquement, elle pourrait créer un double, une femme aux traits d'Alice Guy, fabriquer un mont Blanc, inventer une ascension, puis vieillir l'image, faire comme si, falsifier. Constance veut travailler le réel, que ses mains touchent quelque chose, the cellulose de la pellicule. Réparer l'époque with les matériaux de l'époque.
Elle ne sait pas où chercher, alors elle cherche au hasard. Alice Guy discovers a photo of one of the films in a market among the people. Constance imagines the choc que ça a du lui faire, elle trouve ça ignoble d'avoir dû payer pour quelque chose qui lui appartenait si fort. Céline Zufferey, Nitrates: novel (Gallimard, 2023).
Constance a terminé les deux boîtes à chaussures, elle passe au stand suivant. Des cartons de vaisselle remplis d'assiettes, d'outils, de tasses. The ménages entassés pêle-mêle, the heritages encombrants, liquidés en même temps que la table à manger trop lourde, les commodes et les sommiers à moulure.
In her research, Constance discovered that the fate of Alice Guy's films was not an isolated case. It is estimated that two-thirds of all films from the first 15 years of cinema have disappeared. They are made of nitrate cellulose, are highly flammable, and the gas they release makes them explosive. The older and more damaged a film becomes, the lower its auto-ignition temperature. "Flame films" are potential disasters. Their preservation is delicate, but so what? Back then, there was no question that they weren't going to be cherished. Films were primarily consumer goods; audiences wanted something new, silver salts and cellulose were recycled to make new films, and films were destroyed to make room.
A fifteen-minute film is three hundred meters long, roughly one reel of film. A one-hour feature film requires 1,200 meters of film, which is three reels of 400 meters each. Cinemas are unwieldy.
The introduction of sound film provided an opportunity to dispose of the outdated silent film reels. A new film, which was less flammable, dealt them the final blow: since 1961, the use of nitrates has been prohibited.
Entertainment, industry, film was not considered cultural heritage. It was enthusiasts who, in the early 1930s, scoured flea markets, bankrupt cinemas, and junkyards. The first film archives were the work of private individuals, passionate collectors who saved films from the trash and oblivion by storing them in their closets and bathtubs.
Constance follows their example, and it's her first time visiting the flea market in her neighborhood. Two faded shoeboxes sit on a vendor's table. Inside are yellowed photographs of faces taken head-on. Constance flips through them all with two fingers. One after the other: children in a row in a schoolyard, couples against a black background with a baby in their arms, bridal couples in front of village churches. Her middle finger flips over a child in white underwear, squinting, feet in the sea; her index finger traces a family, men in the back, women sitting, shades of gray and overexposure. Never the same color or the same format, her fingers brushing against the sharp edges of the cardboard.
What unites these people in this shoebox is that they lived in the same region and are part of a bygone era. These are photographs, carefully preserved, taken from the sideboard when one wanted to reminisce—not snapshots, but long exposures capturing important moments, moments in which no one smiled. The phrase "That's the past" allows dealers to sell them, buyers to purchase them, and these images to end up in cafes, hotel lobbies, or bathrooms.
Beneath her fingers are all these people, gathered by chance, preserved first out of love, then out of nostalgia, and then out of exoticism. She fights the drowsiness brought on by the succession of black and white, of faces photographed head-on. She wants to see them all, to give each a glance before turning to the next. When her attention falters, she goes back, looks once more, and then moves on.
Constance is searching for Alice Guy. Amidst boxes, folders, and cookie tins. She's looking for images from that era, for snippets to piece together her film, a short film of her climbing Mont Blanc. She holds her breath, waiting for something for her, somewhere, on the tables, among the scattered objects that have been turned over a thousand times, inspected, but never taken—a photograph, a letter, a film. She's searching for fragments from 1900 to mend the story. Digitally, she could create a doppelganger, a woman with Alice Guy's features, fabricate a Mont Blanc, invent an ascent, and then age the image, pretend, fake. Constance wants to work with reality, to have her hands touch something, the cellulose of film. To mend time with the materials of time.
She doesn't know where to look, so she searches at random. Alice Guy discovered a photo from one of her films at a flea market. Constance can imagine how shocking that must have been for her. She finds it despicable to have to pay for something that was so rightfully hers.
Constance has looked through the two shoeboxes and is moving on to the next stall. Dish boxes full of plates, tools, and cups. Households stacked haphazardly, bulky heirlooms that had been sold off along with the too-heavy dining table, the dressers, and the bed frames. 1
This article is written in German and can be found at https://rentree.de. Automatic translations into English and French are available. English, French.
Notes- “‘When you ask her what she does and she answers “editor,” people look at her blankly. They wonder what she could possibly edit. Furniture? Staircases? In the pixels, in the depths of the rushes, Constance searches for the meaning in the images. The potential narratives.’ — Constance, a documentary film editor, one day discovers the autobiography of Alice Guy, the first female filmmaker. In her memoir, the director recounts an attempt to climb Mont Blanc that she had to abandon. Constance decides to fix the story and create a short film from archival footage that will show the filmmaker on the summit of Mont Blanc. To this end, she searches for the lost film. Snow Fight, which was filmed by Alice Guy in 1900. But many of the films from this period, made on nitrate, a particularly unstable base material, have now disappeared. — How is memory preserved? How is history written? On the trail of this lost film reel, the missing piece with which she can realize her film, Constance ventures into the storage rooms of film archives and overcrowded attics, meeting collectors, curators, and showmen. She immerses herself in the history of cinema and its origins. Captivated by the beauty of the first images, Constance also learns to tame her own insecurities.” (Translation of the publisher's announcement.)>>>
