Collective Effort: Archiving LGBT
Moving Images
by Lynne Kirste
Queer moving image materials, to paraphrase the old gay rights slogan, are everywhere.
Three kinds of archives collect them: LGBT1
archives, non-LGBT mixed
media archives, and moving image archives. These repositories collectively hold
thousands of films and tapes with queer content, made by queer filmmakers, and/or
perceived as queer by audiences. In addition, studio libraries hold many of the original
elements of LGBT theatrical releases and television programs. A new model
for queer audiovisual archiving is the Outfest Legacy Collection at the UCLA Film
and Television Archive, founded in 2005, which brings together the complementary
resources of a major LGBT film organization and a premiere moving image
repository.
Being "everywhere" creates both opportunities and challenges for preservation
and access. In one respect, queer films and tapes are too scattered for their
own good: LGBT independent and amateur productions are typically stored in
media-unfriendly conditions in filmmakers' homes rather than in archives. For
decades LGBT people have shot and appeared in home movies and home videos,
documented the activities of queer organizations, and filmed queer events; the
surge of independent queer filmmaking that began in the 1980s has increased in
subsequent years. Since mainstream cinema and television have consistently marginalized
LGBT people, a large percentage of all queer moving images are found
in independent and amateur works. These films and tapes contain the great majority
of moving images that have a queer point of view, portray LGBT people as
complex individuals rather than stereotypes, offer a diversity of race, age, ethnic
background, politics, gender identification, and other qualities, and show LGBT
people in the context of our relationships, families, and communities. Because amateur
and independent productions are rarely widely distributed, typically only a
few elements exist of each title. If these elements remain in filmmakers' closets
and basements, they will eventually deteriorate, suffer damage, or be discarded or
lost. In the meantime, usually only the filmmaker has access to the materials. To
make these images viewable now and in the future, archival outreach is essential.
Archives house LGBT moving images dating from the very early days of cinema
to the most recent releases. Queer archival holdings include features and
short subjects; fiction, documentary, experimental, animated, and educational
films; newsreels, screen tests, outtakes, trailers, behind-the-scenes footage, home
movies, and interviews; and broadcast, cable, and public access television programs.
Elements range from original negatives and video masters to DVDs.
134 Cinema Journal 46, No. 3, Spring 2007
Most archival repositories share the same mission: to gather materials that fall
within their collecting mandate; protect their holdings from harm and damage;
identify, organize, and catalogue materials; preserve deteriorated items; and make
their collections publicly accessible. Achieving these goals with queer moving
image materials requires sufficient staff, climate-controlled storage, specialized
equipment, expertise in film and tape handling and care, knowledge and appreciation
of moving image history and LGBT culture, and money.
LGBT archives came into being through the remarkable efforts of queer people
who took action to safeguard queer cultural heritage from being ignored, misrepresented,
censored, lost, and destroyed. During the twentieth century, LGBT
individuals and groups around the globe collected books, periodicals, newsletters,
organizational records, correspondence, diaries, photographs, films, videotapes,
audiotapes, and artifacts relating to the queer experience. These passionate,
mostly amateur, archivists gathered and shared an impressive amount of LGBT
material. Some of the private collections eventually became the basis for public
LGBT archives; others later formed distinct LGBT collections within archives
with more general collecting policies; and many of the collections created after the
rise of the gay rights movement were founded as public collections.2
While most
LGBT archives focus on paper materials, the majority also hold some moving
image materials, usually home movies, amateur documentation of queer organizations
and events, cable access television shows, homemade compilations of clips
from TV programs with queer content, and/or VHS tapes and DVDs of television
shows and theatrical films. LGBT archives can deal fairly easily with most access
media, which enrich their collections and do not require the special care that oneof-a-kind
materials need. However, unique films and tapes are often at risk of deterioration
or damage.
Most LGBT archives struggle with small budgets, few resources, cramped
quarters, and little or no paid staff. Dedicated volunteers usually do the bulk of
material processing and cataloging.3
Climate-controlled storage, necessary to prevent
deterioration of films and tapes, is typically out of reach financially, as are
viewing equipment for more than one or two media formats, preservation projects,
and the copying of unique materials to access media. Processors untrained in moving
image archiving may overlook the importance of one-of-a-kind items, such as
a home video of a commitment ceremony.
Some LGBT archives have found ways to address the challenges of caring for
their moving image materials. The GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco received
a National Film Preservation Foundation grant that enabled the archive to
hire an outside consultant with film expertise to work with the Harold O'Neal home
movie collection. Several films were preserved and made accessible through this
grant, later becoming the basis for the documentary Harolďs Home Movies (2004).4
The Brooklyn-based Lesbian Herstory Archives receives income earmarked for the
preservation of unique videotapes made in the mid-1970s by a lesbian collective.5
Some LGBT archives that cannot provide adequate storage conditions for, or access
Cinema Journal 46, No. 3, Spring 2007 135
to, their films or older video formats are talking to moving image archives about
placing these materials on deposit (ownership to remain with the LGBT archives).
The moving image archives would store the materials free of charge in climatecontrolled
vaults and make access copies of some items for the queer archives.
LGBT archives possess important strengths as repositories for queer moving
images. They contextualize film and tape holdings through related materials such
as filmmakers' papers, queer organizational records, still photographs, flyers,
movie posters, clipping files, books, and periodicals. For example, an archive that
holds amateur documentation of a gay motorcycle club will often hold the same
organization's paper records. An individual might donate her diaries as well as her
home movies. Researchers at LGBT archives begin searches knowing that every
film or tape in the institution is queer-related, whether or not other cataloging details
exist in the archive's database. People may view materials in a queer environment
that they might not feel comfortable requesting in another repository. LGBT
archives have community ties and are often perceived by potential donors as
politically safe, appreciative places for personal and organizational materials that
the donor would hesitate to entrust to a nonqueer institution. This puts LGBT
archives in an ideal position to reach out to the queer community for donations of
amateur moving images and related materials.
Like their LGBT counterparts, most non-LGBT mixed media archives focus
on collecting paper materials rather than moving images, so they tend to have paper
rather than audiovisual expertise. Many non-LGBT mixed media archives work
with the same tight budgets and small staffs that are the norm for LGBT archives,
while others are better off in this regard; some have climate-controlled storage facilities
for their moving image materials, own audiovisual viewing equipment, and
employ moving image specialists, while others do not. By definition, non-LGBT
archives have holdings relating to nonqueer subjects or people. Their LGBT collections
may or may not be a priority for detailed cataloging, preservation projects,
and access, and staff members may or may not be knowledgeable about queer culture.
Many mixed media archives with LGBT collections are university archives,
are government-funded archives, or are affiliated with public libraries.
Mixed media archives can serve the important functions of making LGBTrelated
materials accessible to a wide audience and contextualizing them within
the larger society. While any researcher may access most LGBT archives' collections,
queer archives generally are not familiar to people outside the LGBT community
and frequently are not well known even within this community. The New
York Public Library was chosen to house the Royal S. Marks AIDS Activist Video
Collection, which many people would overlook if it were held at a less visible institution.
The tapes complement and expand the library's collection of AIDSrelated
materials, while NYPL holdings such as the organizational records of ACT
UP give context to the tapes. Archiving the videotapes in an LGBT-specific
repository could limit both physical viewing of the tapes and the way in which the
collection is perceived: housing the tapes at NYPL acknowledges that AIDS issues
136 Cinema Journal 46, No. 3, Spring 2007
include and affect people beyond the queer community.6
Similarly, the Fales Library,
whose Downtown Collection documents the New York downtown arts scene,
is in the process of integrating a large collection of festival submission tapes and
paper records from MIX, the New York lesbian and gay experimental film festival,
into its holdings.7
Moving image archives often have extensive LGBT holdings. Though few moving
image archives look to acquire queer materials, they frequently fall within the
archives' collecting mandates by virtue of being, for example, documentaries or films
of regional importance. Moving image archives usually provide cool storage for their
holdings; in the best-case scenarios, they have climate-controlled vaults and equipment
for viewing and repairing materials, employ staffs that include trained preservationists,
processors, curators, and catalogers, and provide public access through
viewing appointments, screenings, and archival loans. While materials are generally
well cared for, the preservation and cataloging staffs do not focus on issues of
queer culture as do the staffs of LGBT archives.
Many queer titles that are extremely significant to the LGBT community are
barely known outside this community; thus these productions are not likely to be
preservation priorities. A number of LGBT films have been preserved by moving
image archives--examples in recent years include Lilith (1964), Lianna (1983),
and films by Mike and George Kuchar8
--and, while they were probably chosen
because they were deemed important for reasons other than their queer content
or makers, it is noteworthy that the archives did not shy away from working on
these films. Still, it does not appear to be common practice at moving image
archives to research and select titles for preservation specifically because of their
significance to the queer community.
A second issue for LGBT materials held by moving image archives is the descriptive
cataloging necessary to make queer holdings easy to find. Detailed cataloging
is time consuming; determining appropriate subject headings, especially for
obscure materials, can mean hours of viewing time and bring up questions about
subjectivity, appropriate terminology, filmmakers' self-identities, and other cataloging
concerns. Since almost all moving image archives have backlogs and ongoing data
cleanup projects, descriptive cataloging of materials relating to marginalized
groups is frequently left off their agendas.
Without a subject heading or descriptive word to search on, a researcher or
archive staff member must resort to searching film titles or the names of filmmakers,
actors, or personalities, one by one. Because their existence is known only to a
handful of people, many LGBT items, such as student films, amateur documentation,
and home movies, typically cannot be found using this method. Some moving
image archives describe queer materials by writing brief synopses or choosing from
among the over 400 LGBT-related Library of Congress subject headings;9
some
find a shortcut, such as adding the general term "LGBT" to the records of items
that the cataloger knows to be queer-related; and others do not describe the
material at all, frequently rendering the work inaccessible for LGBT research.
Cinema Journal 46, No. 3, Spring 2007 137
Inquiries from scholars who wish to view queer materials can influence cataloging
practices by demonstrating the need for LGBT finding aids.
Collaborative efforts involving the three types of archives, archival organizations,
and LGBT organizations are on the rise and look to be instrumental in preserving
LGBT moving image heritage. The partnership of Outfest and the UCLA
Film and Television Archive on the Legacy Project for LGBT Film Preservation and
the Legacy Collection of LGBT moving image materials will create an enormous,
publicly accessible, queer-identified collection stored in climate-controlled vaults,
cared for by moving image professionals, and assigned a preservation budget. The
3,000 festival submission tapes that originated the Legacy Collection have been
cataloged and are accessible for viewing; selected titles are described in a study
guide. Outreach by Legacy to LGBT independent filmmakers and film collectors
has begun to bring additional titles into the collection, and outreach to LGBT
archives will likely result in deposits from some of these institutions. Legacy announced
their first slate of queer preservation projects in the summer of 2006.10
Archival organizations that are reaching out to mixed media archives with
information about audiovisual care include AMIA and the Society of American
Archivists (SAA), which hold workshops in film and tape archiving basics. The University
of Washington Libraries, NFPF, and other groups have created excellent
online resources,11
and, in an effort specifically directed toward LGBT archives,
the Lesbian and Gay Roundtable (LAGAR) of the SAA is at work on Web pages
that will include guidelines and links for archiving LGBT audiovisual media.12
LGBT film festivals have started to deposit submission tapes with archives, supply
independent filmmakers with information about media care and storage, and present
panels on archiving. In April 2006, the "Out of the Closet, Into the Vaults" symposium
brought together LGBT archivists, moving image archivists, archival and
LGBT studies students, filmmakers, programmers, and scholars to discuss preservation
and access issues facing LGBT moving images; the Persistent Vision conference
in June 2006 included a session on archiving and preservation.13
At both
events, the resistance to archiving their work expressed by independent filmmakers
caught many archivists by surprise; a major challenge over the coming years
will be to overcome this resistance. The number of LGBT, mixed media, and moving
image archives with searchable online databases increases constantly, allowing
archivists from other institutions, researchers, and the public to search for holdings.
Information-sharing projects include the LAGAR survey of North American
LGBT archives; online lists of LGBT archives around the globe; and the Moving
Image Collections (MIC) database.14
The LGBT Interest Group of AMIA is working
to compile a union catalog of archived LGBT holdings, and the Legacy Project
has begun to create a database of queer moving images, including locations of materials
and preservation status.
Currently the LGBT community, like society at large, rarely gives a thought
to film and tape preservation or access beyond wondering when a favorite title will
come out on DVD. Drawing the queer community into archival efforts will be
138 Cinema Journal 46, No. 3, Spring 2007
necessary in order for LGBT archives to receive better financial support. We will
also look to the queer community to donate amateur materials and to share in the
fruits of archival labors as audiences and researchers. Working together, LGBT
archives, mixed media archives, moving image archives, professional archival organizations,
scholars, LGBT film festivals, queer filmmakers, and the LGBT community
can maximize our ability to preserve LGBT moving image heritage and to
make queer images widely accessible, now and in the years to come.
Notes
1. In this article, I use "queer" and "LGBT" interchangeably and with the intention of including
people who identify as gender or sexual outsiders.
2. A survey of North American LGBT archives conducted by the Society of American
Archivists' Lesbian and Gay Roundtable gives information about the history and holdings
of 58 repositories. "Lavender Legacies Guide," http://www.archivists.org/saagroups/
lagar/guide/guideintro.html (accessed May 30, 2006). Two Web sites that list and give
links to international queer archives are Library Q: "Archives and Libraries," http://
carbon.cudenver.edu/public/library//libq/archives.html (accessed June 10, 2006), and
the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archive: "Links to Related Sites," http://www.clga.ca/
(accessed June 22, 2006).
3. The Lesbian Herstory Archives, the largest lesbian archive in the world, has "always
been completely organized, managed and staffed by volunteers." See "Volunteers," http://
www.lesbianherstoryarchives.org/supvolunt.htm (accessed June 3, 2006). Prior to 2005,
the ONE National Archives, the largest LGBT archive in the world, had only one paid
staff member. (Author's conversation with Joseph Hawkins, President of the ONE Board
of Directors, January 11, 2006.)
4. Author's conversation with Terence Kissack, Executive Director of the GLBT Historical
Society, January 18, 2006.
5. Financial reports for 2001, 2002, and 2003, in Lesbian Herstory Archives newsletter
19, Spring 2004, 16.
6. Author's conversation with Jim Hubbard, creator of the Royal S. Marks Activist Video
Collection, December 1, 2005. Mr. Hubbard said that another reason for placing the
collection at NYPL was the library's ability to provide space for tape duplicating equip-
ment.
7. E-mail to the author from Ann Butler, Senior Archivist, Fales Library and Special
Collections, New York University, March 14, 2006. Finding aids for the Downtown
Collection may be found at http://www.nyu.edu/library/bobst/research/fales/cdfa.htm
(accessed June 5, 2006).
8. Lilith was preserved by a joint effort of the Academy Film Archive and Sony Pictures.
Lianna was preserved by the UCLA Film and Television Archive as part of a project to
preserve the films of director John Sayles. Several 8 mm Kuchar brothers films were preserved
by the Anthology Film Archives, with a grant from the National Film Preservation
Foundation. Many other queer titles have been preserved by moving image archives.
9. For a list of queer LOC subject headings, see "Gay-Related Library of Congress Subject
Headings," http://library.auraria.edu/libq/glbt_lcsh.html (accessed June 30, 2006).
10. Information about the Legacy Project is available at http://www.outfest.org/legacy.html
(accessed June 14, 2006). The first films selected for preservation are the documentary
Word Is Out (1978) and the narrative feature Parting Glances (1986).
11. Three valuable online resources are the Washington State Film Preservation Manual,
which is directed at mixed media repositories and includes easy-to-follow guidelines for
Cinema Journal 46, No. 3, Spring 2007 139
no-budget, low-budget, and higher budget film care: "Washington State Film Preservation
Manual," http://www.lib.washington.edu/specialcoll/film/preservationmanual.pdf
(accessed June 16, 2006); the National Film Preservation Foundation's detailed "The
Film Preservation Guide," http://www.filmpreservation.org/ (accessed June 16, 2006);
and Film Forever's "The Home Film Preservation Guide," http://www.filmforever.org/
(accessed June 16, 2006), aimed at individuals with home movies and independent films.
12. "Volunteers needed for the Community Archives Manual," Society of American
Archivists Lesbian and Gay Roundtable Newsletter No. 27 [i.e., 28] (February 2006),
http://www.archivists.org/saagroups/lagar/newsletters/LAGAR_newsletter27.pdf (accessed
April 19, 2006).
13. "Out of the Closet, Into the Vaults" took place in Los Angeles on April 10, 2006. The
symposium program is at http://www.cinema.ucla.edu/pdfs/LGBT_SYMPOSIUM.pdf
(accessed June 7, 2005). Persistent Vision 2006: Envisioning the Future of Queer Media
Arts took place in San Francisco June 19­22, 2006. Conference details and blog are
available at http://www.pv2006.org/agenda.html (accessed June 25, 2006).
14. To find lists of queer archives, see Note 2. The MIC Web site may be accessed at
http://mic.imtc.gatech.edu/; to browse MIC's archive listings, click on "Archive Explore"
in the horizontal menu bar (accessed June 1, 2006).
The Library of Congress National
Audio-Visual Conservation Center
by Mike Mashon
Seventy-five miles southwest of Washington, D.C., outside the town of Culpeper,
Virginia, on a site once occupied by the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, a revolution
in audiovisual preservation and access is taking shape. A building that once
held sufficient monetary reserves to restart the American economy east of the Mississippi
River in event of a nuclear holocaust now contains the more than 5 million
film, video, and audio items in the collections of the Library of Congress. Next to
it, a state-of-the-art conservation center will open in spring 2007, broad in scope,
bristling with innovation, representing a paradigm shift in the way archives preserve
moving image and recorded sound material and deliver them to patrons around
the globe. Together with 124 vaults designed to house the Library's 130 million
feet of nitrate film, the complex is known as the National Audio-Visual Conservation
Center (NAVCC).
Funded primarily by the Packard Humanities Institute, the 415,000 square
foot complex will contain not only state-of-the-art preservation laboratories but
also space for the Library's moving image and recorded sound processing staff, an
acoustically perfect critical listening room, and a 200-seat theater capable of projecting
nitrate film.
Most strikingly, the NAVCC will usher in a complete redesign of the way the
Library acquires and preserves film, video, and recorded sound, particularly in the
140 Cinema Journal 46, No. 3, Spring 2007