Susan Trien

The nitrate film collection was originally stored in the Henry A. Strong Archives at the George Eastman Museum.

In 1952 these vaults were the first of their kind in a private museum.

On a quiet country road in north Chili, the state-of-the-art Louis B. Mayer Conservation Center could be easily overlooked.

Formerly a welding shop for farm equipment, the unobtrusive, white cinderblock structure on four acres of land is now home to the George Eastman Museum’s world class collection of more than 26 million feet of combustible nitrate film.

“I call the building the treasure box,” says Deborah Stoiber, technical director of the Conservation Center. Under its “lid” are 12 vaults, each 1,000 cubic feet, overflowing with the stuff of great cinema.

The collections — 7,000 titles in all — include everything from an 1893 Lumiere film of monks walking up a hill in Indochina, to Alfred Hitchcock’s screen tests, a recently discovered negative of Greta Garbo in Flesh and the Devil (1926), The Wizard of Oz (1939), Gone with the Wind (1939), Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), Tarzan films of the 1940s, and An American in Paris (1951), the youngest film in the collection. Some of the films are controversial and hard to watch, Stoiber says, like the World War II propaganda films from Nazi Germany.



Why preserve such flammable film? Nitrate film has a beauty and clarity that is unparalleled, according to Jared Case, head of collection, information, research and access at George Eastman Museum. Manufactured by Eastman Kodak starting in 1889, nitrate film, which has a highly flammable nitrocellulose film base, was used in virtually all major motion pictures until 1951, when it was replaced by safety stock with an acetate base. If not stored under highly regulated conditions, it can auto-ignite with a flame so hot it can burn even when immersed in water. Only three other facilities in the U.S. can legally store this volatile film stock, says Stoiber.

“Because of the great amount of silver content in the emulsion, nitrate films have dark, rich blacks, and more detailed gradation. The sharpness of the edges are so crisp and there’s so much depth, it’s almost like 3-D.” The colors, from dyes pressed into the film stock, “are so true.”

Wearing a black T-shirt with white and orange letters that say “Film Is Cool. Nitrate Is Hot,” Stoiber sits at one of four workstations in the building’s inspection room.

With white-gloved hands, she painstakingly spools through one of the 14 reels of film containing Cecil B. Demille’s 1927 silent film epic, King of Kings. She’s looking for signs of shrinkage, decay, fading or badly spliced reels. If the film shrinks by more than one percent, sprockets on a projector will tear the corners. Bad edges and perforations can lead to tears and splits and film scratches. While you can stop further deterioration, she says, you cannot reverse the process.

New acquisitions are examined with caution. She advises staff to wear gloves and masks, and to open film canisters faced away from themselves. Deteriorating film can give off gas vapors and cans may contain insects, mold and decay.

“One time, there was so much pressure in the canister, it popped and the lid rose by itself and powder was coming out like a horror film. You never know what you are going to find. I once received a donation of films packed in kitty litter.”

Stoiber bundles up in a thick, gray zippered sweat suit jacket before entering the hallway leading to the vaults. Six identical gray doors line each side of the corridor.

When she opens one of the doors, the air quickly turns frosty. Vaults are kept at 40 degrees Fahrenheit and 30 percent relative humidity with a fresh air exchange every 20 minutes. Inside each narrow vault, 10-foot shelves stacked with 2,184 aluminum film canisters, rise from floor to ceiling. Stoiber climbs a 6-foot ladder daily to reach the uppermost shelves. “I wear jeans, sweaters and sturdy shoes to work, I never wear a dress,” she laughs. Extensive safety measures include regular testing of the sprinkler system, mock fire drills and staff training in first aid and CPR. Each vault is sealed off like a separate tomb to prevent the spread of fires.

Every five years staff goes through 20,000 reels to make sure they are not decomposing. “If you keep it cool and dry and if the film is in good shape it will last over 600 years,” Stoiber says. “Even if it’s decomposing, it will still last 100 years, depending on the level of decay."

If not kept in cool temperatures, at low humidity, nitrate film begins to give off gas, becomes sticky, bubbles, hardens, and ultimately disintegrates into a brown powder. The first sign of decomposition, says Stoiber, is the smell: ”Nitrate acid gas smells like a wet dog wearing dirty gym socks.”

Film preservation involves making another copy as close to the original as possible. Sometimes, she says, detailed repairs must be made to the film edges so it goes through the projector.

There are no film projectors at the Louis B. Mayer Conservation Center. Films here can only be viewed manually, frame by frame. But each year, several nitrate films are selected from the collection to be shown at the Dryden Theatre, one of only three institutions in the country equipped with the capability to safely project nitrate film (the others being the UCLA campus in Los Angeles and Stanford Theatre in Palo Alto, California).

According to Benjamin Tucker, assistant collection manager at the George Eastman Museum, “You have to take a lot of precautions to project nitrate film because it’s so flammable. There have been laws about it for decades. But if you think of all the films made from the 1890s to 1950s, every single one was nitrate and there were not many fires.”

Tucker manages a museum team trained in the rigorous fire and safety codes for projecting nitrate film. “There are metal doors on the booth and the film basically runs inside an enclosed box. If there is a fire, it is contained in the projector and there are metal plates on all of our projection windows that will drop.” There is also a “dowser” that can be closed to prevent the hot, bright light source from touching the film. At least two trained projectionists must be in the booth at all times.

Tucker is also projection manager for The Second Nitrate Picture Show at the Dryden Theatre, April 29 through May 1, which will provide movie lovers an opportunity to view an entire weekend’s worth of original nitrate films.

Jonathan Schroeder, an expert on visual communications who has held visiting appointments in Sweden, New Zealand, Milan, India, Shanghai and Thailand, says that viewing original nitrate film is a moving experience. “When I attended last year's Nitrate Picture Show,” says Schroeder, "I can report that viewing nitrate film truly touched me." The communications professor at Rochester Institute of Technology had been skeptical about all the hype surrounding nitrate films.

"Casablanca in particular, a film I knew well and had seen several times on a large screen, positively vibrated. The actor’s faces glowed, and their clothing revealed a surface and depth that I had never seen on film,” he says.

George Willeman, nitrate film vault manager at the Library of Congress in Culpeper, Virginia, who oversees one of the world’s largest nitrate film collections (124 vaults filled with 140,000 reels of nitrate film), plans to attend this year’s festival. Ironically, Willeman has never seen a nitrate film projected properly, the way it can be at the Dryden Theatre.

“Holding fragments and looking at it under glass or holding it up to the light is glorious," says Willeman, "but seeing it projected on the screen is even more glorious.”

Susan Trien is a Rochester-area freelance writer.

About The Louis B. Mayer Conservation Center

The nitrate film collection was originally stored in the Henry A. Strong Archives at the George Eastman Museum. In 1952 these vaults were the first of their kind in a private museum.

In 1978, the museum had their nitrate film vault auto-ignite and lost more than 300 original camera negatives (though copies of the lost negatives were saved).

The state-of-the-art offsite facility in Chili was completed in 1996 and contained six vaults.

In 1996, the George Eastman Museum also launched the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation to teach restoration, preservation and archiving of motion pictures.

In 1999, the museum doubled the vault space to 12 vaults and is already at 92 percent capacity.

About The Show

The 2nd Nitrate Picture Show, one of the world’s first archival festivals of film conservation, returns to the Dryden Theatre at the George Eastman Museum for the second year, providing movie lovers a rare opportunity to see pristine, archival films made on flammable nitrate stock.

At last year’s festival, more than 200 pass holders from 16 countries, including Japan, Slovenia and Australia, attended workshops, lectures, and screenings of such classics as Casablanca (1942), Portrait of Jennie (1948), Black Narcissus (1948), and The Fallen Idol (1948).

This year, festival goers will be treated to nine films, chosen from the museum’s collection and from fellow archives and museums in the United States. Museum organizers are mum about movie titles, to be unveiled as a surprise on the first day of the event.

Attendees will also attend lectures and watch technicians create an actual strip of nitrate film. New this year are tours (already sold out) of the nitrate vaults in Chili.

If You Go

What: The 2nd Nitrate Picture Show.

Where: The Dryden Theatre at George Eastman Museum.

When: April 29­ through May 1.

Tickets: Weekend passes include admission to all screenings and lectures, opening and closing receptions, and admission to the George Eastman Museum throughout the festival:

$150 general; $125 museum members, students, and Selznick School alumni

Special Event Tickets: Making Nitrate Film workshop: $50 ; Nitrate Vault Tours: $50 (sold out)

Single-screening Tickets will be available at the box office on the day of each screening pending availability (the film schedule will be posted online the first day of the event):

$20 general; $18 members, students and Selznick alumni.

Tickets may be purchased online at eastman.org, at the Dryden Theatre box office, and the Lipson Welcome Center at the museum.

For more information: eastman.org/nps