Film cans often sit for years on shelves, awaiting the care of a professional film archivist, curator, or qualified preservationist to identify, document, repair, and conserve their contents. One of the more problematic kinds of film that we occasionally encounter in our work is nitrate film. The earliest film base (the material to which the film emulsion adheres) was made of nitrate cellulose. Read more »

In 2011 the Missouri History Museum installed a state-of-the-art freezer for long-term preservation of deteriorating nitrate and acetate films and still photography. Over time, old film bases begin to decay. Nitrate film causes one set of problems, acetate another, but both sets of problems can be resolved by proper preservation assessment and cold storage. Frozen storage halts the deterioration process for both film base types, giving us decades in which to find funding to perform further preservation and duplication of these relics. Read more »

On March 27, 2012, an unseasonably warm evening, people streamed into the Lee Auditorium of the Missouri History Museum to hear a lecture on the Willie Lynch Myth. Dr. Jelani Cobb spoke before an audience of more than 300. Shortly before the event, Dr. Read more »

I received an internship in the Missouri History Museum's Moving Image and Sound Collections rather unexpectedly—though happily—after spending the last 14 years working in the field of film preservation and archiving. It is a unique profession, one that has offered varying degrees of training and experience while working in rooms without windows and in basements and cold storage vaults. Read more »