At the end of 1993, a small piece of tightly wound nitrate film, possibly no more than 50 feet long, was deposited with the Film Archive. While being accessioned, it was realised that the contents demanded a closer look. Could it be early New Zealand footage?

The film was so brittle that merely examining it could cause a great deal of damage. Conservators carefully took a series of frame enlargements, which were shown to historians and archivists. Experts agreed that the film was of soldiers departing Wellington for the Boer War in 1900, and was most likely AH Whitehouse's film, The Departure of the Second Contingent for the Boer War. The Film Unit, the laboratory we send our nitrate films to for preservation printing, was also consulted. They felt that, even after modifying the printer to allow for excess shrinkage and curl, the Film Unit would not be able to print the film. Also, they could not wet gate print nitrate film, which the image quality obviously needed.

This meant that the Film Archive possibly had the earliest surviving piece of New Zealand film on our hands and it might not be able to be preserved.

The film was as brittle as eggshells. Even with extreme care, new breaks would appear each time it was handled. To ease this handling difficulty, each piece was taped together and wound around a specially constructed core. The film and its core were then suspended over a fuming agent of Glycerol and hot water, which was replaced daily. Doing this for an hour each day made the film relaxed enough to work on.

Problems and Solutions

Because of the persistent springy brittleness of the film, more usual repair techniques were not appropriate. Usually, during repair work, the film is held steady on the work bench by small weights, and repair is done with a minimal amount of clear, perforated repair tape, which must be placed carefully over the holes that run along the length of the film.

Instead, conservators resorted to using large amounts of tape and, because of the edge curl, it was necessary to secure the edges of the film to the bench with masking tape. It was unorthodox, but conservators did whatever they had to in order to hold the film together.

In many instances, the emulsion separated from the base as the film was uncurled. The emulsion was re-attached with nitrate cement and secured with clear tape. The emulsion had also flaked off some frames where breaks had occurred. To prevent further flaking film repair tape was used over the entire area. This had to be done very carefully, as the pieces of tape had to fit within the line of the frame — and if the tape was placed incorrectly, moving it would lift more emulsion.

As a result of the many breaks in the film, small chips of film had broken off. These were matched like a jig saw and cemented in place. Edge damage was also repaired with clear tape. As the tape was laid down, hundreds of new perforation holes needed to be cut, one at a time, because the film was shrunk by 2.2% — meaning the precut tape would not fit.

In the places where the correct order of the film was uncertain, black frames were inserted to indicate missing images.

This allowed for future additions or editing after printing of the material.

The film was stored on the specially constructed core during the entire repair period and eventually looked more relaxed and printable when the repair was finished.

During the repair work, consultation was undertaken with L'Immagine Ritrovata Laboratory in Bologna, Italy, who have a special nitrate printer that they thought could possibly process a film as delicate as this one. After the film was sent to them, the Retrovata Laboratory produced a contact dupe negative, then successfully wet gate printed a dupe negative from which they struck 2 new prints. The original nitrate was returned to the Archive with the new print material. The film had sustained only a small amount of new damage to two frames, proving that the repair work had been highly successful.

Although The Departure of the Second Contingent for the Boer War is only 33 seconds in duration, the repair and preservation work took the Archive's conservation team 160 hours.