The Metro Theatre Center Foundation, with support from National Film Preservation Foundation, has completed a film-based restoration of the John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy Collection of Home Movies filmed by Augustus Sassa
The wonderful material that we have in our library of President John F. Kennedy and Senator Robert F. Kennedy, has now been copied from it’s original 8mm and Super 8 Kodachrome camera originals, to a 16mm color inter-negative so that this material is preserved on film, in addition to the 4K digital scans that we previously made.
The original films were carefully copied on specially designed film-to-film laboratory equipment created and maintained by a wonderful new custom film lab that has recently opened its doors in Southern California. The Film Center Laboratory specializes in handling legacy film formats and creating new film copies for use and long-time back-up preservation materials.
More than 40 minutes of the Kennedy material was copied to a new 16mm negative using both film lab and computer technology. Using a wet-gate and a computer to control exposures and color correction, Film Center Laboratory has made a preservation copy of the original material that perfectly matches the original. In addition to the negative, Film Center Laboratory has made two 16mm prints, and some additional prints are on order.
Film Center Laboratory has a staff that includes four generations of film laboratory professionals, and they have done an amazing job on this project. We highly recommend them for this work. Their prices are competitive and their work simply superb.
The 8mm and Super 8mm originals, along with a 16mm print will go to The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Film Archive in Hollywood. The 16mm color inter-negative will be deposited in The Library of Congress along with a digital screening copy. The second 16mm print as well as a digital screening copy will be deposited with The UCLA Film and Television Archives.
This is the first of our film-to-film-preservations. We are pleased to have received a generous grant from The National Film Preservation Foundation to support the costs of this work. We are more than pleased that we were able to do this work all on film. Film is the only time-test means of preserving images. If properly stored and cared for, film can last almost indefinitely. We are planning more film-to-film preservation projects, the first of which will be two hours of 16mm Kodachrome of the greatest stars of Hollywood, filmed mostly in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The “cast” reads like a who’s who of A List Stars from the period, including Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, Ingrid Bergman, John Wayne, Bob Hope and many more.
We look forward to this project, and to support from our donors and other foundations that focus on this kind of preservation work.
