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Somewhere in Moscow for less than a second, 1989
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Friday the 13th part 2 video disc
What do we lose when institutions discard physical media—especially an obsolete physical media like VHS? There are two distinct areas where we lose out: First of all, we lose titles that never make the jump from one format to another. An example of that is the 1977 film Looking for Mr. Goodbar, which was released on VHS up until 1997 and which has never been released on DVD or authorized for any streaming service. It’s an incredibly important film, an iconic movie of the sexual revolution. So we’re losing film history and television history every time we switch formats. The other thing is that some kind of important movies were shot on VHS or have an intrinsic relationship to the medium. I can’t imagine seeing Todd Haynes’ Superstar without the warble and the static of VHS. The underground distribution of that movie on VHS is so important to how people experienced it and understood the evolution of Haynes’ work or of new queer cinema more generally.
Caetlin Benson-Allott explores the legacy of VHS and VCR.
Blast from the Past
Photographed here is Ryan Collins, Archives Technician at the National Archives at Philadelphia, performing preservation tasks on a collection of records from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
It is not uncommon for Archivists to come across gems from bygone eras while performing preservation tasks. Sometimes NARA staff come across items as prestigious as a signature from a US President or Founding Father! Other times we discover objects from the not-so-distant past, evoking our sense of nostalgia. This is particularly true with the various, now-obsolete, media formats used throughout the years. From VHS tapes and vinyl records to monochrome and nitrate film, archivists uncover numerous media formats that are no longer in production. While processing a collection of records from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Ryan, one of our Archives Technicians at the National Archives at Philadelphia, came across disc film. After a few minutes of bemusement, he brought the film to our senior archivist who explained its use during the 1980s.
Disc film was released by Kodak in 1982 after 10 years of production. The advent of this new film technology would replace existing negative strips with a compact, convenient disc of negatives. This particular film required a specific camera to use, as well as specialized equipment to develop. Disc film would not be the “next big thing” however, and production was stopped in 1988 as a result of the poor picture quality on the film.
The formats on which the past is documented are ever evolving. Coming across obsolete media formats present challenges to archivists across the field.
This post was written by Ryan Collins, Archives Technician at the National Archives at Philadelphia.
