The Film Archive: Our Cultural Memory Bank

By René O'Connell

Long before the Internet made armchair traveling just a click away, the Museum presented a film series that took people around the world.

When Phipps Auditorium opened in 1940, Museum director Alfred Bailey inaugurated a film lecture series on Sunday afternoons that was part of a national program about nature and travel. It became so popular it was expanded to Monday evenings. Color film was new and sensational, only increasing the demand. Sometimes as many as 3,000 people had to be turned away for lack of capacity.

Today, the Museum's Image Archives Department houses Bailey's entire film library that documents not only our historic fieldwork but other rare footage that captures flora, fauna and locales from a bygone era.

With more than 900 reels of 35mm and 16mm film, the film archive has some real treasures, several of which are just being rediscovered.

For instance, imagine seeing film of now-extinct birds or Museum staff in a Louisiana swamp wrestling an alligator. Or our latest find: a feature-length film made by Osa and Martin Johnson, American adventurers and documentary filmmakers, titled Simba: King of the Beasts. No other copy of such high quality exists in the world today.

But perhaps the most unique and significant nature films housed anywhere are the Alfred M. Bailey Lecture Film Series. Bailey was director from 1936 to 1969 and believed fieldwork was the lifeblood of any museum. Under his leadership, our Museum's expeditions covered the globe several times over.

The First National Bank of Denver thought so highly of his films, or "pictures," as Bailey called them, that the bank was an annual sponsor of the series. Bailey also presented the films to the National Geographic Society more than a dozen times and to both the Chicago Natural History Museum and the American Museum of Natural History 14 years in a row. No one but Bailey can boast this.

Three years ago, thanks to a KT Challenge grant from the Museum's Giving Club, the Image Archives Department began preserving selected titles by copying them to new film stock. Without this support, we couldn't afford to do it. But sadly, the day is fast approaching where money is not the limiting factor for film preservation.

The three biggest film stock manufacturers were Kodak, Fuji and Agfa. With Fuji and Agfa shuttering their film stock business, Kodak is left with 100 percent of a vastly shrinking market. However, having recently exited Chapter 11, Kodak's future is unclear.

In addition, film labs that specialize in film preservation are hanging by a thread. Digital objects, seemingly the answer to this dilemma, are too fragile and unreliable. Remember floppy discs, CDs and that hard drive that inexplicably failed? It takes a village to manage a digital object into the future, and there's no guarantee you won't lose data along the way.

To date, we have restored four of Bailey's lecture films for audiences to enjoy. And, yes, we show real film. Bailey shot silent film because the large amount of required audio equipment made it impossible to shoot in remote environs.

For the film series, Bailey stood at a podium presenting a live lecture to accompany his film. These lectures were recorded, and CinemaLab Preservation in Englewood has used the audio and the original film to create a whole new experience. So far, today's audiences have had a chance to relive Bailey's trips to Hawaii; Alaska; the Galápagos Islands; and Baja, Mexico, and its surrounding islands.

In January 2016, we will present one of Bailey's favorites. First shown in 1954, New Zealand Highlights wowed audiences with looks at rare and endemic birds in rugged sheep country.

Filmed well before there were established flights to this island country, the film offered the Denver audience a first glimpse of a country they had only heard about. Imagine seeing the Maori cultural land of Rotorua before it became a popular tourist destination.

The film archive is one of our most precious collections, with tens of thousands of feet of film documenting moments in time that cannot be replaced in written form. It is our cultural memory bank.

See It for Yourself

The newest film from the restored Bailey Film Series, New Zealand Highlights, will debut on Tuesday, Jan. 19. Find out more here or visit the Bailey Library and Archives.