The new Conservation and Restoration Center of the Spanish Film Archive, in detail

The Secretary of State for Culture accompanied by the director of the Spanish Film Archive, José María Prado, and the architect Víctor López Cotelo inaugurate a work that, located in the City of the Image of Madrid, occupies an area of 15,429m² and has involved an investment of 23.6 million euros.

The Secretary of State for Culture, José María Lassalle, has presented the new Conservation and Restoration Center of the Spanish Film Archive, located in the City of the Image. The work has involved an investment of 23,609,382 euros.

The Center has been built on a plot of 8,118 m²; The total constructed area is 15,429 m², of which 9,885 are below ground, making up three large floors for the most modern storage facilities, distributed in archives, technical and administrative services and air conditioning facilities, known as “Air conditioning car”.

film backgrounds

As a whole, these are modern facilities dedicated to the conservation, restoration and recovery of the documentary collections of our cinematography, as well as containing the most important or significant collections of film heritage. Among them, the Sagarminaga and Tramullas collections stand out, which contain films made from 1896 to 1908, the first, and from 1910 to 1927, the second.

Added to these collections are the archives filmed on the Spanish Civil War, the No-Do Archive, the Daniel Jorro collection (of reports filmed in 16 millimeters between the years 1930-1955), the collections from the Film School (EOC), amateur film collections (made by amateur filmmakers in 8, Super 8, 9.5 and 16 millimeters), the Turespaña collections and the 'Section Femenina', TVE's video collections referring to the program Spanish cinema night, with all the interviews with relevant personalities of Spanish cinematography, conducted by Fernando Méndez-Leite. Added to all these collections are the archives of the ministries of Agriculture, Education and Culture, Foreign Affairs, Defense, Economy and embassies with a film department, as well as companies, universities, film clubs and film festivals.

It is important to highlight that Spanish film producers who have received some type of aid granted by official organizations have been obliged, since 1964, to deliver a copy to the Spanish Film Archive for its conservation, which has represented a great advance for the conservation of Spanish film heritage, which would otherwise end up destroyed.

Five years of work

The CCR facilities have been built on two plots, donated by the Community of Madrid, in the municipality of Pozuelo de Alarcón, with work beginning in October 2009 and being completed three years later (October 2012). The presentation of the Center has been postponed until the facilities have been fully equipped and operational, as is now the case.

In 1999, the Spanish Film Archive promoted the contracting of the project for the CCR, which was finally awarded to the team headed by architect Víctor López Cotelo. The project was drafted and approved in 2000, and the Infrastructure and Equipment Management of the Ministry of Culture, which coordinated its construction, was awarded to the company VIAS in 2009.

With this great equipment, the Spanish Film Library has been able to bring together its funds and archives scattered throughout different locations. It also has an annexed and underground building, known as “Voltio”, where the flammable supports of nitratecellulose, triacetate and polyester are preserved, which require special storage and safety conditions.

The Vote

The file block constitutes the core of the project. Entirely underground, to guarantee its isolation from the ground, this block has been conceived as a box within another box, with the inner box being completely separated from the outer one by a set of air chambers more than one meter wide. These chambers are used for the passage of air conditioning ducts and, if applicable, they could be used for smoke evacuation in the event of fire, or to permanently maintain ventilation in conditions of very prolonged power failure.

Based on their conservation characteristics, the 36 warehouses that this block houses are classified into 7 files.

At the deepest level of the archive block, the 3rd basement, are archives numbers 2 and 3, for color and black and white photochemical materials, exclusively reserved for the preservation and restoration of cinematographic works.

File 2, with seven warehouses for color materials, is heated to 5°C and 30% relative humidity. The five warehouses in File 3, for black and white materials, are prepared for 10°C temperature and 35% RH.

Files 4 and 6 are reserved for reproduction materials and reserve or restricted use copies.

In File 4, for color, it has five warehouses at 10°C temperature and 35%RH. File 6, also with five warehouses, is intended for black and white materials, located at 15°C and 35-40% relative humidity.
But, today film archives face a big problem: the degradation of acetate supports due to the dissociation of acetic acid.

Experiences developed by the Rochester Image Permanence Institute have determined that freezing carried out with materials that have reached degradation level 2, maintaining a correct protocol regarding ventilation and humidification, considerably slows down the aforementioned degradation process, the vinegar syndrome.

In basement 2, File 5 is intended for films affected by vinegar syndrome that were preserved in frozen conditions, at a temperature of -5°C. It has two warehouses, one in operation and the other as a reserve.

On the upper level, 1st basement, files 7 and 8 would be located for use copies and magnetic and digital materials.

File 7 is intended for photochemical copies for use in projection, color and black and white, and File 8 for magnetic materials. Each of these files has six warehouses, prepared for 15° temperature and 40-45% humidity.

In the lobbies of each floor, along with the vertical communications and other facilities necessary for the archive, there are conditioning chambers for carrying out the film entry and exit protocols. In all files, except freezing, the system is calculated to completely renew the air 24 times a day.

The warehouses for photochemical materials have mobile, compactable shelves, with a theoretical capacity of 38,000 rolls of film per warehouse. The warehouses for magnetic and digital materials and those for media with acetic degradation have fixed shelves and a capacity of 20,000 rolls per warehouse.

The technical, administrative and communications services block is developed on three floors located on the south side of the Center. On the ground floor, along with the general and control services, the Film Funds Headquarters, the maintenance and Administration offices, is the Material Movement and Circulation Area that records the entry and exit of the film rolls and tapes that make up the CCR Film Funds. A 250 square meter warehouse has been located in this space for the classification of incoming films; the one known as the Transit Warehouse.

Work areas

The Recovery Department is located on the first and second floors of the complex, whose main function is the location, inventory and identification of materials; the Technical Inspection Department, where the materials are controlled and catalogued, preparing detailed viewing and review reports, with special attention to the materials entered into the archives as Administration Aid for Film Production and those reproduced on request in laboratories; and the Department of Documentation and Labeling, which is responsible for managing the databases of the titles and audiovisual documents that make up the Filmoteca Española catalog in addition to keeping all the paper documentation linked to the film collections in the rotary archives and cabinets. More than 35,000 files are managed with information related to rights, origins, collaboration agreements, viewing reports,...

The facility has a small projection room equipped with 35mm and 16mm projectors and a digital projector that allows controlling the quality of the reproductions and restorations.

The Research and Restoration Department is located on the second floor, where the original materials of the archive are examined in detail, also establishing comparisons of different materials for future reproductions. In this area, among other tasks, collaborations with public or private institutions are developed; the Physical Restoration Department, where the photochemical materials are prepared for projection or entry into the laboratory, repairing, to the extent possible, their deterioration; and the Photochemical and Electronic-Digital Laboratory, which allow reproducing on electronic media and data files, photochemical and electronic materials that require it, as well as identifying and cataloging the innovative electronic and digital materials imposed by the Industry.

All areas of the CCR participate in the monographic study of the different collections that make up the Film Collections of the Spanish Film Archive.

The training of scholarship holders, interns, temporary staff and participation in regulated undergraduate and postgraduate higher education programs is diversified by the different areas of the CCR. Training in conservation and restoration techniques for film materials can only be received here since there is no regulated center where this training is given. Great professionals have been trained here and are working in the different film archives of the world.

With a theoretical storage capacity close to 1,200,000 rolls of film, CCR warehouses currently house more than 300,000 containers. When the transfer of the materials stored at the Alcalá de Henares headquarters is completed, the total number of containers in the CCR will be 600,000.

The CCR archives are perfectly equipped to house the more than 40,000 audiovisual works that make up the Filmoteca Española catalog of titles. The warehouses also house the approximately 83,000 rolls of film from the No-Do Collection, and 124,170 audiovisual documents on photochemical support, of which 53,654 are preservation materials, which correspond to 173,655 containers. The rest are screening copies and other materials. In addition, it houses 77,955 audiovisual documents in electronic format and 1,027 in digital format.

Where the cinema sleeps

First of all, it is important to highlight that, starting in 1964, producers of Spanish films, both feature films and short films, who have received some economic benefit granted by official organizations had to deliver a copy to the Spanish Film Archive for its preservation. Deposit that has been mandatory since 1990, which has represented a great advance for the conservation of Spanish cinema.

Starting in 1976, the new team that was being formed, both in Madrid and Barcelona, confirmed that there had been a systematic destruction of Spanish films prior to 1954. Contacts with professionals and the industry served to determine the main causes of this destruction: the support on which they were printed was nitrate, a flammable material that was very dangerous to handle and store. A consequence of this were the fires suffered in the Arroyo, Cinematiraje Rieja and Madrid Film laboratories, in the 40s, 50s and 60s, where a large number of negatives of Spanish films were kept. This dangerous storage and lack of commercial interest for many producers resulted in the massive destruction of the negatives that survived these fires.

To facilitate and achieve greater efficiency in the recovery of lost Spanish films, a series of specific works were carried out, such as developing an inventory of Spanish films shot, consulting books, magazines, yearbooks and other media; incorporate into the inventory the negatives, dup-negatives, copies and other existing materials, both in the Film Library and deposited in other warehouses: Spanish laboratories, TVE, collectors, distributors, production companies, Ministries and other official organizations; and collect information on Spanish film materials in other foreign archives (film archives, laboratories...).