Kick Gets a Little More Time

At last, movement on the animation preservation front, Thursday night the ASIFA-Hollywood Executive Board funded the preservation of the only 35 MM copy of the Fleischer cinecolor cartoon A Kick in Time. We also funded the copying of a Mike Lah pencil tests reel that spans his career, as well as finishing the preservation of the Ub Iwerks Sinbad the Sailor.

I have been working to getting Kick and some other films from the Kausler collection persevered for a number of years.

It is always a delicate balancing act not to step on toes or piss off people, or accidentally divert funding from other people`s projects or other ways rock the boat with studios and donors.

There are so many films that need to be saved and only limited resources. But it is worth it when one of the films gets stay of execution away from oblivion.

The thing with film is that it always is just a stay of execution, because each time we make a preservation copy of an endangered film all we are really doing is resetting the clock to zero. But the clock just keeps on ticking.

There is no such thing as a perfect standard archival quality preservation medium, not safety stock, not modern 35 mm, not DVD or any other digital medium, they all are subject to the encroachment of time in one form or another.

So the next time you see a great copy of 60 or 70 year old film, stop and think about all the people who fought to keep that film alive.