Journal of Film Preservation - FIAF

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Jan de Vaal (left) discusses with Raymond Borde and Wolfgang Klaue at the FIAF Congress in Vienna, 1984 In Memoriam In Memoriam Jan de Vaal (1922 - 2001) Robert Daudelin Pour les archivistes de ma génération – ceux qui ont connu leur premier congrès de la FIAF au début des années 70 – Jan de Vaal faisait partie des pionniers. Ces hommes-là n’avaient déjà plus d’âge et ne vieilliraient jamais. Et ils appartenaient déjà à une mythologie : les films conservés dans une baignoire ou trouvés chez les gitans, les lettres de Greta Garbo achetées aux puces et les confidences de Louise Brooks recueillies « live ». Jan de Vaal aimait follement le cinéma. Il en avait fait sa vie. Il aimait aussi beaucoup le genièvre et, quel que soit le pays où la FIAF nous emmenait, il pouvait toujours offrir un verre de genièvre aux amis. Car, plus que tout, Jan aimait l’amitié. Il aimait les retrouvailles, les nouvelles des derniers mois, les bons mots et les dernières rumeurs. Et sa fidélité, aux amis, comme au cinéma, était inébranlable. Plus rare encore, il savait respecter et garder une estime entière pour des collègues qui ne le gâtaient pas trop en retour. Fondateur du Nederlands Filmmuseum (1946), Jan de Vaal fut toujours très actif à la FIAF : membre du Comité directeur pendant de très nombreuses années, il en fut le trésorier-ajoint dès 1949, puis vice-président, puis secrétaire général, puis trésorier et aussi éditeur du premier Bulletin d’information (ancêtre de l’actuel Journal of Film Preservation). Depuis 1988 il était membre honoraire de la Fédération. Jan était profondément attaché à la FIAF : son ultime visite, au congrès de Prague en 1998, fut encore une fois un geste d’amitié. A personal note on Jan de Vaal and (the importance of a) FIAF history José Manuel Costa Besides the friendship, my personal legacy of Jan de Vaal will never be separated from two basic lessons, or in fact a double one. I have met Jan and Tineke at my first FIAF congress (Rapallo, 81), I guess the friendship started when I stayed during one month at his office, one year later. I had gone to Amsterdam to research on the Joris Ivens collections, and been invited to that room where, by that time, Tineke herself was going through the Ivens’ papers, inventorying and primarily cataloguing them. Thus, during that month, I had the chance of both studying a unique author’s 74 Journal of Film Preservation / 63 / 2001
collection and... witnessing the daily routine of a foreign archive’s Director and important FIAF executive. And in fact, watching Jan at his desk and phone, I kept an image that often came back to me, later, as a concentrated sign of the world I was about to enter (or, rather, of what it had been until then): a link in a chain of complicities; a part of a bigger, but also relatively closed, secretely tied world; a rather centralized but also immensely committed one. As far as I can remember, neither he nor Tineke urged upon me their own vision of the Ivens’ controversial work. Instead, they insisted on the need to research and to go beyond all clichés, and, often and often, they talked to me about... FIAF and its perhaps even more intricate short history. Knowing that he had witnessed the post war years (the first significant boom of the federation growth, and the battles against indifference or sheer hostility), but perhaps also anticipating what would come soon as signs of another kind of indifference, or forgetfulness, by new agents in the film heritage area, Jan took as his mission and pleasure to make me acquainted with that idionsyncratic world. The relevant thing, however, is the way he did it. It may seem obvious, today (but, more and more, it doesn’t to me) but in fact, since those first contacts until the later ones, what I remember is a repeated, genuine and open push forward. His obsessive message was for me to go ahead, to carry the group’s legacy and find my own way inside it. Like as if he was always saying: “it’s just great to find someone younger really interested in this; there’s a world to build and you have a role in it”. This, I cannot forget. My first gratitude to Jan comes out of the fact that he always kept faithful to this “push”, always repeating it. But then, over the years, he progressively reinforced the other side of it, and I progressively acknowledged its double message. As a matter of fact, I think that very few other people insisted so much with me on the plain need to record past history. Even in our latest meetings (and very specially then) he kept urging upon me the awareness of this need, the awareness of the lack of it (regardless of the few “memoirs” published so far), the urgency to accomplish it. As in the begining, the push forward was therefore inseparable from the push backwards, or the need to remember. Writing this now may seem a routine reflex in a personal tribute, or just the natural archivist’s remark. Again, I believe it goes much beyond that, and even more so when we acknowledge (or defend) that FIAF cannot, and must not, recuperate its past tendencies. We know only too well that the film archive movement irreversibly changed, and I would personally add without ever being able to meet some of its original goals. More than the archives, the overall context radically changed, and new interests surrounded the conservation and use of the film heritage, amplifying its challenges, but not necessarily solving or softening some of its primary problems and shortcomings. In this context, FIAF itself, however bigger and apparently stronger it may be (and of course also because of that), 75 Journal of Film Preservation / 63 / 2001
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Journal of Film Preservation Revue
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October / octobre / octobre 2001 55
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Courier du sud, Pierre Billon. Sour
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cinématographique coloniale à tra
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cette mission s’appuyait sur et s
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de tous les continents pour rendre
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opposition avec l’option dominant
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exploits nous sont montrés en imag
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