Journal of Film Preservation - FIAF

source text now used by the archivists, i.e., the catalogue of the film
material (two volumes) published in 1982. He had professionally
classified all documentary films, feature films and animated films
produced up to 1977 that had been acquired by the archive. The
catalogue contained 965 titles. This catalogue was reprinted in 1998. In
1998 the archive also published also the third volume of the catalogue,
in which Mr. Nemanic had classified another 299 films that had been
subsequently received by the archive up until 1995. He produced two
other catalogues, one on the film work of Bo_idar Jakac between 1929-
1955. The second catalogue deals with the film activity of Metod and
Milka Badjura in the period from 1926 to 1969. In 1995 an exhibition
dedicated to Metod and Milka Badjura was mounted and on this
occasion a special catalogue was published. A catalogue was also
published for the exhibition on the newsreels of the years 1946-1951.
• Public presentation of archival film material
The Slovene Film Archive has presented its films at special performances
in Ljubljana in the theatre of the Slovenska Kinoteka and Cankarjev
dom. In other Slovene towns special thematic evenings have been organised
and enabled local people to view films that had been shot in their
region.
The silent film festival in Pordenone (Italy) is the most prestigious international
festival at which the archive’s films have been screened, but by
no means the only one. Films have also been presented on public and
other TV networks in their entirety or partially and within the framework
of various exhibitions.
• Physical conditions
Special safety conditions are needed for film reels due to their specific
characteristics. Therefore the Slovene Film Archive’s principal concern is
the physical preservation of its films. From the very beginning films were
regularly rewound. The situation has improved since the construction of
an air-conditioned storage facility in 1979. The archive has therefore
focused primarily on the copying process of the nitrate films to acetate
film as well as other films shot on inflammable stock.
The Archive of the Republic of Slovenia in co-ordination with the
Jugoslovenska Kinoteka in Belgrade managed to take possession of all
nitrate films just a few days before the attainment of independence and
the war in Slovenia in 1991. These had been the property of Triglav Film
that had been stored in Belgrade since 1971. In that period Slovenia had
no adequate storehouse for inflammable and explosive nitrate films. Due
to these characteristics the archive could not ensure special storage
conditions before coming to an agreement with the Home Office about
the storage of the inflammable and acetate films in the air-conditioned
underground rooms of the training centre in Gotenica near Ko_evje. A
very large number of our archival films, including all inflammable films,
are stored there.
85 Journal of Film Preservation / 58/59 / 1999