ABSTRACT
Introduction The first film archives were established in the 1930s, as a reaction to the threat of silent films vanishing with the emergence of sound films. The way film preservation is conducted today is, to an extent, the reaction of film archives towards the emergence of new formats brought about by technological development. The paradox though, is that while film archives were born to preserve a dying format, new digital formats could now be the death knell of the very institutions that are attempting to preserve them.
