The Preservation of Mellanrum
by Jenny Hsu & Momo Li (NYU MIAP)
At the 2024 Orphan Film Symposium, we join with NYU professor of cinema studies Zhang Zhen to present a short film she made in 1985 while an undergraduate student in Sweden. She asked us to help digitize the Super 8 work, which she gave the Swedish title Mellanrum, meaning “gap” or a “space in between.”
In the 1980s, university students in film production used analog film and magnetic media to shoot course assignments. However, it is becoming increasingly difficult to screen these analog media. Today, established filmmakers and studios archive and preserve their production materials, but student works are in a forgotten corner. Super 8 images and sound tracks in particular require special tool to access them. As time passes, they are more likely than 16mm to be pushed into deeper recesses of storage.
Dr. Zhang Zhen and Mellanrum were in such a situation. As a scholar, and the founding director of the Asian Film and Media Initiative, her research interests include Sinophone film history and contemporary independent documentary in China. But before becoming an accomplished film scholar, Zhang also studied filmmaking. In the 1980s, Zhang left her hometown of Shanghai, and moved to Sweden, where she studied film as an undergraduate student.
Mellanrum originated as a course project, collaboratively produced by Zhang and classmate Ingela Lundholm, in May 1985. The film delves into the experiences of an Asian girl abroad, as she wanders the Swedish streets and sits in a coffee shop while reflecting on her past. The actress featured in the film was also a classmate.
Zhang tells us she chose the title to connote her emotional state of in-between-ness. Chinese students were rare in Sweden at the time. She completed her studies despite challenges with language, culture, and environment, all the while harboring, she says, a deep longing for home and family. Mellanrum artfully captures the longing for connection and belonging, weaving Zhang’s original poetry into the soundtrack (read in Swedish).
Zhang told us many memories of studying abroad nearly forty years ago came to mind when revisiting Mellanrum. She recalled the classroom screening was its only projection. The Super 8 film and other materials remained in a paper envelope, rarely opened again. Zhang had been waiting for an opportunity to see this work again and we are thrilled to have the opportunity to inspect, scan and piece together this film that she holds dear to her heart.
We inspected five elements (pictured below) and scanned the film on September 27, 2023, in the Barbara Goldsmith Preservation and Conservation Department at NYU Libraries, with Michael Grant, assistant director for Media Preservation. Having been stored in a cool, dark environment, they were in good condition.
Shot on Super 8mm Reversal Kodachrome KMA, with an edge code indicating 1985, the footage contains 45 one-sided splices. They were secure, therefore we applied no additional splice tape, so as to avoid introducing artifacts when run through the library’s Lasergraphics scanner.
The Super 8 full-coat magnetic film is a curious element. This magnetic film features a full-width coating of magnetic oxide, carrying only sound with no picture area. While inspecting, we noticed that unlike other 35mm or 16mm full-coat magnetic film elements, Super 8 full-coat mag is tape-based rather than film-based. Super8 full coat is essentially 8mm tape with sprocket holes.
The primary challenge in Super 8 lies in achieving synchronization during editing. This challenge arises from the disparity in speed between Super 8 film, which runs at 24 frames (4 inches) per second, and the standard tape recorder/player, run at 3.75 inches per second.[1] Consequently, there was a pressing need to develop a synch-sound recording system for Super 8.
In 1972, Harvard professor Robert Doyle and cinematographer Richard Leacock at M.I.T. founded the company Super8 Sound.[2] Its Super 8 Sound Recorder introduced the double-system editing methods of 35/16 filmmaking to Super 8, allowing full-coat magnetic film to be easily cut frame-for-frame alongside picture film. Because this “mag” shares the same width, sprocket hole size, and sprocket hole spacing as picture film, it could be processed using the same projectors, synchronizers, and editing tables.[3] We recommend watching this instructional film, Super 8 Sound Editing (Eastman Kodak, 1977, 11 min.), posted in 2009 by a successor company, Pro8mm. <vimeo.com/4738864>
The final phase of the investigation for this project involves looking into the audio component. While the original element appears to be the two reels of Super 8 full-coat magnetic film, audio cassette tapes were also used (as was common in 1985). Were all these elements utilized in the production of Mellanrum? Professor Zhang recalled a poetry recital being part of her soundtrack. Consequently, it is plausible parts of the audio and the poetry reading were recorded on separate media. This speculation will be confirmed once the audio cassette tapes are digitized.
Finally, we will sync the sound to the picture, for the small-gauge movie’s re-premiere on the big screen. We introduce the Orphan Film Symposium screening of this student film with now-professor Zhang Zhen at Museum of the Moving Image.
Notes and sources
[1] Richard Lerman, “The Progress Report: The Professionalization of Super 8.” Industrial Photography (Mar. 1974), 22-28.
[2] Jaclyn Melo, “50 Years of Keeping It Reel # 2,” Pro8mm blog, Jan. 14, 2022.
[3] Introduction, Super 8 Sound Recorder manual (197?), reproduced in “Super 8 instruction manual diagrams,” on Reed Sturtevant’s website mondoFoto (2005); accessed Feb. 27, 2024,
See also this discussion of Zhang’s career as a poet and her experience in Sweden: Zhou Zan and Sun Yi, “Where is the Echoing Wall of Poetry? An Interview with Zhang Zhen,” (2008) trans. Wenxin Xiao, Chinese Independent Cinema Observer, no. 2 (2021-22): 240-54.
