Author: Robert L Anen

Mold, a word that elicits many negative reactions, unless you’re talking about cheese. I get the feelings of concern surrounding the appearance of mold, and feel the same way, even when it concerns cheese. But mold is a natural occurrence in many regards, including in film collections, and while not always ideal (in some cases it is dangerous!) the important takeaway here is that the advent of mold should not be viewed as an emergency that halts all intended work with the affected media. 

Over the course of my time as a fellow for the Regional Media Legacies (RML) project, I’ve come in contact with mold more than once, and have become desensitized to seeing it at this point. I am not a mold expert and my intention is not to be dismissive of the presence of mold. Expertise in mold in an archival setting is very important since discovering it is quite common.

I’d like to use this post to share my findings with mold as an audiovisual archivist doing collections work with under-resourced collections, and where that experience falls on the spectrum of audiovisual preservation.

In early 2020, I was in the process of inspecting film for a small historical organization when a staff member discovered additional films while they were reorganizing items in the basement. I was called down to inspect and assess the films, and determined they were indeed most definitely covered in mold. The musty smell emanating from the cans gave away the mold immediately. Then as I opened each can and the white fuzzy evidence confirmed our suspicions. Another common form of film decay that makes its presence known through a smell, but should not be confused with mold, is vinegar syndrome. This smell is far more powerful and can sometimes be evident even without opening a film can. 

After some research and discussion with the staff, they allowed me to remediate the moldy films. I already possessed 99% isopropyl alcohol that I had purchased for a previous project. I also purchased a non-abrasive cloth from a local hardware store. I moved my portable film inspection bench outside on a nice day. It’s worth noting here that when dealing with moldy objects, you should do so in a well-ventilated area, and nothing really beats a mild sunny day. I tested the cloth on a piece of film to ensure that it did not scratch it. Had the cloth actually scratched the film I would not have moved forward. An important rule to follow as an archivist is to do no harm. 

Before I continue, I want to note that it is important to wear a mask, N95 preferably, as well as latex gloves. Wash your hands thoroughly after remediation and do not touch your face after holding moldy items. 

Confident with the new cloth, I readied the first film on the inspection bench, then lightly soaked it in isopropyl alcohol. I held the cloth gently around the film and wound the film onto a take-up reel. I then wiped the original reel with alcohol and wound the film back on. This process removed the visible mold. I proceeded to perform this process on about a dozen reels of 16mm film. I made sure the alcohol evaporated before placing the films back in their cans. 

Four months later, I inspected the films for mold or any sign of effect from the alcohol. I did not see or smell any mold, or see any change to the film image. To this day, there are no signs of mold. It’s also important to note that these films are no longer stored in the basement and have been moved to an upper-level floor in the building. They have also been rehoused in new archival cans and taken off the metal reels and wound onto archival film cores. Environmentally controlled archival storage may not be possible, but moving media items out of spaces more likely to encounter flooding or fluctuating temperatures and humidity can go a long way. 

Below is a before and after of one of the reels:

My process in becoming comfortable with mold began with doing basic research, which demonstrated how common mold is and why it shows up in the first place. For mold to grow, two things need to be present: a food source for the mold and constant moisture. These two conditions together are a breeding ground for mold and are also the common conditions of most basements and many attics. 

It is also important to note that mold never really dies. Mold is either active or inactive. You can render mold inactive by drying out the affected area, but the second a moldy film is reintroduced to a moist environment the mold will become active and continue to grow. The only way to render mold harmless is to remove it from the equation completely. There are also many different types of mold. I have only ever seen white mold on films before. I’ve never seen black mold on a film, but can’t say definitively what might be possible! 

The gelatin binder on all film formats is a prime food source for mold. And once a single film item is affected, all nearby film formats are in danger. Magnetic media isn’t safe from mold either! The remediation technique I used should be performed by someone comfortable with film, whether through archival training or experience working with film in a production environment. This technique would not be appropriate for video or audiotape, but advice related to storage would be similar.

My education and instincts lead me to this remediation process, but it was helpful to find validation amongst the photographer set with a post like this: “How to Clean Your Negatives” by Dillon Wallace

Additionally, the project manager of the RML project reached out to a few colleagues who have dealt with mold on film. While best practices tend to lean more toward engaging a professional vendor for cleaning, using a more toxic cleaning agent yourself (if you can get approved for it), or foregoing cleaning agents at all and prioritizing cold storage and digitization – our final takeaway was that my methodology achieved the intended goal of mold remediation. This lower-cost solution is particularly important in a scenario where a higher-cost vendor solution was not possible. Not remediating the films this way would have resulted in zero-intervention for a further unknown length of time, allowing for the mold to continue its potentially destructive course. 

Since professional mold remediation can be costly and out of reach, it’s best to take measures to avoid this situation as much as possible by keeping your films in a dry area. A cool, dry, secure space is essential for all media items – it’s great for any items, quite frankly. If you’re reading this, and you know you have media items in a basement, attic, or garage – make a plan to check up on these items, and find a new location. In an office setting – a room with no windows and low traffic. In a home – a hall closet would be preferable. Any space where you notice the conditions are more stable and dry throughout the year. 

Keeping in mind that mold can reactivate, the films I cleaned have been prioritized for digitization but it’s not always possible to jump ahead to this step. In the meantime, we keep the films stored as best we can and check up on them when we can. Professionally sanctioned best practices are important to learn, but cannot always be implemented (and in some cases are not appropriate), and our goal is to assist project partners not only by performing conservation and preservation work but also by presenting reasonable options and empowering them to move forward even without our assistance.

By Robert Anen, RML Fellow & Marie Lascu, RML Project Manager

Welcome to the premier blog post of the Regional Media Legacies (RML) project! This project is funded by the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation. Now that we are beginning the second year of this funding cycle, we have decided to create this blog in order to acquaint you with not just the collections we have been introduced to but also the stories that go along with them as well.

I’m Robert Anen, an audiovisual archivist, a graduate of NYU’s Moving Image Archiving and Preservation program, and the first appointed Research Fellow for the RML project. The RML team has spent the last year reaching out across Long Island, Brooklyn, and Queens with great success. Not every organization contacted possesses an audiovisual collection, but those that do pay dividends, in the cultural sense that is.

The context of a collection is essential for understanding why we are all putting so much effort into preserving these pieces of history. Sometimes when we encounter a collection, there is no documented context at all, no provenance(the origins or history of an item) to speak of. The who, what, where, when, why, and how are either completely missing, lost to time, or only partially recorded. 

As a Research Fellow and as a person who loves a good mystery, I make it my mission to fill in the context gaps of collections I begin to inventory and inspect. With the correct equipment, I can take a stack of film cans that an organization had previously known nothing about, and through the inspection and repair process not only begin to conserve the object but also begin to examine the content and fill in the gaps needed to better understand the collection and subjects in front of the camera. Beautiful stories can be woven using this information. This is one of those cases.

Towards the end of January this year, I began working on the film collection of the Sea Cliff Village Museum located in Sea Cliff, New York, a small old coastal town on the north shore of Nassau County. This is the first collection we were truly able to dive into under the RML project. There was no provenance available in the museum’s records. Some of the film cans had notes on the front of the container but you can’t trust what the notes say at face value until you examine the content found on each reel of film. For example, let’s take the photo on the left of a label on a film can; it hints that the film collection does indeed come from Nassau County. Roslyn, NY is a town just four miles south of Sea Cliff. This film collection found its home at the Museum some time between its opening in 1979 to 2019 when Courtney Chambers, the current Director of the Museum began working there. 

The collection is made up of twelve reels of 16mm film. We knew nothing about this collection other than the information on the film can labels which I approached like a cinematic Sherlock Holmes.  A good archivist must approach everything with some suspicion when inspecting and inventorying any collection since reels can be swapped out of cans and easily placed in an incorrect can or the labels found on a film can be written years or even decades after the fact. That being said, there is information I could infer simply by looking at the metal reels and the film print. The above image of the reels matches this image here on the right.  Knowing the vintage of the reels also allowed me to infer that whoever purchased the Kodak reels and Kodak film in this collection was likely of a higher class status than the average person at the time. Why would I assume that? The Kodascope Projector in this image cost $180.00 in 1928, a 50-foot roll of film cost $4.00, and the camera for that film would have cost $150.00. Adjusted for inflation by today’s standards, that would make the projector $2,735.98, the film $60.80 and the camera $2,279.98. According to IRS data for 1928 the average income for an Individual was $6,191.81. This would make an individual’s weekly pay $119.07 before taxes. A home movie camera, a projector, and one roll of film to use in that camera would cost almost an entire month’s income. This makes it easy to conclude that the person who originally owned this collection at that time in 1928 made more than the average person and was likely of higher class status.

As I began inspecting and inventorying the collection, each reel revealed a little more information about the family they belonged to. The films were most certainly home movies. The first reel revealed a partial exterior of a home. The third reel revealed the full exterior of the same home pictured on the left. The home was the only house visible on the property and seemed to have an extremely long driveway. The film also revealed the very end of the driveway, a detail that turned out to be key. 

I had the What: a home movie, the How: this person had the physical means, and the When: 1925 to 1930 respectively. I made it my mission to figure out Where this house was, Who was behind the camera, and Why these images were captured on film. When approaching questions like this, you have to think of different ways in which to figure out the answers, and in some cases unconventional tools are needed to do your research. Since the dates on the film cans matched the manufacturing years found on the film prints, I decided to trust the information found on the labels of the film cans.

Using the images above, I joined and posted in a Facebook group called “You’re Probably From Roslyn If Part 2………..” I hoped that current and former Roslyn residents could identify either the house or entrance to the driveway. There were a handful of responses initially, but no one was able to identify the house. That was until a former Roslyn resident commented that she thought the posts at the entrance of the driveway looked familiar. She revealed that she had grown up next door to the Shibley Day Camp and that the image looked like the entrance to the camp. A quick search on Google Maps revealed she was correct! The same brick posts remain in the exact same place as they did in 1926 at 175 Warner Avenue in Roslyn, New York. The Where.

Now that I had the Where, I could move onto the Who. In 1925, New York State conducted a State census. The probability of finding out who lived in this house at the time the home movies were created was very high, but the houses on Warner Ave in 1925 did not have numbers associated with them yet so the Who was still elusive to me. I then decided to go over to the Shibley Day Camp and drive right up to the house. It was the exact same house visible in the home movies and I was thrilled to see it still erect. This is when I turned to the Bryant Library, the oldest continuing library in Nassau County that is also located in Roslyn, NY. The library’s archivist, Carol Clarke, was able to identify the house as the former home of William Prentice Willetts (1890-1964). According to census records and other documents found on Ancestry.com, Willetts was born May 13th, 1890 in Skaneateles, New York. He grew up in upstate New York and Brooklyn, and married Christine Newhall Clark in 1915. He served in WWI and was principally stationed in Mineola, NY, Washington, DC, and Montgomery, AL, was assigned to work in an aviation repair shop and was eventually promoted to Captain. He did not serve overseas or ever engage in any combat, and he was honorably discharged on December 17th, 1918. 

According to the 1930 United States Federal Census, Willets was a broker at a bank at the time the home movies were filmed. This certainly seems like a well-paying job and would have allowed him to afford the materials needed for the home movies: the film, the camera, the projector. Willetts himself does not appear in any of the home movies, which could mean he is the person holding the camera. A young woman and two small children do appear throughout. The children could be his eldest daughter and son, Jean and Joseph, who would have been 10 and 8 respectively. The Who.

The Why is the final and larger question that as a researcher, or you as a reader, may never know that answer to without explicitly asking him, the Who, that question. This is now impossible since William Willetts died in 1964. Why did he capture these home movies in the first place? One could assume he did this because he had the means to. Again, this was an expensive endeavor in 1926. Home movies were a brand-new hobby in the mid-1920s so he may have been the type of person who loved the latest gadget and had to try it. William may have bought it for a trip he was taking, or a family event he simply wanted to capture and remember forever. As my research continues, I also hope to discover how these films finally made their way to the museum. 

I hope you have enjoyed this inaugural post. I continue to work on Sea Cliff Village Museum’s film collection, so stay tuned for future blog posts. As the Regional Media Legacies project continues from 2020-2021, check this space for more stories of the partners we have worked with, and the collections we have worked on and hope to help bring to light across Long Island, Brooklyn, and Queens.