FILM COLLECTION’S NEW HOME

Flammable films are being transferred to new stock

Inside Out has gained access to one of the country’s most important film archives. The priceless footage it contains is so flammable, that it could literally burst into flames at any time.

The Imperial War Museum nitrate film store at Duxford holds footage dating back more than 100 years.

Rare sepia images of the First World War, shot by the Germans, are some of its most valuable treasures.

David Walsh, Head of Preservation at the archive says, "The film archive is extremely important. It has a huge range of films.

"It's a great social record of life and times during the war... It's an enormously useful resource for the nation."

Flammable

Most of the early footage was shot on 35mm film containing nitrate, which is highly flammable. This old stock can literally burst into flames at any time.

Once alight, the film will even burn under water, making it almost impossible to extinguish.

Considering its fragile yet potentially hazardous composition, safely storing the archive is a huge challenge.

New home

Until recently, most of the collection’s film was stored in London. It has now moved to a new, purpose-built facility in Duxford, Cambridgeshire.

The separate blocks of the film archive

The Nitrate film store is probably the most advanced in the world. It is a building comprising eleven separate blocks and experiments have confirmed that a fire in one block could be contained, and it would not spread to the rest.

This ensures that if one of the rolls were to ignite, the whole collection would not be destroyed.

Preservation

Preserving the footage is also a constant battle. A team at the Imperial War Museum are transferring the old film onto new stock.

Original equipment dating back to the 1930s is being used for this process.

Currently the archive has over a 100,000 rolls of old film. Just to transfer them onto new film will take at least 20 years.