Roundtable : Conservation and restoration : an ecological challenge for tomorrow

For the 9th edition of the MIFC, Birgit Heidsiek, editor-in-chief, Green Film Shooting, Cédric Lejeune, founder and specialist of Workflow Media, Workflowers, Julien Tricard, president of the Media Club'Green, and finally Dr. Nikolaus Wostry, general manager, responsible for film collections, Austrian Cinematheque, met to discuss ecology and heritage cinema around a round table on the theme "Conservation and restoration: an ecological challenge for tomorrow". Two distinct domains, not necessarily close to each other at first glance, which are nevertheless intimately linked today. This unique meeting was moderated by Hans-Nikolas Locher, Director of Development at the Commission Supérieure Technique (CST).

"This is a first, a historic moment, during which we will ask this question about ecology and heritage cinema," explains Julien Tricard. "I am happy that this is being done at the MIFC because we are all here ecologists, all concerned about the environment, because we are concerned about heritage cinema, which is actually a handover for future generations. A notion of heritage in good condition, a notion of transmission that is close to ecology." For his part, Dr. Nikolas Wostry, returned to the crucial issue of film preservation, contextualizing that the ecological problem was both related to digital but also to the preservation of films in physical format. "There is a paradox: to preserve you unfortunately have to destroy." The general director of the Austrian Cinematheque explained that radical choices must be made for this "very brutal transition." He returned to the use of electric cars, the creation of wooden buildings to store notably the archives composed of nitrate films.

Today, heritage cinema has to save a lot of digital elements, like when restoring films. There are several ways of doing this, such as active conversation, which consists of leaving hard disks running, and colder storage on tape. But this raises ethical and especially ecological questions. Birgirt Heidsiek explained that there are many disadvantages of storing digital data in data centers because it causes a "huge impact" on the environment. This process pollutes on a large scale because it involves the use of several online servers. Cédric Lejeune, for his part, is working on the evaluation of the cost of carbon and its place at the center of the discussion of this meeting at the MIFC: "Carbon is an abstraction that allows us to try to measure many different things with a single figure. However, in environmental issues, particularly in climate change, it is no longer a component of the environmental challenge. There is also the challenge around resources." The founder specialist Workflow Media also pointed to the thorny issue of air conditioning in cinemas, which is proving to be a big long-term problem for the environment. The fight for the environment remains, according to him, still an "experimental" fight, which takes time because it is necessary to change the mentalities of the public but also of small and large companies.

The moderator of this round table, Hans-Nikolas Locher, made it clear to the audience that the topic of this discussion was both recent and vast, that it was not a question of finding an answer but of trying to get closer to it by discussing it all together.