The National Archives of Hungary (Budapest, 2006)
PRESS AND MEDIA ARCHIVES - Hungarian Film Archives by József Bana
was made manually. The film 'Tanítónő' (Teachress in English) ( directed by Márton Keleti 1945) the first whole Hungarian film after World War II was restored from several imperfect, damaged nitro positive. Nowadays digital technics also helps in cleaning the sounds and restoring colours. It is limited by the fact that these procedures are very expensive, mainly writing back on film after digital restoration, and the financial background of the archives is very poor. The feature film titled 'Ludas Matyi' made in 1949 (Matthias with the Geese -in English just approximately) was renewed with digital colour restoration, nitro-material of which preserved the colours only in traces. All the films after 1963 were shot on safety material. Renewal of them is done not on mechanical chronological base but on film history value and selection is made according to the fading of colour films. The renewal of 35 black and white and 50 colour films was completed from this period of time. The followings were the films by Miklós Jancsó, Zoltán Fábri, István Szabó, Zoltán Huszárik, Károly Makk, 'Szindbád' (Sinbad), 'Árvácska' (Pansy the orphan girl), and also the 'Megáll az idő' (The time stops), 'Mephisto', 'Kutya éji dala' (The night song of the dog).The greatest challenge was the reconstruction of Psyche by Gábor Body the 305 minutes long film in three parts. It collects and classifies the critics and filmographies, it makes profiles about the artists of the age and load the material of the archives on the Internet. In the cinema of the archives, the Perpetuum Mobile these films are presented continuously and there are meetings with authors. One of the most exciting areas of an archivist is to watch the birth of a feature film in the presence beginning from shooting to the presentation, to take part in the muster of Hungarian films, the annual film review and to follow continuously the echo of the press and audience and their rewards. It registers, archives and catalogues the collected depository copies. Right after delivering in Beta or SVHS or time-code VHS copies are made about the depository copies. It continuously collects the published articles and critics. All the data and short story of the archived Hungarian feature films are loaded on the database of the institution. On the base of it filmographies of the Hungarian feature films presented by the Hungarian National Film Archives can be prepared. THE LIBRARY OF THE HUNGARIAN NATIONAL FILM ARCHIVES The Library of the Hungarian National Film Archives was established in 1957 The collection was built upon the documents of Theatre and Film Art Association and Film Board operating in the Ministry of Popular Education during 1949-1956. After the separation of Theatre and Film Scientific Institution the library changed into an independent collection on 1 st April
