Narrating the preservation of a film school archive – Re-configuring the hero’s journey across the nexus of conservation and film production

Abstract

Narrating the preservation of a film school archive–Re-configuring the hero’s journey across the nexus of conservation and film production. In 2013, a program to secure the future of the more than 1800 films produced by students in the Victorian College of Arts’ Department of Film and Television commenced at the University of Melbourne. This is a highly significant collection, with films from 1966 to the present, that contains work by some of Australia’s pre-eminent producers, cinematographers, scriptwriters, and others. Utilising narrative frameworks theory, and particularly the victim to hero narrative, this paper explores the journey taken to preserve this archive and make it accessible to current and future students and the public. This makes explicit the value of narrative inquiry as a method for active rethinking and reframing of the project, the opportunities for democratisation and increasing plurality during the project and highlighted the need to contest the celebratory narrative of project completion to ensure that the continued risk to the hero-archive remains a central institutional concern.