Conversation with Christophe Dupin

Ernest Lindgren was the first curator of Britain’s National Film Library (later renamed National Film Archive, now known as the BFI National Archive) from its foundation in 1935 to his death in 1973. He was also, alongside Henri Langlois of the Cinémathèque française, one of the true pioneers of the film archive movement. The two men, who dominated debate within the growing FIAF community in the post-war period, had conflicting temperaments and diametrically opposed views on what the priorities of a film archive should be (although today many in the film heritage sector see those views as complementary). Lindgren, the quieter and more phlegmatic of the two figures, introduced to the FIAF community a number of defining techniques and strategies of acquisition, preservation and cataloguing of films still largely embraced by film archives around the world today. Perhaps because he was less interested in creating his own legend than his French counterpart, his name is relatively overlooked today. This presentation intends to redress that imbalance a little by paying tribute to his immense contribution to the film archive movement.

Christophe Dupin