Ernest Lindgren (3 October 1910 – 22 July 1973) was a British film

archivist An archivist is an information professional who assesses, collects, organizes, preserves, maintains control over, and provides access to Document, records and archives determined to have long-term value. The records maintained by an archivist c ...

and writer.

Career

Lindgren joined the

British Film Institute The British Film Institute (BFI) is a film and television charitable organisation which promotes and preserves film-making and television in the United Kingdom. The BFI uses funds provided by the National Lottery to encourage film production, ...

in February 1934 as Information Officer, and became the first

curator A curator (from la, cura, meaning "to take care") is a manager or overseer. When working with cultural organizations, a curator is typically a "collections curator" or an "exhibitions curator", and has multifaceted tasks dependent on the parti ...

of the National Film Library in 1935, renamed the National Film Archive in 1955. He remained curator until his death in 1973.Luke McKernan, ‘Lindgren, Ernest Henry (1910–1973)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 200
accessed 19 March 2007
/ref> He was succeeded by David Francis. Lindgren's approach to the preservation of film materials is often contrasted with that of

Henri Langlois Henri Langlois (; 13 November 1914 – 13 January 1977) was a French film archivist and cinephile. A pioneer of film preservation, Langlois was an influential figure in the history of cinema. His film screenings in Paris in the 1950s are often ...

, the founder of the

Cinémathèque Française The Cinémathèque Française (), founded in 1936, is a French non-profit film organization that holds one of the largest archives of film documents and film-related objects in the world. Based in Paris's 12th arrondissement, the archive offers ...

; the scientific against the romantic.Roger Smither "Henri Langlois and Nitrate, Before and After 1959" in Smither (ed) ''This Film is Dangerous: A Celebration of Nitrate Film'', Brussels: FIAF, 2002, p.247-55 Unlike Langlois, Lindgren adopted a selective approach in opposition to accumulating every possible film. Along with Langlois though, Lindgren played a major role in the development of FIAF, the

International Federation of Film Archives The International Federation of Film Archives (french: Fédération internationale des archives du film, FIAF) was founded in Paris in 1938 by the Cinémathèque Française, the Reichsfilmarchiv in Berlin, the British Film Institute and the Museum ...

. It is argued that the NFA gained a reputation for being uncooperative in this period, and Lindgren reportedly applied the Alizarin Red test (a disputed means of checking for the extent of nitrate decomposition) to films which were on loan from other institutions. Langlois in contrast had an eccentric, or non-existent, approach to record keeping, and the Cinémathèque suffered a nitrate fire on 10 July 1959. Lindgren's approach, on the other hand, meant that no account of changes in fashion could be made. When the BFI published ''Missing Believed Lost'' (1992), and launched an accompanying campaign, it was forced to admit that some of the featured titles, all made during the

nitrate Nitrate is a polyatomic ion A polyatomic ion, also known as a molecular ion, is a covalent bonded set of two or more atoms, or of a metal complex, that can be considered to behave as a single unit and that has a net charge that is not zer ...

era, had previously been rejected as possible acquisitions. ''The Art of the Film: An Introduction to Film Appreciation'', first published in 1948, went through several editions during Lindgren's lifetime. ''A Picture History of the Cinema'' appeared in 1960.

Career

Notes

Further reading