Harold Godart Brown (15 August 1919 – 14 November 2008) was the first head of
film preservation at the
British Film Institute's
archive. He was appointed by the archive's founding curator,
Ernest Lindgren, upon its creation in 1935, and remained in the post until his retirement in 1984.
Biography
Born in
Walthamstow
Walthamstow ( or ) is a large town in East London, east London, England, within the Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county of Greater London and the Historic counties of England, ancient county of Essex. Situated northeast of Chari ...
, the son of a maker of nautical instruments, Brown joined the
British Film Institute (BFI) as an office assistant aged 15 in 1935, two years after it was established. Formally appointed as the BFI's first film preservation officer in 1951, he was a largely self-taught archivist.
[ ]
In his role at the BFI, Brown made a major contribution to the science of film preservation. He was possibly the first archivist to research systematically the
decomposition process of
nitrate film, and consequently to show that it can be inhibited by storage in a cool and dry atmosphere. Brown is credited with having invented the term
vinegar syndrome to describe the deacetylation of
cellulose acetate film (safety film).
He designed and built specialist step-printers to enable the preservation copying of shrunken and otherwise damaged originals. He was an active member of
FIAF's Technical Commission, in which capacity he wrote and contributed to technical manuals that film archivists still consider standard reference works. Retiring in 1984, he was the longest serving employee of the BFI.
In retirement, Brown was a prominent volunteer with the Projected Picture Trust, restoring and operating historical
projectors
A projector or image projector is an optical device that projects an image (or moving images) onto a surface, commonly a projection screen. Most projectors create an image by shining a light through a small transparent lens, but some newer types ...
at a museum in
Bletchley Park.
See also
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Film preservation
*
British Film Institute
*
BFI National Archive
*
Fédération Internationale des Archives du Film
References
Further reading
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External links
Obituaryon Luke McKernan's website, 17 November 2008.
"Harold Brown" BFI website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Brown, Harold (Film preservationist)
1919 births
2008 deaths
Film preservation
English archivists
British Film Institute