New York Film Festival is not only where some of the best films to release this year are screened, but is also a great place to see some stunning restorations of movies that were once thought lost. Among the many fantastic entries in the Revivals section is The Sealed Soil, which now has the record of being the earliest completely surviving Iranian film directed by a woman. Marva Nabili’s debut feature follows Roo-Bekheir as she prepares to move houses thanks to a state-ordered construction project. Shot with the same attention to detail shown in the best Akerman films, this amazing movie has finally been restored by the UCLA Film & Television Archive. Mere weeks ahead of its New York Film Festival debut, with Nabili in attendance, I was able to speak with the Head of Preservation for the Archive, Jillian Borders.
The end result looks so great that I have to ask how this film first looked when it was presented to your team. Was there any significant damage or repairs that had to be done?
The filmmakers brought in the original negatives to the Archive, and they had acetate deterioration, so they were pretty warped and the film was kind of twisting up. It was edited on 16mm film with two rolls of negative, cutting back and forth with black opaque sections in between picture, and the opaque was deteriorating faster. Those sections were crumbling, tearing and sticking to the film. Fortunately, the only sections we had to lose were the opaque that didn’t have any film information on it; but because they were wound up with the film, the picture would actually have some staining. You could see some blotchiness that comes through on the image after we scanned it. There’s also image movement because of the warping. We found there were some sections that had some color fading, but you can do a lot now with digital tools. In the old analog days, even just fifteen years ago, you’d have film that’d faded to magenta – you’ve probably seen some of those prints. That used to be all you could do, but now they’re able to put a lot of that color back in and it’s amazing how much you can get back from those faded prints. That was one challenge with this film. Because of the fading and the deterioration, you’d watch a shot and slowly over the shot it goes from warmer to cooler then warmer again. The digital tools really had trouble correcting for that. This film is very meditative, so these shots are minutes long. Usually for the person who’s doing color timing that’s ideal, because you have less shots you have to adjust. But those long shots were a problem, because they would vary so widely it was harder to make incremental changes within one shot versus just a whole new setup for the next shot. Those are some issues we had with the restoration. There was a print that had been shown at festivals, which we still have, and it’s viewable—but we were so worried that the originals wouldn’t be usable that we wouldn’t let anyone screen the print. So, there were some screenings where they even showed a VHS copy [laughs]. The difference now between the VHS copy and restoration is pretty breathtaking. I have a before and after actually showing the VHS vs the film and it’s pretty mind blowing to think that’s the only version some people have seen.
What is the process of restoring a film in that state?
When it first came to us at UCLA, we did inspections and looked through all of the different elements, because we wanted to be sure we were using the proper ones. We had a CRI, which is a color reversal intermediate, which is a step between the original negative and the print. But a lot of older CRI film stocks are known for fading, so people don’t usually want to use them as a source because the chemistry of the film was never very stable, and often times that’s the most faded element that you have. We want to inspect and be sure we’re using the closest to the original negative that we can, but also what’s in the best condition. We have to make sure there aren’t different versions of the film. In this case that wasn’t a problem, which is great [laughs]. We did all that inspection work here at UCLA. We had to prep the film to be scanned, putting leaders on the ends of the reels and also making any needed repairs. Those opaque sections had to be cut out, and footage notes were written up for the labs. At UCLA, at least for this project, I didn’t personally do any of the scanning or digital cleanup. My role was more of a supervisor, overseeing the work. Once the film left here it went to the lab. Illuminate Hollywood and Corpus Fluxus did the picture work. They scanned it and, using my notes about the film, were able to edit it into a long play version, the definitive version. They had to make certain there was nothing missing from the scans. As the 16mm film was set up as two checkerboard film rolls, you need documentation or a picture reference to know where any effects —like dissolves and fades—are. Put side-by-side, the outgoing shot will go longer and the incoming shot starts earlier so you have to figure out where in the overlap to start the dissolve. So, the lab used the print reference we had, to make sure that all lined up. I’d work with the colorist at the lab to make sure everything looked how we wanted it to. When you initially look at a raw scan, it doesn’t look how the final film is supposed to look, as it is scanned “flat”, allowing the most latitude for adjustment. You still have to add your light values and color values to make it look like a print. They also had a whole other department doing all the dust and deterioration clean-up. Meanwhile, I’d come in and look at the color or make sure they didn’t miss a piece of hair or dirt. Sometimes you have to reposition the frame a little bit so that those aren’t visible. Then we brought in the filmmaker, Marva Nabili, and her husband Thomas Fucci, who was familiar with the making of the film, and they came in and gave their notes on how it looked. We noticed the background of the main title, in the VHS transfer, was completely black. But in the negative, we could tell there was a color behind it. It could’ve gone a few directions – you look at the scopes and say ‘maybe it was red?’ [laughs]. But we actually found some old notes from Marva after making her first print, which confirmed our choice. She was really involved in the overall look of the film. We don’t always have that advantage when we’re working on classic Hollywood or silent films. We just kind of have to use our best guess based on research and prints that were made at the time, but you don’t have the filmmaker with you to verify that. We also did sound restoration as well at Audio Mechanics. We had three different sources for the sound, and they were actually in worse condition than the picture. We had magnetic tracks that had pretty bad decomp and we tried a couple of different vendors where they tried to transfer it but couldn’t get a good contact with the magnetic head. The third vendor we tried, Endpoint Audio, was able to transfer it with good results so we were able to mostly use the original mix. There we did have a version issue, actually, because a few of the audio tracks sounded a little different. It seemed like Marva had added in wind and effects noises after the fact, which weren’t in the original recording. So, we had to make sure to add them in from another source. I was sitting with the audio engineer looking at the waveforms, listening out for extra dialogue not in the final version. Marva was also able to come into the sound session, which was great.
That seems like a great resource to have had during this process.
Yeah, it was. It was important for her to be involved as much as she could, to really see this get back out into the world. It had a good reception when it first came out, then it wasn’t really heard from that much. Ten years ago, BFI programmed it. I’m learning now that people have been using VHS copies in film courses, but I hadn’t heard of the film before working on it.
Were there any surprises in the restoration process?
There were sections we had to fill in from that color reversal intermediate, and the surprise was that the color fading wasn’t that bad, as is usually the case with CRIs. We were hoping to not use it, but the deterioration was pretty bad in the third reel so we had to pull in sections from it and the lab was able to do some digital sharpening to get it closer to looking like the original. At some point you’re just amazed you can get an image onto the screen. You look at the film on the bench and you’re like ‘oh, no’ [laughs]. And this wasn’t the worst case. I’ve seen films that are in worse condition, but it was really important that we do this now. We had gotten it into a climate-controlled setting, and getting it into a cold environment with low humidity often stops a lot of the deterioration, but it was really necessary for this to happen sooner rather than later. Just wait a couple years and maybe we wouldn’t have been able to go off the original camera negative at all, so this really had some priority or immediacy behind the restoration.
What was most important to keep in mind when restoring this film?
Well, I like to think we give all films the same amount of care, but it was important, for me, to work with Marva and for us to work with the Iranian community in Los Angeles. UCLA programs a Celebration of Iranian Film and this was shown as part of that festival. Really, just engaging with the filmmaker and Iranian film scholars so it wasn’t us taking over this film but so that she has the ownership in the project.
What’s one film you would love to restore?
Oh, no [laughs]. We have a ton of titles in the UCLA collection. It’s the second largest film archive in the US behind the Library of Congress. A lot of the studios have their nitrate films deposited with us, but they’re also now restoring their own libraries. I’ve been finding it really interesting to go through more public domain collections in our archive. I’ve been working on this collection of exploitation films from the 30s which I find interesting. A lot of them are fairly campy but, I find, indicative of their time and interesting in a scholarly way, especially about women’s role in history. We’re starting to get people more interested in funding that kind of work, which is cool, but there’s plenty of other titles still in need.
The Sealed Soil shows Wednesday October 2 and Saturday October 5, with tickets going on sale this week! Marva Nabili herself will be in attendance. Get your tickets here and see the wonderful job Jillian and her team did on this important, gorgeous film.
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