A Film Scholar’s Guide to Writing Silent Film Restoration Reports

Authoritative film archival texts demand documentation of film restoration projects. Film archives often produce overly technical internal documentation, and although researchers occasionally publish film restoration reports, the ratio of reports to restoration projects is skewed in favour of films that stir academic debate. Film scholars can be recruited to engage with archives to write reports for lesser-known films, thereby increasing and improving film restoration documentation. However, the relationship between film scholars and film archivists must be improved, as these groups tend not to interact during the film restoration process. Based on a survey of 30 silent film restoration reports, a guide is provided to help film scholars approach archives and archivists to attain information for those reports. The guide is applied to Gräfin Küchenfee (1918), a silent film restored by EYE Filmmuseum for Il Cinema Ritrovato, to showcase usage of the guide and produce a report on the film’s restoration.