Origin stories : the provenance of four archival prints of Death Weekend (1976)

Even as contemporary film studies programs incorporate archival studies into courses, conventional film history, criticism, curatorial writing, and scholarly discourse rarely consider the physical characteristics and technical information intrinsic to the print itself or, indeed the negative elements from which prints are generated. Through an examination of four archival prints of Death Weekend (1976) – a film co-produced by Cinépix and Quadrant Films with funding from the Canadian Film Development Corporation – the thesis proposes a condensed timeline of key events in the life cycle of the prints starting with creation at a film processing lab and ending with acquisition by an archive. The thesis demonstrates that each print is physically unique and has unique provenance. It shows the importance of these factors, seeking to correct the rampant marginalization of the work of the lab and archive by privileging their contributions and foregrounding the preserved prints as rare objects.