Original Copies: Digital Tools for Preservation in Cinema and the Other Arts

International Conference
▸ Turin, 13-14 October 2025
Deadline CFP: 16 June 2025

As a comparatively young discipline, film preservation has looked upon other practices as a template for its philosophical foundations and ethical guidelines: Common speaking, fine arts restoration and textual criticism have been taken as the two main polarities between which the preservation of cinema could shift. While film preservation’s indebtedness to these disciplines is most apparent, though, other archival and museological practices and methodologies are sometimes overlooked and yet should be considered as allies for addressing the challenges that the discipline is facing in the digital age.

This conference aims at going back to the roots of film preservation’s affinities and differences with other fields to open up different possibilities for collaboration and explore what is there to be learned from their best practices, including how the comparison between film preservation and other indications of restoration or archival practices can affect our view of the medium’s nature itself.

Reflecting on these issues is more urgent than ever, given the revolution operated by the introduction of digital technology in film restoration and preservation practices. While different disciplines have reflected upon the consequences of the introduction of digital technology in their respective fields, they have mostly done so in isolation from one another. Even within cinema studies, discourses surrounding digital technology take different shapes depending on whether they are carried out in academia, film archives, or restoration laboratories. And yet, bringing all these discourses together is essential for having a more balanced view on digital tools for preservation, which are alternatively saluted as a lifesaver or treated as a curse.

We therefore invite scholars and practitioners in film preservation, arts restoration, and other related disciplines to come together and share each field’s best practices and hardest challenges, especially in light of the advent of digital technology, as well as reflections on the effects that preservation issues have on each field’s theory and historiography.

We encourage submissions dealing with different technical, organisational and intellectual/conceptual tools and endeavors for digital restoration, preservation, and documentation, with the goal of learning from one another and enriching our view of each other’s, as well as our own, form of art. The main issues that we would like to address include, but are by no means limited to:

1. The relationship between film preservation and other characteristics of restoration or editorial practices.
2. The relationship between original and copy in cinema and the other arts.
3. The fate of archival film material that has been rendered obsolete by the introduction of digital technology.
4. Ways in which digital tools can help saving the memory of the technological uniqueness of analog artifacts for future generations.
5. The lack of a standard protocol for documenting film preservation workflows.
6. The absence of a shared platform to make documentation accessible for practitioners, scholars, and researchers.
7. Strategies for promoting analog film collections and their history.
8. Cinema’s place within the wider cultural heritage framework, also as regards national and international laws and policies regulating restoration and preservation.
9. Object biographies of films and film collections.
10. Best practices for digitizing film and ensuring the long-term survival of the preservation files.

This conference is organised in partnership with the Centro Conservazione Restauro “La Venaria Reale” and will include a visit to its conservation center and restoration labs.

The conference will be held in English.

Call for papers deadline
June 1st, 2025

Please send a 300 to 500-word abstract and a 100-word bio (both in English) to sabrina.negri@unito.it, giuliafrancesca.muggeo@unito.it, and mariaida.bernabei@unito.it

Acceptance notices will be sent out in mid-June.