Unlike other cultural heritage materials, film preservation and restoration has received limited technical and scientific research, leaving many aspects of film materials and color processes largely unexplored. While digital image processing offers advanced methods for detail and color reconstruction, film restoration remains highly dependent on manual intervention. Most available tools, such as semi-automatic cleaning software, are proprietary, and color reconstruction is typically performed using video editing software, often without objective reference to the original materials. The restoration process requires specialized personnel, continuous supervision, and costly equipment. This situation makes traditional film digitization and restoration highly resource-intensive, requiring significant human effort and financial investment. Furthermore, the quality of the results often depends on the expertise of the institutions and the funds available, creating a disparity in access to these processes. This issue exacerbates the gap between institutional and non-institutional archives, as well as between archives in different geographical regions. While wealthier institutions can extensively digitize, restore, and promote their audiovisual heritage, smaller archives and those in less developed areas struggle to do so, risking the invisibility of their cultural heritage. This disparity not only threatens the survival of less-documented audiovisual materials but also distorts the historical, cultural, and societal representation of different communities. The resulting imbalance hinders a comprehensive and diverse understanding of archival collections, limiting access to a pluralistic and inclusive view of cultural heritage.
The DREAM-Film project (Democratising REsearch and Restoration of Audiovisual Media and Film) seeks to develop alternative approaches to film materials analysis, digitisation, restoration, and quality assessment. By drawing on the expertise of both well-established institutional archives and smaller non-institutional centres, the project aims to make these processes more democratic and inclusive, reducing restoration costs in terms of time and resources.
Collaborating with the University of Amsterdam (UvA), the University of Milan (UniMi), the Eye Filmmuseum of Amsterdam (EYE), and the Film Center of Sarajevo (FCS), the project fosters an interdisciplinary approach to developing cost-effective and high-quality film restoration solutions. Through this research, the project contributes to open-access knowledge sharing, ensuring that restoration practices are globally inclusive and sustainable.
