<
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/mar/25/martin-scorsese-vhs-video-collection-archive>
"In the basement of the University of Colorado Boulder’s main library, an
85-year-old stone fortress built in the Italian rural style, the archives of
the school’s Rare and Distinctive Collections occupy rows of shelves as far as
the eye can see. Here, amid yellowed books, historical maps and medieval
manuscripts, Martin Scorsese has quietly made public a very private
preoccupation. More than 50 storage boxes hold thousands of VHS tapes that
contain films and television programs Scorsese recorded directly from broadcast
television. The renowned director and film preservationist, it turns out, was
also, for decades, a prolific guerrilla archivist.
Long before YouTube and Netflix gave the world instant access to a deep
repository of media, Scorsese began the project of amassing his own private
on-demand video library. In each week’s
TV Guide, he would note the movies
and shows that caught his interest. A full-time video archivist in Scorsese’s
New York office would then record the telecasts from a kind of audiovisual hub
made up of multiple VCRs and monitors, which could often be active at all
hours. The tapes were meticulously labeled, cataloged initially using a
library-like card system and later a computer, and filed away for Scorsese’s
personal viewing and research.
Spanning the 1980s through the 2000s, the Martin Scorsese VHS Tape Collection
contains more than 4,400 distinct titles, including features, documentaries,
shorts, history programs and award shows. Perusing the online catalogue, you’ll
find everything from European arthouse masterpieces to an episode of Live with
Regis and Kathie Lee featuring Scorsese’s beloved mother, Catherine, who made
regular cameos in her son’s films. As the archive steadily grew, Scorsese made
the videos an essential part of his film-making process. Typically during
pre-production, he would ask his archivist to pull tapes of various films, many
of which were not otherwise available on home video. He would then hand out the
tapes to the cast and crew to serve as reference materials."
Via Esther Schindler.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
