RESTORATION
The act of preservation is a quarrel with the conditions of time. Since the dawn of civilization the human race has consciously pursued permanence, unconsciously building on the wreckage of what came before. Our efforts to stave off the inevitable in a fundamental sense just hastens it: preserving is by definition intervening in a native state of flux.
To restore a work is to knowingly tamper and alter, to work responsively and correctively with natural and man-made ravages of time and chance. The struggle itself is where a work is renewed: the point at which the finite object meets the infinite world it represents, a continuous act of destruction and regeneration.
see list of restored films here
see list of essays and lectures here
