Lavishly Illustrated Book Discusses Efforts to Preserve and Restore Films

If you want to know more about film preservation, check out the new book, “Our Movie Heritage” (Rutgers University Press, $45), by Tom McGreevey and Joanna L. Yeck, with a foreword by Leonard Maltin.

The lavishly illustrated book examines the race in both the public and private sectors to salvage what films are left in vaults, theaters and private collections and discusses the basics of film preservation with archivists and film restoration experts. McGreevey and Yeck profile the efforts of each of the six main archives and of Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation.

“Our Movie Heritage” also introduces readers to the National Film Registry, which requires the Library of Congress to chose 25 American films each year to be preserved in their original release versions by the library, and the new National Film Preservation Foundation, which will provide private funds to preserve and restore films.

“Without films there can be no real film history,” says Yeck. “The book turned out the way it needed to be. It needed to have beautiful pictures so when you open it up, the pictures [show] the sense of loss. Unless you have a personal sense of loss, nobody is going to dig in their pockets and give money.”

McGreevey acknowledges that a lot of people think a movie is just entertainment and that too much money is being spent to save them. “People say when you’re dead, you’re dead,” he says. “We’re trying to hit the people who care about it.”