How are classic film preserved

A.� Film preservation is a relatively new field, and there is a shortage of skilled technicians for such specialist films. Part of the problem facing the film industry is the cost involved. A typical black-and-white film can cost $50,000 to preserve and restore, while a colour film costs $300,000. The renewal of David Lean's epic Lawrence of Arabia took a year and cost $1 million.

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Q.� How do the films deteriorate

A.� The problem is early films were made on combustible material. Already, 90 per cent of films made before 1920 and half of the 21,000 shorts and feature films shot before 1950 have perished. Much historic footage was destroyed by the studios themselves for safety reasons.

Old stock was composed of silver cellulose nitrate, and films made before 1950 possess properties that are similar to those of gunpowder. As the material ages, it breaks down, turns to jelly or dust, and can explode. The colour of films can also fade, usually to a sort of pink obscurity, or scratches and tears can occur.

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Q.� Which movies have been lost

A.� The original version of Orson Welles's 1942 masterpiece The Magnificent Ambersons is among the significant movies that has been lost. Other major losses include Remodelling Her Husband (1920), the only film directed by the actress Lillian Gish, and Little Red Riding Hood, a 1922 cartoon made by Walt Disney before he found fame and fortune in Hollywood.

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Q.� Is the film industry taking action

In 1990, along with seven eminent directors including Steven Spielberg and Francis Ford Coppola, he founded a film foundation which has raised more than $4 million (�2.7 million) for various archives that preserve reels from the early days of cinema.

Scorcese is hoping that a cultural exchange between the US and Italy with be followed by an exchange with other countries, including the UK.�

At the Venice Film Festival recently, Scorcese warned that a lack of interest in learning from the old masters will lead to a deterioration in standards of film-making and the loss of historic reels because of this indifferent attitude. He has publicly stated that films such as Bicycle Thieves, the Vittorio De Sica's 1948 neorealist classic about the search for a stolen bike, made a huge impression on him.

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By Katharine MacColl