Serge Bromberg, 61, is the most famous French film restoration and protection expert. He was the artistic director of the Annecy International Animation Film Festival in France (1999-2012); out of his love for old films, he founded Lobster Films in 1985, specializing in collecting, restoring and reissuing various The classic old film has produced a large number of restored works including the color version of "A Trip to the Moon" and Laurel Hardy's early works, and enjoys a high reputation in the global film industry.

However, just last week, he was taken to the court of Creteil, a suburb of Paris, France, as a defendant. The reason was precisely because of the unfavorable storage of old film, which unfortunately caused a fire and caused casualties. It is reported that the Lobster Film Company, headquartered in the 11th arrondissement of Paris, currently has as many as 50,000 old movies in its possession, with a total of 210,000 old films. Even so, Serge Bloomberg’s collection of old movies has not stopped. In order to continue to expand the scale, he left the center of Paris, where the land is very expensive, and built an eight-story building in Vincennes, a small town on the eastern outskirts of Paris. In the basement of the company, a private warehouse was built to store 965 old film reels.

Serge Bloomberg

According to what he said in court, these films were originally planned to be transferred to the French Film Center for restoration, but there were delays due to various reasons. Unexpectedly, in the middle of the night on August 11, 2020, due to the high ambient temperature, this batch of films spontaneously ignited and exploded. The fire spread to the entire building, causing one of the upstairs residents to be burned to death, and another person escaped from the fire from the fourth floor. He jumped off and fell to his death on the spot. As a result, Sergey Bloomberg was charged with accidental death. "I just want to say that the responsibility for this matter lies entirely with me. It's all my fault. My crime is unforgivable, and I dare not expect to be forgiven." Bloomberg said in court.

Prosecutor Missiva Chermak-Felonneau pointed out that Sergey Bloomberg stored a large amount of film in the basement of the building without prior approval from any unit, and the basement did not install a fire alarm device. The firewall in the building has also been fragile for a long time, so it completely burned down not long after the fire broke out, and failed to achieve the fire-stopping effect it should have.

What's more serious is that Bloomberg has been engaged in the collection of old movies for decades, and he is logically clear about the flammability and danger of old movies. Imprisonment plus a fine of 150,000 euros is a heavy punishment. The case is expected to be finally pronounced in January next year.

The occurrence of this case is ultimately related to the evolution of the film medium. Today's film projections have basically been completely digitized, and traditional film films have gradually withdrawn from the stage of history. Looking back at the history of motion picture film, it has actually gone through several stages of development.

The earliest first-generation film used nitrocellulose as the film base, which contained flammable and explosive ammonium nitrate components, making this nitrocellulose-based film, commonly known as celluloid, a natural dangerous product. Not only a little carelessness will cause a fire due to the overheating of the machinery during the screening process-there is a related plot in the movie "Paradise Cinema", and it is usually stored in a warehouse, and there are also strict security requirements. Not to mention encountering Mars, even if there is no open flame, but the ambient temperature is too high, spontaneous combustion may still occur.

In "Paradise Cinema", because the film caught fire, the theater was burned down.

Once caught on fire, nitrate-based film is difficult to extinguish with water alone. Because the molecular structure of nitrocellulose itself contains enough oxygen, it does not need air as a medium, and the nitrocellulose-based film can still keep burning even if it is completely immersed in water after ignition. Therefore, once the film catches fire, it is very difficult to extinguish the fire, and it is almost impossible to watch them burn out until they are completely burned.

Historically, in 1914 alone, four film companies and one film processing and printing factory in the United States suffered from Zhu Rong's calamity. Tens of millions of feet of film film were burned, causing huge property losses, and the loss of film cultural property is even more immeasurable. In fact, relatively non-flammable acetate-based film had been invented at this time, but for various reasons, it was not until the middle of the last century that acetate-based film completely replaced nitrate-based film and was used in film shooting. Because of this, movies have been born for more than a hundred years, and almost all the movies completed in the first half of the production use this kind of flammable film. The cultural heritage left to future generations can be said to be a huge gunpowder storehouse.

In July 1937, the film library of 20th Century Fox Pictures caught fire due to the spontaneous combustion of film, resulting in one death and two injuries. Almost all the silent films produced by this film studio, which was merged by many old Hollywood companies before 1932, were wiped out. Moreover, there are no other copies of these films in the world, in other words, they have been completely erased from history.

In 1937, Fox's library fire destroyed countless film copies.

In August 1965, the MGM No. 7 film warehouse ignited the stored nitrate-based film due to an electrical short circuit, and all the films were burned, including precious copies of "The Divine Woman" (The Divine Woman, 1928) starring Garbo. its columns.

Only fragments of "The Holy Woman" starring Garbo exist today.

In 1978, the National Archives and Records Administration of the United States and the Eastman Museum successively had stock film spontaneous combustion accidents, causing heavy losses, which once again sounded the alarm for the industry. Since then, relevant units around the world have become more cautious and standardized in the preservation of nitrate-based films. These old films are regarded as highly dangerous goods, and there are strict fire protection requirements for storage. The number of fire accidents has been greatly reduced. I never thought that in 2020, when the film has almost withdrawn from the stage of history, another tragedy that caused casualties occurred again.

Serge Bloomberg was born in the southern suburbs of Paris in 1961. When he was eight years old, his father gave him a small Super 8 film projector and a film of Chaplin's silent film "The Night of the Show". After that, my whole life changed."

In an interview with the media in the past, Bloomberg, who was obsessed with the protection of old films, once said that looking for lost old films was, for him, a treasure hunt. "What's the best moment in life? That's when you're looking at a stack of film tins. The tins are rusty and there's no sign of what movie it is, so you can just imagine,' maybe It's some old long-lost Méliès or Chaplin movie hidden in there!'"

In 2009, Bloomberg wrote and directed the documentary "Henri-George Clouzot's Hell", which rediscovered a decades-old film history and won the French Film César Award for Best Documentary. In 2011, he co-directed the documentary "Extraordinary Journey", which tells the restoration and protection process of the masterpiece "Travel to the Moon" by the early film master Méliès. When it was screened at the 2019 Shanghai International Film Festival, it also won the Chinese The audience responded enthusiastically.

The Inferno of Henri-Georges Clouzot poster

"Extraordinary Journey" poster

At present, Serge Bloomberg is also serving as the executive director of the French Film Archive. He has been awarded the French Ministry of Culture's Art and Letters Medal, and has also received awards from the New York Film Critics Association, the San Francisco Film Festival, and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. and Outstanding Contribution Awards from organizations such as the Telluride Film Festival.

In addition to restoring films, Bloomberg himself is also a good pianist, and often performs live at film festivals around the world, accompaniment to the soundtracks for silent films he finds. Before each performance, he likes to play tricks, and he will show off a little "magic" on purpose, take some useless old films, and show their spontaneous combustion characteristics to the audience. fire" name. Unexpectedly, this time he made a big mistake on his favorite and most familiar old film, which is really embarrassing.

Bloomberg designed the little magic of "tempering" based on the property of nitrate-based film that is prone to spontaneous combustion.