Film preservation is the ongoing effort to prevent the permanent loss of moving images. With an estimated 70% of all silent films already gone, it is one of the most urgent problems in cultural heritage.
Fight Club's ending was rewritten for China, Disney removed a slur from The French Connection, and streaming platforms can alter films silently. Why physical media remains the only immutable record of what directors actually made.
When Warner Bros Discovery deleted Batgirl and removed Looney Tunes from HBO Max for tax write-offs, much became permanently inaccessible. Why streaming has ended accidental film preservation and what happens when platforms decide content isn't worth keeping.
How a missing copyright notice transformed Night of the Living Dead into public domain and made horror accessible to everyone whilst nearly destroying the film itself.
