"It seems we will continue to have problems with this classification and it may be because it comes under the heading of creation rather than preservation"
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There is a quiet provocation in Lang's phrasing: the real headache isn't a technical "classification" issue at all, but a philosophical one. By suggesting the problem persists because it falls under "creation rather than preservation", he reframes an institutional task as an artistic act. Classification sounds like filing. Creation sounds like authorship. Lang is pointing at the uncomfortable truth that the moment you sort, label, or canonize art, you're not merely protecting it from loss - you're actively shaping what it is, what it means, and what future audiences think it was.
Coming from a director, this lands as craft-level insight. Film is a medium obsessed with continuity and control, yet it survives through decisions made after the fact: cuts, restorations, re-releases, "definitive editions". Calling classification a form of creation hints at the power dynamics behind cultural memory. Archivists, studios, critics, and curators don't just save works; they decide which version counts, which genres apply, which movements a film belongs to, which names get indexed and which get forgotten.
The subtext is a warning wrapped in professional pragmatism: institutions would like preservation to be neutral, because neutrality feels ethical. Lang argues it's inherently non-neutral. Every taxonomy is a story we tell about art, and every story has winners. That's why the problem doesn't go away - because it's not a clerical nuisance, it's the ongoing struggle over who gets to author the past.
Coming from a director, this lands as craft-level insight. Film is a medium obsessed with continuity and control, yet it survives through decisions made after the fact: cuts, restorations, re-releases, "definitive editions". Calling classification a form of creation hints at the power dynamics behind cultural memory. Archivists, studios, critics, and curators don't just save works; they decide which version counts, which genres apply, which movements a film belongs to, which names get indexed and which get forgotten.
The subtext is a warning wrapped in professional pragmatism: institutions would like preservation to be neutral, because neutrality feels ethical. Lang argues it's inherently non-neutral. Every taxonomy is a story we tell about art, and every story has winners. That's why the problem doesn't go away - because it's not a clerical nuisance, it's the ongoing struggle over who gets to author the past.
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| Topic | Knowledge |
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