Fire at Pinedine Films archive in Southampton

There has been a fire in Southampton, which has completely destroyed a private collection of around 3000 cine film reels.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-50641205

https://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/18075603.thousands-reels-film-feared-lost-blaze-hill-lane-southampton/

This was the archive for Pinedene FIlms, which ceased operating in 2012, and from what I've heard, they held recordings of TV programmes which are missing from official archives (such as Doctor Who), so this is a huge loss.

TVS country.

Indeed. Given the location, wouldn't surprise me if this was the location of the infamously missing TVS archive.

It was nothing to do with TVS. It was all film, which hampered the fire fighters as a lot were burning in their cans so had to be opened and put out first.

According to the head of Kaleidoscope Pinedene's archive was mostly duplicates and their holdings had been checked numerous times and are sure there was nothing there that is missing. Though episodes of Dr Who and The Likely Lads were found there years ago. They ceased trading in 2012

Some details here
http://8mmforum.film-tech.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=010488

Which means the Doctor Who film cans will have survived, since they'll now be with the BBC.

Is possible I guess they'd already been digitised.

Like with the UMG archive fire, it’s more the principle of them failing to protect the original prints from damage.

The UMG fire also had them storing duplicates with the originals. Which is a great idea.

Yeah, that's stupid. The whole point of duplication is to have spares if one set gets destroyed. Store them in the same place and they'll both be destroyed at the same time.

The other reason for a duplicate is to not wear out the originals when playing them. If not damaging the only copy of a recording is deemed a higher priority than protection against fire, it's clear why a duplicate would be stored alongside the original.

Then have two duplicates... there's no excuse for archives burning up.

Surely it depends on how valuable/important the material is, as Dosxuk says its all about priorities.

I don't think there's many film archives that will have an total duplicate of everything in a different location


In the Southampton case the archive did apparently mostly copies of stuff that exists elsewhere. When it was active he was selling to collectors and enthusiasts