Pinewood Studios joins forces to preserve the British Library film archive

StudioCanal's U.K. distrib Optimum Releasing and Pinewood Studios have teamed up to protect British movie classics.
The pair have launched an initiative to preserve the British Library Archive - Variety reports.

Pinewood has agreed to the construction of two state-of-the-art cold storage facilities on the Pinewood lot, which are expected to be completed by early 2010 and will store some of the older more fragile stock.

Pinewood will also provide a large amount of the film and audio restoration services for the film archive, and will start with restorations of three classic titles -- Michael Powell's "Peeping Tom," Robert Hamer's "Kind Hearts and Coronets" and Lionel Jeffries' "The Railway Children."

The British Library Archive is home to some 1,400 classic British films, including Carol Reed's "The Third Man," Alexander Mackendrick's "The Ladykillers" and Michael Anderson's "The Dam Busters."

The archive has been based at Pinewood for the past 20 years.

Optimum has also taken over management of the archive content, including responsibility for sales and merchandising of the titles; each of the classics will be re-released in theaters and be made available in Blu-ray and DVD.

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