Polar HQ Film Scanner Used to Recover Original Camera Negative of Ingmar Bergman's "Wild Strawberries"

DFT recently had the privilege of welcoming representatives of the Swedish Film Institute (SFI) to its headquarters in Darmstadt. 
The SFI brought with them a cinematic treasure: a reel of the original black-and-white camera negative of Ingmar Bergman's 1957 classic "Smultronstället" (Wild Strawberries). 
“Wild Strawberries” is a deeply philosophical film that follows the journey of 78-year-old Professor Isak Borg, who embarks on a road trip to receive an honorary degree, reflecting on his past and contemplating his life’s meaning. 

Upon its release in 1957, the film was very well received in Sweden and internationally for its exploration of themes such as aging, memory, and the search for redemption. It won the Golden Bear for Best Film at the 8th Berlin International Film Festival in 1958 and is often considered to be Bergman’s best film and a classic of world cinema. (See: Murray Edward, Ten film classics.)

Polar HQ Enables Scan of Original Camera Negative with Severe Perforation Damage

The Swedish Film Institute had acquired the original camera negative of “Wild Strawberries” some time ago, at which point one reel had already been severely damaged. 
Large portions of the left-side perforations were missing. The extensive damage to the film’s perforations posed fundamental challenges for conventional scanners. 
Failing synchronization and the significantly reduced width of the 35mm stock rendered the reel virtually impossible to scan.

Polar HQ was employed to overcome these challenges and enabled the successful scanning of the severely damaged reel. 
Polar HQ's Optical Pin Registration system (OPR) detects all visible perforation holes and computes relative vectors between them. The scanner’s software then reconstructs any missing or inconsistent position data enabling precise film transport and image stabilization. 
Additionally, Polar HQ’s Smart Motion Gate effectively manages the reduced width of the film, as its mechanical film transport and guidance systems are specifically designed to accommodate such defects. 

DFT completed the scan of the damaged reel in just four hours. Without Polar HQ the restoration would have required a complex manual process that would have taken weeks or even months to complete. The Polar HQ scan ultimately saved the SFI considerable time and cost.

Per Legelius and Fredrik Rundqvist of the Swedish Film Institute supervised the scan at DFT's digitization center in Darmstadt. Both were impressed by how well Polar HQ handled the damaged film. 
“We were really hoping everything would work out on this scanner,” said Per Legelius, Head of Digitization and Restoration at the SFI. “And it has worked very well on the Polar HQ – we are very happy about that. 
It saves us from having to do a manual restoration just to prepare it for scanning on a conventional scanner."

Watch the interview with Per Legelius, SFI

Per Legelius discusses the significance of “Wild Strawberries” and the technical challenges that prevented digitization of its original camera negative until now. Click here to watch the full interview with Michael Schneider of DFT. 

Image Credits: © SF Studios, Digital Film Technology GmbH