Director Atom Egoyan is frontlining an organized campaign to preserve Canadian film, video and audio materials with the formation of the Alliance for Canada’s Audio-Visual Heritage.

A recent acavh report says there are approximately 200,000 hours of high-value Canadian audiovisual material at risk due to deterioration that will require $77 million to copy and/or restore. Citing the information, educational and entertainment benefits to Canadians that preserving the materials would create, Egoyan is helming an industry-awareness program to illustrate what he says is a serious situation.

Egoyan says he was aware of the need for film preservation because of American filmmaker Martin Scorsese’s efforts in the area, but it didn’t really hit home until he discovered some of his early filmed material was already beginning to deteriorate due to humidity.

‘As filmmakers we’re so consumed with the act of making images we often take for granted that those images will be preserved,’ says Egoyan. ‘Film is a medium that needs very strenuous and organized archival conditions to ensure that it lasts. It’s one thing to produce culture. It’s equally important to preserve it.’

As a striking example of the immediacy of the problem, Egoyan points out that all the recorded material from Expo ’67 is in jeopardy.

Among the lost treasures of recorded Canadian material is Evangeline, the first feature film produced here in 1913, and the first broadcast of cbc and Radio-Canada in 1952.

The alliance will be holding a seminar to discuss the preservation of Canadian a/v material during the Toronto International Film Festival Sept. 4-13 (where there will be a screening of a restored print of Claude Jutra’s Mon Oncle Antoine), and is also seeking financial support from government, private and public sources.