The Audio-Visual Preservation Trust is looking to the Academy of Canada Cinema and Television to carry on its work, though officials remain coy about any future efforts to maintain the movies of the past.

ACCT chairman Ron Cohen tells Playback Daily that the Academy is ‘finalizing arrangements’ with the now-defunct Trust, which recently shut down due to lack of government funding, and plans on ‘melding… the Trust’s preservation goals with its own mandate.’ (Know more? Email us!)

The AV Trust since 1996 worked to preserve and restore film, television and audio recordings. It ran aground after Ottawa last year backed out of the Canadian Feature Films Education and Access program and the Canadian Musical Memories program.

‘It’s the end of the Trust,’ says AV Trust president David Novek, but, ‘with movement to the Academy it’s the beginning of a new era.’

The closure put into limbo restoration work on two classic titles, 1974’s The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz and Les fleurs sauvages from 1982.

The films were to be restored with funds from Astral Media, which has supported work on 12 Canadian titles including Atom Egoyan’s Exotica, François Girard’s Thirty-two Short Films About Glenn Gould and 1973’s The Death of a Lumberjack, from the late Gilles Carle.

Contrary to earlier reports, Astral Television Networks president John Riley says the company will continue to support the Trust’s work, regardless of any new structure.

‘It is our intention to continue these activities in the future,’ he says. Astral has contributed roughly $700,000 to the Trust in all.

The Trust also provided financial support to non-profit organizations such as libraries, universities and film festivals, which were doing their own restoration and preservation work on film, audio recordings and TV.