Documentary moviemakers are perpetually faced with the challenge of telling stories visually without too much reliance on static ‘talking heads’ material. Stock footage, then, becomes the central means of recreating periods and settings, especially on projects with a historical bent. When a doc takes on a subject not previously tackled, its producers assume the role of detectives, tracking down obscure footage to bring their stories to life.

This was the task facing the makers of The Struma, a doc about the Holocaust in Romania, coproduced by Toronto-based Associated Producers’ Simcha Jacobovici, who also directed, and Felix Golubev, along with U.K.’s Yorkshire Television.

The film sheds light on a notorious incident that unfolded in December 1941 involving The Struma, a refugee boat crammed with nearly 800 Romanian Jews that set sail for British-controlled Palestine. When the dilapidated boat’s engine failed, it was stranded in the Istanbul harbor, where it remained for 71 days as the British government debated granting the refugees visas to Palestine. The Turkish government, looking to wash its hands of the affair, finally towed the boat back into the Black Sea. Twelve hours later it was torpedoed, with only one passenger surviving. For years it was assumed a Nazi submarine was responsible, but Jacobovici came across evidence, including the memoirs of a Russian sub-mariner who was directly involved, that a Soviet sub had actually committed the act.

The film incorporates contemporary components, such as British diver Greg Buxton’s quest to find the sunken Struma, on which his grandparents had died, as well as an interview with David Stoliar, the ship’s lone survivor. But no existing visual record of the doomed boat could be found, save for a photograph from a Turkish newspaper that cannot be authenticated. The producers were, however, able to unearth some significant visual material relating to the incident.

‘We have a big scoop,’ Golubev proclaims. ‘We have footage of the actual sub that torpedoed The Struma. I found it in the Russian archives. [We see] the sub number – SH213 – on the side of a torpedo.’

Jacobovici also uses an image from another refugee boat, the Pan Crescent, to illustrate the kinds of conditions The Struma passengers must have faced. The Pan Crescent was one of a pair of ships that set sail from Bulgaria to Cyprus in 1947 with some 15,000 illegal immigrants. What makes mention of this ship particularly relevant is the fact that Jacobovici’s father had been on board. The producers located the shot at the Steven Spielberg Jewish Film Archive in Israel.

Other important material was obtained through private sources, including Tereska Levin, widow of writer/director Meyer Levin. She provided color 16mm footage her husband had shot for his 1947 film The Illegals (aka Al Tafhidunu), which further helped visualize the cramped quarters on refugee ships of that era.

Government archives, which charge only for transfer fees, provided much of the film’s key footage. The film refers to the ‘death march,’ in which German soldiers marched Romanian Jews through the countryside to Transnistria in the Ukraine. Many died from the cold, and many of those who didn’t were shot. As it turns out, a Nazi soldier filmed the event, and the producers were able to find 19 seconds of never-before shown footage of it in the German archives.

Over in Romania, the producers unearthed footage of Nazi German and Romanian troops and shots of Ion Antonescu, Romania’s fascist wartime ruler. At the National Archives and Records Administration in Maryland they procured 10 seconds of public domain film of Hitler meeting with the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. Other sources they tapped included The National Center for Jewish Film at Massachusetts’ Brandeis University, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and New York’s Archive Films.

The ease of digital

In 10 years of serving as associate producer on docs, Golubev has seen digital innovations facilitate the entire stock footage process.

‘Before, everything was on reels,’ he explains. ‘[Footage companies] would give you the screener and you would have to send them time codes [identifying what you want]. They would then have to send the footage to the lab to transfer it from film to video. It was a very extensive process. Now they have everything on digital files. When it comes to photos, they’ll just e-mail you a low-resolution file, you choose [what you want], and after you pay they’ll send you the high-res, which you load into your computer editing machine.’

In terms of storage, material previously on analog tape is now being archived on more compact DVDs and digital tape, while the standard format for footage delivery remains Beta SP tape.

On The Struma, Toronto post house Imarion transferred the Beta SP material to digital Betacam for online editing. It was up to Imarion to maintain a streamlined look for all the stock footage coming from so many disparate sources.

‘Some of the black-and-white footage we had was of very poor quality, and you would not believe the difference [Imarion] made,’ Golubev says. ‘They made it look more contrasty and made the color correction levels comparable to the rest of the documentary.’

Golubev points to the usefulness of Web search engines such as Footage.net, which allows users, at no cost, to perform an instant search of more than 700 stock footage collections around the world. For example, inputting the keyword Trudeau reveals 507 records in 14 databases, with contact info for each source. Golubev adds, however, that with the convenience enabled by digital technology comes higher costs.

‘Lots of different little archives are merging, bringing the prices up,’ he says. ‘It’s a seller’s market. The average price for archival material is about $50 to $70 per second.’

Golubev says the biggest problem with stock footage is the issue of licence fees, with up to three or four companies often claiming rights to the same material, in some cases simply by virtue of the fact they have cleaned up the footage and created a master. ‘It’s a very murky area,’ he says.

The Struma has had exclusive screenings in Toronto and Vancouver and has been submitted for Academy Award consideration. It is slated to air on History Television next year.

-www.apdocs.com (Associate Producers)

-www.imarion.com

-www.footage.net