Professional training in film restoration, digitization, and preservation ethics — built for national archives and government film institutions ready to hold this work in their own hands.
Drag to compare — damaged original vs. restored
Restoration and digitization of national heritage is still concentrated in a handful of specialist labs outside the region — so institutions routinely send their most fragile, most culturally significant material abroad.
New Light closes that gap directly: an internationally trained restoration workforce, built in-house, working to shared standards — a matter of both cost and cultural sovereignty over an archive's own record.
The curriculum moves from judgment, to technical craft, to the ethics that govern every decision — delivered as one connected program for technicians and their supervisors.
A practical decision framework for when to correct a defect independently versus escalate it for review — set before any hands-on work begins.
The complete craft: physical handling, non-destructive scanning workflow, restoration tools, and color grading — applying the framework in practice.
Restoration ethics on FIAF lines: minimal intervention, documenting every alteration, and the custodial responsibility an archive owes future generations.
A parallel curriculum for supervisors and decision-makers is also available — covering workflow design, budget and damage-tier triage, element sourcing, and the module institutions most often ask to expand: establishing and defending color reference authority for a locked grading decision.
Six working days across two weeks, on your own equipment and elements — then supervised practice on live material, because training alone doesn't build a workforce.
On-site, on your material. Delivered at your facilities, using institutional elements as training stock — so staff learn on exactly what they'll be working with. After each cycle, the program lead stays on to supervise implementation, bridging the classroom and independent professional judgment.
Not a budget timeline. Not a staffing timeline.
Acetate undergoes autocatalytic hydrolysis — once vinegar syndrome begins, it accelerates regardless of storage. Nitrate is chemically unstable and a fire hazard at scale.
A trained local workforce that can triage and act without waiting on an outside vendor's availability is, by itself, a preservation safeguard.
The curriculum is built and delivered by a film restoration supervisor whose work spans workflow design, element sourcing, digitization oversight, and color grading supervision for theatrical re-release.
It draws on direct, hands-on experience across many film eras, stock types, and damage conditions — not academic study of preservation at a distance. The through-line is a conviction that the knowledge to save a country's moving-image heritage shouldn't have to be flown in every time.
A short note about your material and where you're headed is enough to start. I'll reply with how a program cycle could fit your institution.