The Correctable Text: Practices and Discourses of Fan Preservations/Restorations and the Quest for the Original Experience

Fan communities endeavor to produce “fan preservations” and “restorations”, both by intervening on faulty home video editions so to make them consistent with the original version and by digitizing film prints and restoring them. The intervention are relative to both picture and sound, and entail a meticulous process of research and obtainment of various materials. The results are notable, although there is the problem of the legality of the operation and of the access; however, there are some cases of official fan restorations. This article aims at discussing on the phenomenon stressing how it contributes in stimulating both a culture of philology (the preservation of films in their originally released version) and a philosophy of film as a set of multifarious experiences that may have resonance on the big distribution, as well as in peculiar operations such as the “unrestored” 70mm print of 2001: A Space Odyssey.