Film Studies: MOMI, why did you leave us?

It was a grand idea to have a Museum of the Moving Image. But MOMI closed down, 31 August 1999, and now the British Film Institute has conceded that we cannot expect to see its like again. There are grander ideas afoot – like moving most of the BFI to a nearby South Bank location – but those schemes are in trouble, too, or hanging in the air. Altogether, it's not the most auspicious way of greeting the 50th birthday of the NFT.

On the other hand, this nation's celebration of film has always had problems. For 50 years, the NFT has dwelled in what felt like temporary housing, pushed under the arches of Waterloo Bridge. But as time goes by, so that cramped home begins to seem secure and natural – it can hardly be lost without the abandonment of the bridge.

Harsh economics tell the story of MOMI's decline. When it opened, in 1988, it had 520,000 visitors a year. By the financial year 1998-1999, that number had slipped to 325,000. That's all the sadder in view of the pioneering stance MOMI had taken (there is still nothing comparable in Los Angeles, the city that ought to have a great museum for the culture of film).

MOMI could lead adult and child together through the history of the medium, with a lot of fun and showmanship. Yes, it was not difficult to have costumes, the original Daleks, set designs, galleries of stills and so on, but this museum offered a working version of the Kino trains that tried to unite the early Soviet republics through film. It recaptured the spirit of movie-going when it was a mass medium, yet it also gave ample space to the world of special effects. In a country justly proud of its museums, MOMI was an international achievement, only rivalled by the exhibits of the Paris Cinematheque.

So the loss is cruel. Anthony Smith, a former director of the BFI, and much concerned with raising the money for MOMI (£14.5m, a lot of it from the Getty family) calls this decision appalling. But the drop in attendance is inescapable, and the BFI admits that some of this has to do with their inability to maintain the building and vary the exhibit material.

For example, in the summer of 2001, at the Pompidou in Paris, there was a magnificent show devoted to the work of Alfred Hitchcock. That show should have come to London, and to MOMI, but the building was closed by then. There are so many aspects of film history that would make a dazzling exhibition – the UFA years in Germany, the Eisenstein era (there was such a show at the Hayward, in 1988), the New Wave moment, to say nothing of Hollywood in its golden age. Perhaps MOMI lacked the nerve, or the means, to be the natural site (and originator) of some of those shows.

The BFI Library is unique in size and range, yet it seldom has the chance to mount shows. It has the extraordinary papers of Michael Powell. When Powell was artist-in-residence at Dartmouth College in 1980, the art gallery at the college mounted a fascinating Powell show with limited means.

MOMI could have offered the real thing. In America, this autumn, a television channel is doing a tribute to Ealing Studios – another great opportunity for MOMI (imagine kids climbing over the Titfield Thunderbolt).

Where does the BFI stand now? There is a plan to locate all its establishments (except the Archive) at Jubilee Gardens. That future plan would involve some exhibition space and there is still a hope that elements of MOMI might come back there. But the present thinking cannot see the Jubilee Gardens dream becoming real before 2007 – and that is a long shot. For there are still many imponderables unresolved in the design of the new South Bank Centre, a place where all the arts must live together. The old MOMI building is shut down, though its theatre is actually NFT 3 now. The Kino train? Off in some siding of oblivion, next to the Titfield Thunderbolt maybe.

The lesson may be that only dogged, awkward endurance can compete with bureaucracy, funding problems and a national attitude that says, well, if film is a business can't it look after itself? The answer to that is no and it's painful to see such a brash, appealing celebration of popular history in retreat.