Lindgren's approach to the preservation of film materials is often contrasted with that of Henri Langlois, the founder of the Cinémathèque Française; the scientific against the romantic.
Along with Langlois though, Lindgren played a major role in the development of FIAF, the International Federation of Film Archives.
It is argued that the NFA gained a reputation for being uncooperative in this period, and Lindgren reportedly applied the Alizarin Red test (a disputed means of checking for the extent of nitrate decomposition) to films which were on loan from other institutions.
Langlois in contrast had an eccentric, or non-existent, approach to record keeping, and the Cinémathèque suffered a nitrate fire on 10 July 1959.
When the BFI published Missing Believed Lost (1992), and launched an accompanying campaign, it was forced to admit that some of the featured titles, all made during the nitrate era, had previously been rejected as possible acquisitions.