This paper addresses the lack of published work on the preservation of digital materials within European film heritage institutions (FHIs).
1
In the long-term, technological change might have ...relevant consequences, on the sustainability of film preservation, affecting the ability to write film history and experience cultural memories. Although there is general awareness of the complexity and the cost of maintenance of digital preservation infrastructures, we have little knowledge of what specifically film heritage institutions are doing to address these challenges. Based on elite interviews with leading film archivists and analysis of relevant policy documents, this paper shows that FHIs are actively engaging with technological and institutional change and implementing valuable initiatives. However, this paper confirms that, roughly 10 years since the widespread of digital cinema distribution, FHIs are generally still striving to provide long-term sustainable and trustworthy solutions to safeguard the digital materials that they are acquiring or creating via digitisation. Although some institutions have built fairly reliable infrastructures, problems still arise from the instability of the information technology sector and from its persistent strategies of planned obsolescence.
This text examines the phenomenon of the wide-ranging acquisition of archive films into the Netflix library and tries to understand it in terms of the current situation in the VOD market and the ...perspective of redefining the importance of film heritage in the streaming era. It argues that Netflix’s shift to “classics” is not just part of the company’s general expansion strategy but must be seen in broader context of current VOD market regulations as well as Netflix localization tactics in specific national markets. Most of these films, however, are hidden from the general viewer. Therefore, this study combines analysis of personalization tactics and analysis of curation of “classic movies” to explore how Netflix, with the help of archival films, performs middle-brow cultural taste, and at the same time complicates the relationship between accessibility and discoverability of film heritage online.
The digital optimism of the past decade has been reflected in many policy documents related to cultural heritage in which digital technology is portrayed as a great opportunity to bring cultural ...heritage to a much wider audience. This potential has been contested as widening access has proved much more complex than some at first thought. Despite that, in this paper we argue that curators of national silent film collections can realistically get inspired by grassroots participatory projects. We consider two digital projects: silent feature films in the British context; and silent home movies in Italy. The first study considers the BFI Player as part of the broader BFI digital strategy. We examine the development of institutional practices to digitally publish silent films, the role of the archive and curators, and the new public experiences of silent cinema. The second study is a grassroots project that looks at the role of digitisation in the re-use of digitised footage from Sicilian home movie collections. The study explores digital forms of organisation and access to this material and how they encourage creative reuse. We extrapolate some best practices that curators and policy makers might find useful and could follow nationally and locally.
Streaming-Angebote sind derzeit ein allgegenwärtiges Thema, doch die aktuelle Diskussion greift dabei oft zu kurz. Dieser Beitrag betrachtet grundlegende Entwicklungen und Überlegungen in der ...Zugänglichmachung vom digitalen Bewegtbild aus der Perspektive einer filmwissenschaftlichen und filmkulturellen Institution, dem DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum, Frankfurt am Main, und skizziert, wie sich Video-Streaming als technische Kapazität in eine Strategie zur öffentlichen Vermittlung des Filmerbes einbringt.
This article shows how creative approaches can contribute to a productive engagement with losses in film heritage. By (re)producing and (re)circulating images, sounds and narratives, documentaries on ...film heritage in particular relate to larger contexts of cultural and moving image memory. On the one hand, they are premediated by older productions, including feature films. On the other hand, they bring in new artistic, political and/or social perspectives. Golden Slumbers (Davy Chou, 2012), a documentary about Cambodia's lost film heritage before the Khmer Rouge period, serves as an example to illustrate these ideas. It carries a dual perspective that is simultaneously post-migratory and marked by (French) cinephilia as a cinematographic memory culture. In order to do justice to this complexity, dynamic concepts from the field of memory studies such as Svetlana Boym’s notion of nostalgia (Boym 2001) and Michael Rothberg’s concept of multidirectional memory (Rothberg 2009) are drawn on alongside literature on the history and theory of (French) cinephilia. In this way, cinephilia is reimagined as a multidirectional moving image memory culture that plays a particularly important but also complex role with regard to film heritage. In conclusion, several questions are outlined that need to be explored in further research.
Film heritage and neoliberalism Antoniazzi, Luca
Museum management and curatorship (1990),
01/2019, Letnik:
34, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
This paper analyses the impact of neoliberal policies on the film heritage sector at the European level. I first describe the specific debate to which this paper contributes, a conversation that ...deals with the relationship between neoliberalism and digital technology. With the aim of expanding the horizon of the debate beyond technology, I adopt an analytical framework that draws on the contribution of critical cultural policy scholars who have provided convincing accounts of neoliberalism in the cultural sector. Neoliberalism has had an impact on film heritage approximately in the same ways that it has on the cultural sector as a whole. In fact, economic instrumentalism, New Public Management and corporatisation - the three main features of neoliberal cultural policy - have found their ways into the film heritage sector. In spite of this, neoliberalism does not yet seem to have created a paradigmatic change, as the key features of the field persist. In the conclusion some potential ways forward are suggested.
Audiovisual archiving has two main objectives: preservation of heritage and ensuring its accessibility. In this article, I would like to direct the focus especially on the latter. In the framework of ...cultural memory, I would like to explore the current policies and practices of the Czech National Film Archive (NFA) that govern access to its digitized collections. The adoption of digital technologies has caused profound changes not only in storing of audiovisual works, but also in their exhibition, distribution and sharing. The goal of this article is to review the curatorial processes of the NFA by which the works are selected for priority digitization and digital restoration and to map at least the most important platforms at which digitized content is exhibited or shared. From the point of view of memory, it is meaningful to ask what parts of Czech cinematography are highlighted and why, and also to look at how is the archival footage presented to contemporary public, for example through cataloging, descriptive or interpretive texts and other information that create the framework for its reception.
PDF
