Professional Associations
Archimedia
Focusing on preservation in a major way, Archimedia conducts a two-tier
training program for European Union nationals to ensure the successful
archiving of all the Union's films (almost 700,000 different titles!).
The organization is made up of a number of universities, archives, and
laboratories and strives to strengthen the ties between the academic and
professional worlds concerned with film preservation.
American Film Institute (AFI) National Center for Film and Video
Preservation
Martin Scorcese serves as co-chair of this arm of the AFI. The center
prides itself on being a leader in the field of preservation. They take
active steps to ensure that important artworks and social documents are
located, catalogued, and archived worldwide. Especially important is
their work on saving television images as well. Rather than serving as a
custodian the center's collection is housed amongst the Library of
Congress, MoMA, George Eastman House and other archives and consists of
over 21,000 titles. The "About Preservation" page explains why films and
videos disappear, the process of image deterioration, why preservation is
necessary, and even discusses careers in the field. Links to
preservation and archival societies worldwide are also featured.
The Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA)
This "independent individual-based professional association" does much
to further the field of moving image preservation. The AMIA holds an
annual conference, publishes a newsletter, operates AMIA-L (an electronic
discussion group to which you can subscribe), seeks to educate the public
on preservation issues, provides scholarship and internship programs in
the field, and conducts the Basic Training Workshop in moving image
archiving, plus much more. Whew! Individual annual membership is $50.
The International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF)
This collaborative effort of more than 100 archives in over 60 countries
"collects, restores, and exhibits films and cinema documentation spanning
the entire history of film." They also promote training in preservation,
assist with the development of new archives, and foster cooperation
between archives to make films available internationally. FIAF also
publishes the Journal of Film Preservation (listed as a separate link on
this page).
The International Federation of Television Archives (FIAT/IFTA)
IFTA is the English acronym, FIAT the Italian. This archive is based in
Rome and is made up of member archives whose goal is to preserve TV
productions as cultural heritage. Their site features a list of TV
archive links where you can hook up to photos of IFTA conferences, info
on video restoration, as well as the IFTA handbook. They present a
Television Archive Award annually to an outstanding TV production that
uses a significant amount of archival footage. This September the award,
and their conference, will be presented in Budapest. With Quicktime you
can download videoclips of people being interviewed at past conferences
(dry, but perhaps informative if you are really interested).
National Film Preservation Board (NFPB)
The Board advises the Library of Congress (LC) on matters pertaining to
film preservation and national recognition thereof. Their homepage can
direct you into general information on the NFPB; how films make it onto
the National Film Registry and which films have; the entire document of
"Redefining Film Preservation: A National Plan;" as well as what their
new fundraising arm, the NFPB Foundation, will do. It is kind of
heartwarming and encouraging to know that the government is actually
doing something to preserve film and video. A short, but comprehensive,
list of links can also be found under their heading of "More Film
Information on the Internet." Check this site out. The site is also
mentioned via the Motion Picture & Television Reading Room link on this
page.
Back to Film Preservation and You
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