Today is World Day for Audiovisual Heritage
posted October 26, 2017
Today (27 October) is World Day for Audiovisual Heritage. The 2017 theme is "Discover, Remember, and Share." Sharing is what many archives around the world are doing, in varied activities, to bring members of the public and film-archive specialists together to mark the contributions of audiovisual-preservation professionals and institutions. The many, varied events illustrate the range of activities that archives undertake.
Archive Portrait: The Huntley Film Archives
posted October 23, 2017
The Huntley Film Archives, based in rural Herefordshire, holds a collection of more than 80,000 film titles, which makes it one of the largest commercial film libraries in the United Kingdom. Huntley licenses items to broadcasters and film-production companies, dated from 1895 to the present, in such fields as social history from Britain and around the world in such areas as advertising, architecture, art, education, entertainment, fashion, food, history, industry, media and technology, medicine, public personalities, religion, science, and transport.
Mexican Film Archive Struck by Major Earthquake
posted September 25, 2017
The major earthquake that struck Mexico City and surrounding areas on September 19 caused loss of at least 319 lives, and destroyed many buildings including thousands of homes. Among structures seriously damaged by the tremor was Permanencia Voluntaria Film Archive, the only independent film archive in Mexico specializing in the collection and preservation of popular films. It is located in Tepoztlán, the epicenter of the quake, an hour from the capital.
The VHS Legacy Can Be Saved, But Will It?
posted September 18, 2017
The VHS tape was such a clunky medium that it almost invited disdainful treatment. Never the archivist’s or librarian’s first choice of format, it nonetheless won out in the “videotape format wars” of the late 1970s and 1980s, and became the medium of choice. Now, in the era of digital recording and online streaming, those VHS tapes are slowly but surely deteriorating. Will Section 108 of the US Copyright Act save the day?
Streaming Video: A Library Staple for Modern Times
posted August 29, 2017
The days of college students poring over books in library stacks, seeking inspiration in leaps within and among Dewey Decimal System categories, are virtually gone. That’s not how students now access information. The new media of choice are all digital, and that includes in the audiovisual realm. There streaming video has come rapidly to dominate.
How Do People Dance? Choreometrics on Film.
posted August 2, 2017
How do people dance, and how do cultural factors affect how they do? The Association for Cultural Equity in New York, which musicologist Alan Lomax founded to explore and preserve expressive traditions such as music and dance, will help to answer such questions by using a grant from the National Film Preservation Foundation to restore and care for a set of “choreometric” films that Lomax and two colleagues made.
An Award for the Center for Home Movies
posted July 28, 2017
The Center for Home Movies has received a Society of American Archivists 2017 annual award for increasing public awareness of films that many individuals make, but until recently few institutions made a project of collecting. The award recognizes archiving of "compilation, transcription, exhibition, or public presentation of archives or manuscript materials for educational, instructional, or other public purpose.”
Pioneering Healthcare Recruitment Film Preserved
posted June 29, 2017
The Washington University Libraries’ Film & Media Archive will preserve Code Blue, a 1972 recruitment film aimed at bringing minorities into the medical profession, thanks to a grant in this year’s round of Basic Preservation Grants from the National Film Preservation Foundation. The Archive was among 36 institutions selected for one of the grants, earlier this month.
Life in a Wisconsin Convent in 1958
posted June 19, 2017
With a 2017 grant from the National Film Preservation Foundation, the Congregation of Sisters of St. Agnes, in Wisconsin, will preserve a promotional film from the heyday of recruitment of nuns to Catholic convents. In the 1950s and 1960s, young women entered Catholic convents in cohorts large enough that their process of formation could be as richly social as it was spiritual.
Washington University Preserves Rare Civil Rights Documentary
posted June 15, 2017
The Washington University Libraries’ Film & Media Archive has completed the preservation and digitization of The Streets of Greenwood, a rare civil-rights documentary film from 1963, and has made it freely available, online. The Archive completed the work with a Basic Preservation Grant it received in last year’s round of funding from the National Film Preservation Foundation. One purpose of the grants is to allow archives to make noteworthy films publicly available.