Towards A Regional Framework

Dominique Saintville, Vice President of FIAT/IFTA, October 23, 1997:

The Sitges conference was organised by Eureka Audiovisuel and Copeam, in association with FIAT, represented by Branko Bubenik and Dominique Saintville, and FIAF, held at Sitges. The regional collaboration within Greater Europe was the angle chosen to broach the subject of preserving and using archives.

A regional setting seems to provide a more realistic and operational framework than the international approach generally used by FIAT today. This belief is based on the following facts: Regional groups are emerging on the map of Greater Europe: Western Europe, Northern Europe, Central Europe, Eastern Europe (the Balkans) and the Mediterranean Basin. Within each region, the countries share a number of characteristics: their geographic situation, language roots, a belonging to a common culture and history, as well as the common experience of an economic situation or political changes, especially the fall of the Berlin Wall and the splintering of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union.

Regional boundaries are not clear-cut. Many countries straddle the border between two regions. For example, Greece is part of both the Balkan and the Mediterranean heritage. European geopolitical structures are superimposed on these regional structures: the European Union and what it refers to as third-party countries, i.e. its neighbours (Central and Eastern Europe, the Mediterranean countries), Eureka Audiovisuel, which represents 32 countries of Greater Europe, and the Copeam, which includes the television operators of 27 countries, including 12 Mediterranean countries. These structures handle aid programmes for the development of television, which can be allocated to archiving.

These geopolitics are also encountered in the television archives, where long-standing relationships bind the archiving centres of different countries, despite - or because of - the political changes they have experienced. The economic situations of these regions are quite disparate, and this disparity is also encountered in the level of archive development.

With the advent of digital technology in the archival systems, the gap between the most advanced archives and the most ill-equipped archives has become wider. From this standpoint, Branko Bubenik, Head of Croatian TV Archives, distinguishes three groups of archives, according to their level of development:

1. Advanced archives use all facilities for preserving audio-visual programmes, make heavy use of archived documents, and explore and introduce digital and multimedia technologies in their archives.
2. Average-level archives take all measures to preserve and use filed documents, within the limits of the financial resources allocated. A satisfactory archiving level is kept, but more could be saved. These archives are managed with good documentary tools, but the databases do not cover all the existing material. They have a hard time keeping up with new technological developments and introducing them, due to lack of qualified personnel.
3. Ill-equipped archives do not have the resources to preserve their material. Programmes are erased because the media has to be reused. These documents are rarely used, because there is no adequate documentary tool. The people dealing with them are not very qualified. These archives have almost no dealings with the outside world.

Naturally, the preoccupation of archives vary from one group to the other. For the second and third group, the urgent issues to be dealt with are as follows:

• to improve the conditions for storing and preserving audio-visual programmes,
• the lack of viewing equipment, whether for documentary processing or for using the archived programmes,
• the lack of analogue and digital equipment for converting older programmes to new formats,
• the lack of modern computer tools, especially multimedia tools and advanced documentary software,
• the lack of qualified personnel, especially for using the new technologies.

The key issues are both the lack of resources - human and financial - needed to develop archives, and the lack of interest in archives, exhibited by those who arbitrate and allocate resources in the television organisations.

Judging by the content of the last few annual conferences, FIAT seems to be becoming an instrument aimed to develop collaboration between the most advanced archives. This is legitimate but insufficient. True, a number of initiatives were launched in parallel to the conferences in order to set up regional operations in Northern Europe, Central Europe, the Balkans (however the first meeting had to be postponed) and Latin America (seminar scheduled for 1998). At the same time, regional groups such as the Heritage Group of the Copeam for Mediterranean countries have emerged, with close ties to FIAT. These initiatives must be encouraged and integrated in appropriate structures and modes of functioning. In the future, a place in the annual FIAT conferences should be set aside both for discussing the needs and problems of the less advanced archives, and for the regional groups, who are the most qualified to examine these problems.

Below are a few proposals, some based on earlier proposals, designed to strengthen a regional and inter-regional collaboration policy within FIAT:

• Recognition of and enhanced visibility for existing regional groups, much as for the existing commissions
• FIAT support in organising regional meetings
• FIAT support to help delegates of the most destitute archives attend the annual conferences
• Participation of FIAT experts at regional meetings
• During the annual conference, a session reserved for reports on the work carried out by the regional groups
• Organising inter-regional solidarity based on the needs expressed by the regional groups or some of their members: equipment donations, on-site surveys, training. A number of solidarity drives have already been organised.
• Assistance in designing collaboration projects which federate and strengthen the structure - such as the CAP-MED project - which could be eligible for European aid programmes
• Integration of less advanced archives in European consortiums run by the most advanced archives
• A policy of developing regional and inter-regional cooperation within FIAT must go hand in hand with an effort to shift the work carried out, based on the interests of its members.

Furthermore, it is crucial that FIAT help bring the less advanced archives out of their isolated state and foster recognition of the importance of every local television archive and the position they hold today for production, programming and the affirmation of a national and European cultural identity.

Photo: Gösta Johansson