FIAT/FOCAL Summer School in Norwich (East Anglian Film Archive = EAFA) and London 12-16 July 1999

David Cleveland     Photo: Åsa Sandström

The East Anglian Film Archive is situated at the University of East Anglia and that is where we started off. David Cleveland, director of EAFA, taught us all the basics about (moving) film and video. We also tried joining film using cement, and those of us that hadn't handled film before tried the Steenbeck film editing tables.

Jane Alvey, deputy director, outlined the work at EAFA. The archive was founded in 1976 and now preserves and copies material from the surrounding region (the counties of Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Norfok and Suffolk). It acquires material both from institutions and private persons. It also has an agreement with the local TV station, BBC East, to acquire material from there.

Molly, Ingrid, Tomoë, Agnes     Photo: Åsa Sandström

Only four persons work at the EAFA. In spite of this 250-300 film shows are carried out every year and video compilations of archive film are being made. Access to the collections is made possible for historians, program makers, students and the general public.

The archive has specialised in printing small gauge films onto 16 mm. In addition to printing material from its own collection it offers this service to customers all around the world.

Patrick Russell, assistant archivist, gave us some examples from the collections in an "archive show", an appropriate ending to the first day!

Tuesday we took the train to London and settled in at the Regents Palace Hotel to get some rest before the FOCAL Copyright conference on Wednesday.

We listened to interesting discussions about fair dealing, third party clearance etc and realised that much of the problems in this area are universal. Richard Melman, Heather Rosenblatt, Christine Le Geoff, were some of the speakers. Not all of the day's content concerned us non-English participants as much as the above mentioned discussions..... Lunch was delicious, by the way!

Thursday saw us embarking on a tour of BBC. Starting off at BBC Information & Archives, Millbank, where archive manager Chris Wilkie outlined the work: documentation, cataloguing, preservation; this applies to all archives. Gill Atherton, customer service manager, told us about "The year of the archive", the marketing and gave us some numbers: 700,000 film cans, 200,000 broadcast cassettes, 200,000 spools of analogue tape, 120,000 ENG vt, 155,000 beta tapes, 200,000 vhs and 500,000 sound carriers!

Christine Slattery showed us the storage areas and technical manager Adrian Williams some of the technical facilities, including their multi-format room.

The tour continued at BBC Post Production and we were very impressed by the Television Centre with the news studio. BBC Post Production carries out services for BBC Worldwide, Library Sales UK, Library Sales Americas as well as archive operations (transfers etc).

Friday morning we got the opportunity to get a brisk walk to Charlotte Street where Peter Fydler, commercial manager, greeted us and talked about the wonderful future of commercial archives/former newsreels as the British Pathé. New television channels, the Internet, CD-ROMs, DVDs, provide new customers and new means of exploitation of the archive.

John Flewin, archive management and exploitation consultant, gave us some useful tips about archive research on the Internet and Belinda Harris, experienced film researcher, spoke about her job. Clients should give as much information as possible about the program or topic and the context where archive material will be used. Copyright clearance and the time factor should be considered as early as possible.

The coach picked us up for a ride to Pinewood Studios. There was no time to see the studios but we were given a tour in the Pathé archive. Nitrates still in good condition were demonstrated and we were given VHS cassettes: A year to remember. Sue Malden, BBC, showed us the FIAT video on misuse and use of archive material.

Then we all rushed off! But all of us, except Jannie from Danmarks Radio, got together at the pub at Regents Palace to get a drink and watch the photos our "teacher" David Cleveland had taken.

Åsa Sandström Archive Editor, Sveriges Television/ Tevearkivet

Photo: Ove Wahlquist SVT/Tevearkivet