Finalists elected for the FIAT/IFTA Television Archive Award

Apropos Chile, Chile is their destination of this year! To be precise: Santiago de Chile, where the screening and the Awards ceremony will be held as part of FIAT/IFTA's annual conference hosted by TVN.

But not enough to make own notes and evaluations of the 24 nominated programmes from 17 countries, as a sworn community they top themselves to meet each other somewhere in the hidden catacombes of BBC's premises in White City in London. After leaving the tube station and getting some sun-rays for the first time in weeks, they escape again the daylight. Check in, stairs down, through the fire doors, go left, turn right after 18 yards, next fire door, get to the left, next fire door, go right, straight on, next fire door, go right... after quarter of an hour of advise, "research center", go right, then left again, fire door... fire door, go right and there it is: the Programming & Production Commission's home for May's last weekend: the conference room B144. Without Sue's brilliant guidance it would have been the home for the rest of their life!

Discussions over discussions: every year they do their job with a nearly frightening seriousness. Only late in the afternoon there is the relieving white smoke! Out of so many wellproduced programmes they did find the three that will be seen by all participants of the annual conference in Santiago de Chile on the 3rd of October 1999.

Keeping it no longer a secret, here they are with the jury citations:

Matamata et Pilipili, RTBF, Tristan Bourlard, Belgium

"This documentary gives an insight into colonial history, which was often painful, full of passion and even tragic. It is based on unique footage from the Matamata and Pilipili films which were produced in the late 1940's and early 1950's by white missionaries in the Belgian Congo using very limited resources. The rediscovery and restoration of this "low-budget" series inspired this film which documents everyday life in the colonies during this period.

The documentary's starting point is the restoration of the films and so viewers are shown an archive at work and how new films can be made using existing film material.

The comic figures Matamata and Pilipili were instrumentalised for both educational and entertainment purposes. Incidentally, the dawn of independence in 1960 saw the demise of the two stars' acting careers.

The contrasting reactions to a screening of the restored films for a group of former missionaries in the Congo and for a group of African film students are presented: nostalgic reminiscence on the part of the former and analytical remarks from an academic perspective on the part of the latter."

Blood on the coal, CBC, Geoff D'Eon, Canada

"It is a dramatic reconstruction of a rescue operation to free miners trapped in the Springhill Mine in Nova Scotia after an explosion there in 1958.

This reconstruction was possible because kinescopes of CBC's live television news coverage were made, preserved and shot-listed. Very few live news broadcasts survived from this era.

Using the original logbooks provided by the technical producer of 1958 the timeline of the nine-day coverage has been thoroughly recreated. Footage from television archives is an integral part of this production, and combined with interviews with survivors, those involved in the rescue operation and a CBC journalist who covered the story in 1958, an authentic review of the event has been achieved and it communicates much of the emotion felt at the time.

This documentary is an illustration of the fact that television archives, if properly preserved and intelligently accessed, provide a rich vein of programming possibilities.

100 years of childhood, DR, Marianne Kemp, Denmark

"For the first time in history, a century can be illustrated in moving images. The centenary of cinema and the end of the 20th century form the background for this visual narrative - a television series of ten programmes produced for children and focussing on children.

Part 4 of the series describes a period of social deprivation in which many children grew up in the shadow of unemployment and poverty. It was also a period in which growing social awareness directed the spotlight on to the issues of children's education and health. In the late 1930's there were many promises of prosperity and optimism, but then the sound of marching boots paralysed the small country of Denmark. Today's children are constantly bombarded with films employing very sophisticated audio-visual techniques but here we are shown that old black-and-white film footage can be presented in a manner attractive to children. A symbiosis of image, narrative and music has been successful in creating a striking picture of the period at a number of different levels. The creative use of archive footage and interviews with adults who were children at the time set things in perspective for the young target group and show them that events in the past have a relevance to their own lives.

In this context, good news for everybody who will attend the Santiago Conference as a registered delegate:

Except delegates of CBC, RTBF and DR now everyone of you is allowed to vote!

And what about the Innovation Award? - Error message!

There had to be made a difficult and not very satisfying decision: good and professional produced as they are, all the programmes were conventional ones, justifying to be in the competition for best use of archive material, but there was no one that could be considered as innovative. So, in order to let the Innovation Award really be what it has to be - we all will have to wait for the next year's competition! Not easy to accept, but a motivation really to look intensively in your companies for the innovative programmes or to develop them together with your producers.

Please don't be disappointed, but ambitious to nominate the winner of the Innovation Award 2000 - the first one in the new millennium - and not to forget - a nice summer or wintertime to all of you and hopefully I will meet you all in Chile's springtime in October! So long, please keep yourselves informed on the FIAT/IFTA Awards homepage

Best wishes,

Karl Maier
Organiser
FIAT/IFTA Awards