Editor's Letter

The FIAT/IFTA NewsLetter will in the future appear in a slightly different form. There will be a monthly review on the FIAT/IFTA website, supplemented by the NewsLetter, appearing intermittently. This idea is, of course, something that is belonging to our times but it is also for practical reasons. It will be easier to reach the readers and to spread the news. All of you who still would prefer to have it in paper form will just have to contact us and we will forward it to you. You can also more easily just print out or download the documents that especially interest you.

One thing that I really have missed for the NewsLetter is a more open dialogue between the members. The review has mainly been written by our President Peter Dusek, the Secretary General Lasse Nilsson and myself. I am not saying that we are boring, but I am sure that the NewsLetter can be even more interesting to read if it would be colored with regional and local articles from archives somewhere in the World, telling stories about things that we did not know of, maybe what happened on the conferences or other important things to report about to the readers - discussions or whatever.

This December issue will also be my last to edit, at least for a year or so. I will be off duty because of maternity leave. I have very much enjoyed working for FIAT/IFTA and I do think that it is an organization full of strength and vivacity, able to create and establish a lot of the needful and fundamental bases which will be the start for many of the audiovisual archives around the world. I have felt that I, at least, took part of that work, and that is a joyful feeling. My intention is not to say farewell but instead to look into the future.

My successor is also from the Swedish Television (SVT) and her name is Agneta Forsström. She has got skills in web designing and has been responsible for a newly started system at the Swedish Television archive and she knows several languages. Read her own presentation of herself.

The FIAT/IFTA World Conference in Santiago de Chile was an important event and it brought a lot of new members from different parts of the world to the federation. Speakers, commission meetings and workshops did all their best to maintain and to show the quality that is, and has to be, the feature that brings the ideas forward. The FIAT/IFTA Award was delivered to Mr Tristan Bourlard from the RTBF for his production "Matamata et Pilipili".

Next World Conference and General Assembly will be in October 2000, in Vienna. Our Conference Organizational Committee (COC), probably exhausted after having been organizing the last Santiago-rendez-vous, is already heading towards Vienna to make sure that that one will be as successful as the last one!

In October FIAT/IFTA was also one of the hosts for the conference "Approaches to Television Studies" which was held in Stockholm. Scholars from the USA, the UK, Germany, the Netherlands and of course from Sweden presented their papers treating the different aspects of the television medium and what kind of invisible manipulation we all are victims of. Subjects of more psychological, political and economical character were also discussed. More than a hundred interested people filled the auditorium and listened eagerly.

One of the first FIAT/IFTA events in the new year to come - apart from the JTS in Paris - will be in Tallinn, Estonia. A series of seminars is planned to be effectuated as well as commission meetings and of course we are hoping to get the Baltic archives to join us. One of them that has already applied for membership is the Latvian Television.

Finally, I wish you A Merry Christmas and A Happy New Year!

Yours sincerely,

Katharina Robertsson Reimer
Administrative Coordinator

The FIAT/IFTA Calendar of Events 2000

• November 29-30, FIAT/IFTA Documentation Commission meeting, London, UK 1999
• January 20-22, JTS meeting, Paris, France
• February 24, FIAT/IFTA Vienna World Conference Sponsors meeting, Vienna, Austria
• February 24-25, FIAT/IFTA Vienna World Conference Organizing Committee meeting, Vienna, Austria
• March 17-18, FIAT/IFTA Executive Council meeting, London/Stockholm
• April, FIAT/IFTA Management Seminar, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
• April, FIAF Annual Conference, London, UK
• May 25-26, FIAT/IFTA Documentation Commission meeting, Tallinn, Estonia
• May 25-26, FIAT/IFTA Programming & Production Commission meeting, Tallinn, Estonia
• May 25-26, FIAT/IFTA Technical Commission meeting, Tallinn, Estonia
• May 25-26, FIAT/IFTA Training Commission meeting, Tallinn, Estonia
• May 26-27, FIAT/IFTA Baltic Seminar, Tallinn, Estonia
• July 3-7, IASA/SEAPAVAA Conference "A future for the past", Singapore
• October 15-18, FIAT/IFTA Annual World Conference, Vienna, Austria