Archive Achievement Awards 2024

Awards 2024

The FIAT/IFTA Archive Achievement Awards are designed to honour outstanding archival initiatives and projects that have significantly improved the ways in which the archives are preserved, managed and used. Any initiative that brings the professional preservation and management of audiovisual archives to a higher level, any project that valorises the use of archives in an outstanding way, is eligible to enter.

Members of FIAT/IFTA can nominate their organisation, or they can nominate a person or organisation with whom they have collaborated. The FIAT/IFTA Archive Achievement Awards winners were announced during the FIAT/IFTA World Conference 2024 in Bucharest, Romania.

Awards 2024
Awards 2024

FIAT/IFTA is humbled to award Eva-Lis Green the 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award.

Since 2014 FIAT/IFTA has also given a special Lifetime Achievement Award to a person with special merits for FIAT/IFTA and for the field of audiovisual archiving as a whole. This year the jury honoured someone…

FIAT/IFTA is humbled to award Eva-Lis Green the 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award.

This year, we have the privilege of honouring a remarkable individual with a career that spans not just decades, but an entire era. Our honoree’s journey began humbly, as many great careers do, but very soon it was clear this was no ordinary professional path. From the late 1980s, she became a cornerstone of one of Europe’s most respected public broadcasting archives, where her name quickly became synonymous with innovation, leadership, and a no-nonsense, but always kind approach.

In the 1990s, she led the charge in developing a fully-fledged digital archive system at a time when “digital” was still considered more science fiction than workplace necessity. She understood long before anyone else that metadata wasn’t just about organizing information; it was about making content discoverable, meaningful, and future-proof. No wonder she was an early champion of implementing media asset management and the mass digitization of broadcasting archives. But beyond the technical and the conceptual, she is also human. In fact, she played the role of a ‘mama’ for many archivists. After all, who else could blend ‘MAM’ with ‘mum’ so seamlessly, ensuring that everyone not only had their media assets in order, but also received a warm hug and a word of wisdom along the way? Between brackets: I myself have been a firsthand witness of this, when I met her for the first time in Toronto, on the 20th of May 2011.

Now, you may think a trailblazing career like this would be enough for most people. But not for our honoree. In 2006, she officially joined FIAT/IFTA’s Executive Council – although those who know her best will tell you, she was already an integral part of our community well before then, attending FIAT/IFTA events since 1990 – that is thirty-four years ago! From there, she led the Media Management Commission for nearly a decade, alongside her trusted co-chair, Jacqui Gupta. And let’s be honest, if you ever had a conversation with her about media management, you probably walked away a little wiser, a little more inspired, and—if you were lucky—armed with a solid to-do list for the next ten years.

But of course, that’s not all. In 2017, she returned to where it all began: the national library of her home country. And what was the first thing she did? She didn’t just lead, she reorganized the whole audiovisual department. And while running two departments at the same time, she still managed to have time for a laugh, a chat with old friends, and to make every engineer in the building appreciate her for the magic she could bring about, with both technology and people.

For over 35 years, she’s been a leader, a mentor, a problem-solver, and yes, a power lady, but stripped of any coldness that description could encompass. All the colleagues with whom I contacted to prepare this speech describe her as a visionary, someone who convinced a hesitant world that putting media asset management in the centre of media production was not only possible, but essential. She’s the person who showed us how to ‘archive first, publish later,’ and she has ensured that the vast treasures of Swedish audiovisual and web heritage will be there for future generations to explore.

So, it is with the deepest admiration, and frankly, a tear in either eye, that I invite you to join me in congratulating this year’s recipient of the FIAT/IFTA Lifetime Achievement Award: the incomparable Eva-Lis Green.

Meet the winners!

WINNER

A+E Networks Showcase

by TMT Insights

Making Cloud-based Remote Editing an Operational Reality: How TMT Insights accelerated A+E Networks’ Journey to Total Supply Chain Transparency and Visibility

We delve into the remarkable transformation journey of A+E Networks, where they reclaimed control of their media supply chain by bringing content management workflows in-house. Learn how A+E Networks collaborated with TMT Insights and leveraged the Polaris operational management platform to revolutionize their broadcast and VOD edit workflows, streamlining processes, and automating manual tasks. Discover the benefits achieved, and gain valuable insights into the strategies employed, challenges overcome, and lessons learned in accelerating the optimization of a cloud-based remote edit implementation.

Jury Comments – A+E Networks Showcase

The A+E Showcase illustrates how cloud migration influences archive practices, emphasizing the need for distinctive metadata in Titles, Seasons, Episodes, and Versions to automate workflows effectively. The project underscores the critical role of archives throughout the digital media value chain, highlighting archive metadata as a crucial component of automated cloud workflows.

The complete rethinking and automation of the media management chain enable rapid deployment of content across different outlets without increasing team workload.

This project revolutionizes internal content workflows, eliminating the need for outsourced media supply. Powered by the Polaris Platform, this initiative creates new possibilities for transmission and workflow in VOD editions, representing a significant advancement in the audiovisual industry. By leveraging the Polaris Platform Software, A+E and TMT Insights have streamlined processes, automated manual tasks, optimized cloud usage, and removed the necessity for outsourced collaboration.

This innovative project improves delivery times and flexibility to meet customer needs, and robust content library management in a stable environment. A+E and TMT Insights have successfully transitioned to providing licensed content directly through streaming applications, marking a significant milestone in the audiovisual industry’s business landscape.

Congratulations to A+E Networks for setting a new benchmark in media management and cloud-based editing solutions.

SHORTLISTED CANDIDATE

Production materials from the Archive

by RTVE Archive

Production materials from the Archive

Creation of a solution which integrates the Archive with the Commercial Cloud Service.

Helps to locate and take advantage of commercial materials produced for RTVE in addition to discovering relationships with previous masters in the Archive.

It facilitates the usage of content by various business departments including production, broadcasting, marketing, and archiving.

Key features:

  •  Integration with Archive: The solution seamlessly integrates with RTVE’s Digital Library archive, allowing for efficient management and access to production assets
  • Centralized Access: It serves as the only point of access to production materials, ensuring centralized control and management of the content.
  • Content use: Users can take advantage of materials stored within the Commecial cloud, maximizing their utility across various applications and workflows.
  • Shared Infrastructure: Archivists and producers share infrastructure to send assets to multiple endpoints, fostering collaboration and efficiency in content delivery.

Overall, the project enhances RTVE’s ability to handle commercial content effectively, from acquisition to distribution, while optimizing asset usage and collaboration among stakeholders.

Jury Comments – Production materials from the Archive

RTVE has, with its integration with a commercial cloud service, impressively shown, how aggregated archive work and archive standards can easily be put to work in the commercialization of company assets. The showcase proves, that If the Interfaces to legacy archive objects and metadata are skillfully arranged  and the metadata is structured according to proven archival data models, the possibilities to give meaningful access with little additional effort are virtually limitless.

The Jury appreciates the continuity and development of RTVE’s project to open its archives within the company, and also to enhance the content preserved through the commercialization. The RTVE archive today is fully integrated into the constant change of the technological order, keeping the archive alive, in all the meanings that this word brings to the preservation of the past. Furthermore the jury completely agrees to RTVE’s statement “the archive should not only be for archivists.

We congratulate RTVE for having unleashed their archive-contents and for having unveiled the potentials of  every well-maintained archive in our community.

WINNER

Safeguarding Afghan AV heritage

by INA

Safeguarding the Afghan Audiovisual Heritage

In 2021, with the collapse of the Islamic Republic and the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan, the archives documenting previous decades were threatened. Yousuf Jan Nesar, camera operator under Massoud’s command, was forced to flee from Kabul with his family. With the support of INA – a long-term partner since 2002 – and of the French Embassy, he was also able to evacuate his audiovisual collections made of videos recorded since 1986. In July and August 2021, INA recovered the collection – made of 7 trunks of mini DV, betacam, VHS, Audio cassettes, Hi8, DVCam – to be kept in its premises in France.

In June 2023, to ensure the long-term preservation of and access (for research, education, cultural, audiovisual and news production) to the collection, Yousuf Jan Nesar and INA decided to launch a preservation project, including the storage, cataloguing, digitisation and documentation of the whole collection, based on the collaboration between several partners : Y. Jan Nesar, INA, the ALIPH Foundation and the mobilisation of all INA technical departments.

To do so, a specific and adapted organisation and technical process had to be designed and implemented to be able to manage the collection. Indeed, despite Yousuf Jan Nesar own knowledge of his collection, it arrives at INA with very few information: no precise volume, no explanation of its organization, no information on the carriers, no metadata. Furthermore, Y. Jan Nesar only speaking Persian and the collection content and few metadata being in Persian, the work organisation required to be adapted to collaborate with Y. Jan Nesar and to process the collection. As the collection is processed, it is also discovered, gradually accumulating technical and content / documentary knowledge.

Jury Comments – Safeguarding Afghan AV heritage

A difficult challenge for a project of exemplary value. The collaboration of teams with different skills resulted in valuable unique digital collection, which was in a serious risk of loss situation.

SHORTLISTED CANDIDATE

Digital Migration Final Phase

by ORF

Digital Migration DiMi (Final Phase)

To achieve full and easy access to the large TV-collection in the ORF Multimedia Archives it was decided to digitize/migrate all 300.000 hours kept on IMX and Digi-Beta in one large project (which was divided in three stages for better control).

After a successful tender in late 2015 the project started in late 2016 with a foreseen overall end in late 2025. The main “Facts & Figures” of the project are:

  • Overall amount: 300.000 hours of TV-content (stored on both IMX and Digi-Beta; in total ~ 600k cassettes) are migrated to MXF D10 Op1a files
  • Main service-provider and contractor is ATOS IT Solution & Services GmbH; main technical provider is NOA
  • The Final Phase started in early 2023 ( ~ 60.000 hrs)
Jury Comments – Digital Migration Final Phase

A well defined project, with tangible results, demonstrating a long term vision regarding preservation concerns. A robust workflow, including multiple stages of quality control, thanks to the good collaboration between ORF and their service providers.

SHORTLISTED CANDIDATE

CBC/Radio Canada: French Services Audiovisual Archives Digitization Project

by CBC/Radio-Canada French Services

Radio-Canada – Audiovisual Archives digitization project

The audiovisual French services collection of Radio-Canada is distributed across 18 sites throughout Canada. This collection, considered a national treasure, is one of the ten largest in the world, covering the archives of the public broadcaster from 1936 to the present day. It includes over 665,000 assets to digitize, including SD and HD video tapes, optical discs, DVDs, soundtracks, RDATs, acetate discs, audio tapes, CDs, and films, some of which are unpublished. These assets are associated with over 2,000,000 records cataloged in 13 databases, highlighting the scope and diversity of this collection. Digitizing these archives presents a significant logistical and technical challenge, also considering the supplier is in the United States. However, it is essential for preserving this exceptional audiovisual heritage and making it accessible to current and future generations.

We developed a tracking tool for asset selection and batch creation, assigning also a single ID to each item. We managed this initiative during the Radio-Canada move and the construction of warehouses. We also went ahead with the digitization project during a MAM implementation context.

By digitizing the Radio-Canada archives, all production teams will benefit from access via a centralized digital platform (MAM), thus creating new opportunities for programming and archive sales. This project will also ensure the longevity of archival content in the face of the increasing obsolescence of analog equipment. Finally, establishing a file migration process will ensure the continuous preservation of files while minimizing risks associated with technological obsolescence.

Jury Comments – CBC/Radio Canada: French Services Audiovisual Archives Digitization Project

A project with high level of ambition, well defined and described, with tangible results. The large scale was challenging and required good collaboration among various teams within the organisation.

WINNER

Our Strategic Journey to Connect with a Diverse Audience

by Radio Canada

Our Strategic Journey to Connect with a Diverse Audience

The Radio-Canada Archives team unlocks our archives by producing and publishing content on a daily basis. We are connecting with different audiences using audiovisual archives and opening up this heritage, especially for young people.

Within a public broadcaster, Radio-Canada’s Archives department is an example of extraordinary dynamism and a global leader in the production of archival content. The team has developed a strategy to seize every opportunity to connect with diverse audiences. We have been proactive over the years to move forward by creating different pilot projects. Our strategy aims to integrate within the production teams by different means to collaborate with them and suggest initiatives and content to highlight. The outstanding results justified additional funding for the original archival production.

Today, the credibility and quality of our production means that we have a production team and an editorial voice. We are very proud of the great diversity of content produced, available on various platforms. These include:

  • articles
  • vertical videos
  • thematic capsules
  • full-length interviews
  • digital photo stories
  • quizzes
  • youth capsules with motion design
  • productions with a youtuber
  • podcasts with guests
  • a video creation workshop with teenagers in a public library
  • an event to mark World Audiovisual Heritage Day and
  • collaboration with Radio-Canada’s editorial teams.

Our approach is innovative and could inspire other broadcasters to diversify production on all platforms through content production and events.

Jury Comments – Our Strategic Journey to Connect with a Diverse Audience

While we cannot reinvent archive footage, we can reimagine how it is presented to diverse audiences. Radio Canada’s exceptional project provides a prime example of how to disseminate archive material across multiple platforms, reaching various target groups. Whether it’s video content for television or social media, or audio material for radio or podcasts, their approach is truly versatile. The archive footage has been repurposed for radio and TV shows, quizzes, karaoke events, and has been used to engage both older and younger generations, even inspiring the latter to become content creators themselves. The jury noted the multifaceted activities, all conceived and initiated by the archives team at Radio Canada, in collaboration with other editorial departments. This robust strategic initiative demonstrates that archive footage remains relevant and impactful for all generations, both now and in the future.

SHORTLISTED CANDIDATE

The Story of Doctor Who from the Archives

by BBC

The Story of Doctor Who from the Archives

‘The Story of Doctor Who from the Archives’ is an innovative, digital hub allowing audiences to delve deeper into Doctor Who’s history than ever before. Launched in November 2023 as the companion to the Doctor Who back-catalogue on iPlayer, it brings the BBC’s archive collections together for the first time, across television, images, documents, music and radio, to create a unique 360 perspective with contemporary resonance for today’s audience. Collectively, they tell the story of the ground-breaking series beginning with 60 archive gems for the 60th anniversary.

Much of the BBC’s Doctor Who archive has been commercially available in DVD and Blue Ray content, but the archive as a whole has never been brought together in this way before. It’s the first Doctor Who archive curation for all audiences, freely and permanently available on a public service digital platform, enabling fans and new audiences to immerse themselves in the story of Doctor Who, whilst also connecting them to the wealth of BBC content across iPlayer and BBC Sounds. It features curated journeys through the archive to bring the show’s extensive history to life using everything from interviews with cast to production memos, long unheard audio, and behind-the-scenes photos; bbc.co.uk/doctorwho.

Jury Comments – The Story of Doctor Who from the Archives

“The Story of Doctor Who from the Archives” is a comprehensive digital offering from the BBC that delves into the rich history of the long-standing, globally recognised science fiction series. It features a complete archive collection, images, behind-the-scenes photos, documents, radio broadcasts, and previously unheard music, all narrating the journey of this 60-year-old groundbreaking television programme, one of the most significant drama brands of all time. The jury was impressed by the intricate multimedia content and noted that the content-rich project could appeal to audiences beyond just Dr. Who fans, underscoring that fiction isn’t a minor or trivial part of the archives. This project serves as an exceptional interdisciplinary model for celebrating anniversaries and leveraging archival material.

SHORTLISTED CANDIDATE

BFI Replay

by British Film Institute (BFI)

BFI Replay

BFI Replay is the culmination of a 5 year UK-wide digitisation and preservation programme to save the UK’s most at risk videotape collections and make them accessible to the public, via a free digital video streaming service exclusively available in UK public libraries. BFI Replay brings the nation’s audiovisual heritage into the heart of local communities.

Jury Comments – BFI Replay

BFI Replay is a vast and ambitious project with a clear goal: to bring archived content to the broadest possible audience through free library networks across the UK. This logistically challenging initiative is the culmination of a five-year nationwide digitisation and preservation program, aimed at saving the UK’s most endangered videotape collections. For the first time, 60 years of television treasures are made accessible to the public in a user-friendly way, specifically designed for audiences who have little or no knowledge of their audiovisual heritage. The jury highly commended the excellent level of curation, the substantial work in rights clearances and copyright collaboration with various copyright holders, and the appealing design of the search tools. This is public access to archive collections at its finest!

WINNER

Godforsaken

by VRT

Godforsaken

The documentary series ‘Godforsaken’ features in four episodes twenty Belgian men and women who were abused and mistreated as children by a Catholic priest or father. The survivors and their family members are interviewed and they are followed in their search for recognition.

The high-profile documentary series had caused an unprecedented emotional shockwave in Belgium. The victims’ stories led to many angry reactions from viewers, a massive number of debaptisms, and even to a parliamentary committee of inquiry. An answer from the Pope of the Catholic Church has still not been forthcoming.

In addition to the compelling and courageous testimonies in the series, no fewer than 523 archive fragments confront those responsible with their words. This archival footage was a crucial and vital element of storytelling to unveil the truth.

Jury Comments – Godforsaken

Godforsaken is a four-part documentary series that follows the victims of sexual abuse in Belgium’s Catholic Church as they fight for recognition. In this documentary series, archive footage is combined with interviews in the present day. The viewer is taken on a journey following a timeline of events, providing a clear sense of the perceptions and feelings at each stage in the victims’ journey. The jury felt that the archive was skilfully used to evoke those feelings, with a strong narrative development which was very well conceived. This documentary reminded us of the importance of historical documents, including audio-visual records, as more than a resource to illustrate a story and recognised that they often ARE the story and the witnesses to the truth, offering validation, evidence and authenticity. The documentary used a broad range of archive sources and the jury recognised that this was a high profile legal case which will have led to complexities and significant challenges when clearing the archive and presenting the context of the story. The jury praised the sensitive editing of the documentary and how the archive materials were used in creative ways.

SHORTLISTED CANDIDATE

Mother Suriname

by Sound & Vision

Mother Suriname

Mother Suriname is a new documentary film by director Tessa Leuwsha and producer Pieter van Huystee, that had it’s world premiere at the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam in November 2023. The film consists entirely of archival footage and tells a completely new story, from a completely new perspective than that from which the original images were made.

Mother Suriname tells the story of the life of a Surinamese woman and, in parallel with her life, also the story of Suriname’s recent history. In Suriname – a former colony of the Netherlands – very few moving images are preserved (from before independence in 1975). The footage used in the documentary comes almost entirely from Dutch archives (and mostly from Sound & Vision).

These images were originally made with a Dutch or even colonial gaze. For the documentary makers, it is extremely valuable that these images have been preserved; they “manipulate” the images to tell a story from a different perspective. Moreover, they make use of the expertise about the collection by involving researchers from the institute. Without archives, this film would never have existed. Mother Suriname is a magnificent showcase for everything we do as an archive at Sound & Vision.

We preserve the images sustainably and they can be used a hundred years later to tell new, more inclusive stories that fill gaps in the archive itself. Because the film is shown at festivals and in cinemas, it reaches a large and new audience. Furthermore, as an archive, we present the film at various lectures and presentations because we believe it inspires other creators to work with archives: in our archive lie countless potential new productions waiting for a maker to engage with them.

Jury Comments – Mother Suriname

Mother Suriname is a documentary that uses archive materials to tell the life story of a Surinamese washerwoman, inspired by the director’s grandmother Fansi. The life story covers the period from the abolition of slavery in 1863 to Surinamese independence in 1975. The jury found the documentary to be emotive and sensitive, using archive materials to connect the viewer to the protagonist and the wider story. It was felt to be a very impressive piece of research work which used unique archive footage throughout the entirety of the piece to provide a contemporary way of looking at these archives, particularly with the impressive colourisation work carried out. The significant amount of rights clearances showed that this project was a labour of love for the documentary makers and is an inspiration for documentary makers looking to use archive materials in such a way.

SHORTLISTED CANDIDATE

Behind the Scenes: Kavčí hory

by Czech TV

Behind the Scenes: Kavčí hory

A detective podcast about six important and great figures from the rich history of Czech television. Two historians and archivists explore the turbulent lives of famous directors, managers, entertainers and TV presenters. The series offers an entertaining and exciting look not only at the personalities themselves, but also at the history of television as a powerful medium. The authors take advantage of the fact that research on the first 40 years of television overlaps with research on communist regime, and use the stories of the personalities to show how important a role television played in the history of our country under socialism and afterwards. They use archival AV and written sources as the basis for their investigation, supplemented by new interviews, engaging music and passages narrated by well-known Czech actors.

In six forty minutes long episodes, historians and archivists Jakub Hošek and Jakub Adamus, who accompany the show, reveal the fates of director Jindřich Fairaizl, TV program announcer Miloš Frýba, TV presenter Kamila Moučková, Czechoslovak Television CEO Jiří Pelikán, screenwriter Vladimír Škutina and legendary presenter of programs for children Štěpánka Haničincová. The podcast Behind the Scenes: Kavčí hory, which was initiated by the Czech TV archive, was released on all platforms of Czech television in May 2023.

Jury Comments – Behind the Scenes: Kavčí hory

Behind the Scenes: Kavčí hory  is a detective podcast about six important and great figures from the rich history of Czech television, with two historians and archivists exploring the turbulent lives of famous directors, managers, entertainers and TV presenters. The archive is supplemented by new interviews, music and passages narrated by well-known Czech actors. The jury felt that this was an innovative way to use audio archive materials to evoke memories, present stories of the different characters & often controversial topics and show the history of television as a powerful medium. It was felt to be a flagship example of how TV broadcasters and TV archives may handle and investigate their own history and to attract younger and older listeners to look at their history through a popular medium.

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