FIAT/IFTA World Conference 2025

Kelas Liarsip collective’s first project traces the work and life story of Indonesia’s pioneering woman film director Ratna Asmara (1913 - 1968). It was initiated with the support of public broadcasting platform for arts and culture Indonesiana TV.

This project expands the acknowledgement for women’s works in the moving image heritage. Since Indonesia’s publicly funded film heritage program was initiated in the form digitisation and restoration in 2014, only ONE work from women directors was included. Ratna Asmara’s ‘Dr. Samsi’ (1952), the subject of this research, is the second one.

The documented numbers of women directors remained below 2 percent within the moving image industry. This scarcity is very much reflected in the silences and absences in the archives. Due to lack of recognition, their works are left with minimal attention and care, leading to advanced chemical decay. The erasure of their traces progresses slowly and steadily over decades of limited civic spaces to research history - following decades of military regime’s censorship which is being revived by the country’s newly elected administration.

In this presentation, Kelas Liarsip will share a reflection of this collaborative project. Tracing Ratna Asmara provides a chance to question this erasure and explore methods of overcoming it. This research looks into the margins of established archives and searches through non-institutional sources. To study Asmara’s work approaches, Kelas Liarsip created digitisation and restoration workflows for 35mm film elements found in Jakarta, Indonesia. Acknowledging limitations of locally available technological resources, collaborative approaches were developed by moving image archivists and post-production technicians, mindfully using digital workflow in creating access copies and restoration. The process was documented in a series ‘Devising Ratna Asmara’ which was co-produced by Indonesiana TV, facilitating the assembly of a women-led creative team.

Digitisation is often seen as central to decolonising museums and archives by enhancing access and inclusion. However, many practices risk reproducing colonial structures by privileging institutional perspectives and erasing crucial contextual relationships. This project addresses such issues through the re-digitisation of archival materials from the 1947 expedition to Colombia, Panama, and Peru by the Ethnographic Museum of Gothenburg, confronting gaps and biases in earlier digitisation efforts.

We begin with a critical review of previous digitisation projects, revealing undocumented selection criteria, loss of context, and institutional bias. Using a decolonising toolkit focused on reflexivity, transparency, and contextual integrity, we aim to re-digitise three photo albums from the expedition, preserving their original structure while integrating related, previously overlooked materials such as travel journals, correspondence, and financial records. This approach reconnects visual and textual sources to offer a more layered narrative.

Our method aligns with records-continuum theories, which challenge colonial provenance and advocate for concepts such as parallel provenance, archival multiverse, and critical reflexivity. These frameworks expose how archives shape historical narratives and highlight the colonial roots of many museum collections.Through the application of these tools, frequently guided by developments in AI, our goal is to decolonise and open the archive to multiple perspectives.

Through comparison with earlier digitisation efforts, we show how decolonising methods can reshape archival practices, fostering more equitable, transparent, and adaptive workflows that resist colonial legacies and support future reinterpretation.

In her landmark speech on November 26, 1974, before an overwhelmingly male Assembly, Simone Veil, Minister of Health in the French Government, declared: “Just listen to women.” History has remembered this plea, but historiography has not always followed its guidance. Before the feminist voices of the 1970s and the passage of the 1975 law, there were the women who had abortions, those who performed them, and the intermediaries—nameless, faceless figures whose haunting, anxious, painful, liberating, or traumatic experiences had never been documented on this scale. 

To honor the significance of the Veil Law, INA (French National Audiovisual Institute) has created a landmark archival collection: 65 filmed testimonies gathered by a transdisciplinary and non-partisan committee led by historian Bibia Pavard. 

Those fragile yet essential testimonies—unprecedented in both scope and nature—form the foundation of a multi-platform and multi-format project ; Directed by Sonia Gonzalez, the documentary Il suffit d’écouter les femmes (Just Listen to Women) offers a chronological and thematic journey from 1955 to 1975, weaving together archival footage, songs, and fiction to bring these hidden stories to life.  Alongside the documentary, a book and podcast, offer a 360° exploration of abortion’s personal, historical, and societal dimensions.

Through these different lenses, the project sheds light on the lived experiences of abortion—moving from individual stories to broader historical and social perspectives—adding nuance and depth to contemporary public debates. 

Access to historical memory increasingly unfolds in digital spaces and it is crucial to make the exploration of the past intuitive and engaging. Online amateur footage— a phenomenal historical source offering a direct view of the past—can play a decisive role in this process. Our presentation will focus on these two topics:

1. The need for online platforms that engage non-specialist audiences

We’ve developed the concept of a large-scale audiovisual atlas that lets users explore space and time through audiovisual content. In a working prototype focused on Rome, we mapped each clip—sourced from both institutional archives and amateur online footage— to its exact filming location and time period on an interactive map. The result is a rich, immersive experience that allows:

• Low-threshold access: Users are drawn in by curiosity about specific places or moments, even without prior interest in archives.
• Playful interaction: Navigating the past becomes an exploratory act, akin to gameplay.
• Emotional resonance: Familiar places seen in unfamiliar times evoke memory and recognition. Such platforms have significant public value: they support a more authentic collective memory, counterbalancing fictional narratives with spontaneous, unmediated glimpses of the past.

2. The anthropological treasure of online amateur footage

Amateur digital videos—often shared informally online—played a crucial role in our prototype. They hold great historical and anthropological value because they:

• Show unfiltered, everyday behaviors;
• Document aspects of daily life rarely covered by professionals;
• Offer diverse perspectives and micro-histories.

By combining institutional and amateur footage, we gain a more complete, decentralized, and democratic view of reality. We argue that greater attention must be paid to the selection, preservation, and valorization of this often-overlooked material.

Amid a global trend for open access to public archives, this study introduces a national initiative to create a digital platform for accessing government-produced audiovisual content held by Korea’s Public Policy Broadcasting Service (KTV). These materials—ranging from public information films to coverage of national events—offer significant historical and cultural value for civic engagement, education, and creative reuse.

The research evaluates South Korea’s evolving digital archive environment, focusing on institutional, technological, and policy strategies to improve public access. It critically analyzes current platforms, such as the KTV NaNuri portal and e-History, identifying limitations in metadata infrastructure, content quality, and user interaction. Drawing on global archival practices and AI applications, the study proposes a roadmap for innovation.

Key recommendations include AI-based metadata enhancement, a dual-track service model for general and institutional users, and phased content release aligned with social demand across sectors such as education, research, media, and cultural institutions (GLAM). Legislative and institutional reforms are also addressed to overcome regulatory and rights-related barriers.

The project concludes with a strategic plan (2026–2028) to foster interagency collaboration and build a sustainable, AI-driven infrastructure for public access. This presentation contributes to international discourse on audiovisual heritage and showcases South Korea’s approach to opening its government media archives for broader public use.

Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse (The Gleaners and I) is a 2000 French documentary film directed by Agnès Varda. The film addresses themes like social inequality, dignity and resilience, food waste, and sustainability, making it resonate with contemporary issues. It delves into various forms of gleaning, the practice of collecting leftover crops from fields after the harvest. Shot with a handheld digital camera, it captures intimate and spontaneous moments, featuring unique visual elements such as heart-shaped potatoes.

Twenty-five years after its initial release, l’Institut National de l’Audiovisuel (INA) and Ciné-Tamaris, the distribution company for the works of Agnès Varda and Jacques Demy, are offering students worldwide a unique opportunity to explore Varda's work. Leveraging INA's expertise in preserving, describing, and providing access to heritage collections, all the raw footage from The Gleaners and I is now available online. This comprehensive resource includes the edited film, separate audio tracks, and a pedagogical kit with photographs and press releases. Students can explore and use this raw material to create their own versions of the film and study Varda's editing techniques.

By making the documentary’s rushes available, Ciné-Tamaris and INA continue the educational mission initiated by Agnès Varda herself. This project not only preserves an exceptional piece of cinematic heritage but also fosters a new generation of filmmakers and scholars, encouraging them to engage deeply with Varda's innovative approach to documentary filmmaking.