FIAT/IFTA World Conference 2025

In 2023 the BBC Archive Curation Team was established with a new remit to ‘Maximise the value of the archive through the re-use, re-purposing and re-imagining of Our Collections’. This new approach has required us to consider how to use our existing skills while developing new ones.

In this presentation I will talk about how the BBC Archive has evolved over the last 20 years to a Digital First model, and the impact this has had on our mission, structure and job roles. I will share how we have defined and launched an Archive Curation Strategy, with an emphasis on the skills we are developing in our teams through our Curation Training Programme. I will explore the broad remit of the Curation Team at the BBC, and look at both the challenges and successes we have enjoyed in our first 2 years.

Finally, I will end with a look to the next steps for the Curation Team as the strategy and approach becomes established, and we being to investigate the opportunities offered by advances in tools and technologies.

The increasing demand for engaging cost-effective content within the television industry has catalyzed a paradigm shift in how archival materials are utilized. This project explores the transformative potential of archive-based content production in the Focus thematic television channel, within the TV schedule of Mediaset— the leading commercial television in Italy. By leveraging previously unused and mostly unknown archive footage, particularly raw and semi-edited materials, the project demonstrates how these resources can be reimagined to create fresh, relevant television programming while conserving both financial and creative resources.

Central to this initiative is the collaboration between the Mediaset Archives and Media Management department (archivists/researchers and video-editors) and the Production and Editorial departments of Focus TV, who work together to unlock the hidden value of audiovisual archives.

The process begins with a creative ideation phase, where new concepts are developed in line with Focus TV's strategic objectives and audience expectations. Archival unseen footage is then carefully scouted and evaluated for reuse, with a legal framework in place to ensure the appropriate rights and permissions for each asset. The next steps involve the crafting of the narrative, writing of scripts, and the post-production stages, culminating in the final broadcast.

By reusing and reinventing archival materials, the project not only breathes new life into the audiovisual heritage of the network but also contributes to the preservation and strategic value of archival assets. This process demonstrates the evolving role of the archivist, not simply as a custodian of materials, but as a key player in the editorial and creative processes.

The potential of the project extends beyond the creation of new content. The use of AI-powered documentation tools such as speech-to-text and speech recognition enhances the searchability and accessibility of archived materials, making them easier to retrieve for future projects. Furthermore, the project opens up new opportunities for collaboration with other TV channels to promote the reuse of archival materials, fostering a broader exchange of audiovisual resources within the industry.

This case study highlights the value of audiovisual archives as a strategic, creative asset, and showcases how the cyclical reuse of archival content—within the context of circular media economies—can result in innovative, cost-efficient productions. Furthermore, this project is a testament to the critical role that also private commercial television archives, such as those of Mediaset, can play in shaping the future of content production, proving that even commercially-driven networks can innovate and enhance the value of their archival assets in the global media landscape.

This presentation explores the evolution of video and audio production utilizing archive footage at ORF, tracing three decades of innovation and creative programming. Initially, the ORF Archives production teams focused on creating cost-effective programs solely from existing archive material. Over time, their role expanded as they began collaborating with various editorial departments, integrating new footage into their projects. This collaboration has fostered a comprehensive understanding of production workflows, resulting in mutual benefits for both the archive team and the broader organization.

The transition from archive researcher to archive journalist has necessitated the acquisition of new skills and ongoing training, marking a significant shift in the team's capabilities. This presentation is illustrated through numerous video examples that demonstrate the enhancement in quality and creativity of the programs produced, culminating in tri-medial broadcasting.

A highlight of the ORF-archive is the program “From the Archives,” which features live audiences and live web streaming since its inception in 2011. Archive journalist Regina Nassiri, the creative force of the show, curates and presents the program, welcoming celebrities from stage and screen. The upcoming edition in June 2025 commemorates the 70th anniversary of ORF television, further solidifying Nassiri's status as a celebrated figure in her own right.
This presentation will also address the legal aspects, the advantages and challenges of programs based on archive content and give insights into future projects - an AV-archive must look in both directions: not only to preserve the past but also to look into the future.

By providing a wealth of examples this presentation may inspire other audio-visual archives in their creative endeavors.

This presentation explores experimental machine learning techniques in film restoration, focusing on the development of small custom trained AI models tailored to the needs of archival materials. Unlike commercial AI tools optimized for contemporary media, these models are designed specifically to address the unique forms of degradation found in historical film elements. By working with localized datasets and film specific characteristics, the approach avoids overgeneralization and preserves the distinct aesthetics of the original material.

The presentation covers restoration tasks such as color recovery, either guided by reference materials (such as prints, internegatives, or digitized analog elements) or inferred from culturally or artistically analogous sources when references are unavailable, and spatial repair techniques including gauge alignment, generational recovery, and analog video reconstruction.

Emphasis is placed on ethical considerations, particularly the use of locally executed models trained only on authorized data, thereby respecting rights and provenance while ensuring archival transparency. This work argues for a shift toward practical and ethically sourced AI tools that empower archives to perform restoration work at scale without compromising historical integrity or legal clarity.

Long before TikTok, Instagram and selfies, community-scale media-making narrated decades of everyday history on the Greek islands. Amateur filmmakers captured fleeting moments of public and private life, while public access television stations provided a platform for local news, events and creative expression. This parallel session presents the amateur video and broadcast archive of Aigaio TV, a regional public-access television station headquartered in Syros island, Greece functioning between 1988-2009.

Specifically, the session presents methodologies for community based documentation and access of audiovisual material developed during the 2024 edition of APEX, the Audiovisual Preservation Exchange program originating from the Moving Image Archiving and Preservation program at the Martin Scorsese Department of Cinema Studies at New York University. In collaboration with Archipelago Network, a Greece-based nonprofit organization for research and documentation of audiovisual heritage and knowledge in the Aegean region, selected archivists, NYU MIAP Professors and MIAP students worked to exchange knowledge and skills regarding the care of audiovisual materials, cataloging, metadata management, digitization, digital preservation, and access to collections.

Today, accelerating forces such as overtourism and the global climate crisis exert local pressures on the island communities of the Aegean, threatening their cultural heritage and environmental equilibriums. The Aigaio TV archive, which includes broadcasts covering 30 years of Syros island’s history, contains invaluable documentation of current events, political life and society. Collaborative models for cataloging developed over the course of APEX, as well as public screenings organized subsequently with the local community as a form of documenting anonymous/orphan material, provide models for reinterpreting these materials through a contemporary lens and providing access for younger generations of islanders.

In my presentation I aim to understand how discourses, sentiments, attitudes and behaviours reminiscent of the historical past take centre stage in the present. Drawing upon current media portrayals on the rise of far-right politics in the Romania, I investigate how archived television pasts can offer orientations amidst present-day phenomena such as populism, polarization and disinformation, questioning thus the roles and nature of archives as simultaneously technologies of the past, present and future.

Starting from the premise that present-day medial portrayals act as ‘repositories of memory’ (Stoler, 2009, p. 49), I will zoom into several instances of recent media portrayals in Romania that reflect both present-day sentiments in the country as well as reference Romania’s historical past. These media portrayals will form the focus of a feminist approach to archival curation (DWAN, 2017). Feminist-inspired archival curation aims to generate new approaches to engaging with existing archives in ways that connect historical archives with present-day political contexts and in doing so, create new archival forms and reimagine existing archival structures. As part of this feminist curatorial exercise, I will place the selected instances of audiovisual media in conversation with historical archival documents on Romania’s televisual past, so as to arrive at arrive at gaps, omissions and silences in archived historical narratives that are still palpable in the present day.

Using a method that historian Saidiya Hartman (2019) calls ‘critical fabulation’, I aim to open up the potentialities of archival knowledge and provide a demonstrative show-and-tell of what a reconfiguration of archives as technologies of the past may look like and what new imaginaries are prompted through that exercise of reconfiguration.

Rithy Panh’s Meeting with Pol Pot (2024) revisits the haunting Khmer Rouge leader, often in shadow, re-engaging the regime's propaganda archives. This presentation draws from postdoctoral research analyzing mise-en-scène as a method to investigate staging, ideology, and hidden violence within these official films (1975-1979), largely held at the Bophana Center in Cambodia. Our project develops the methodology "recomposition of mise-en-scène", confronting archival images with extra-filmic sources to critically reread intended meanings and reveal internal tensions.

Focusing on leadership representation, this paper examines Pol Pot’s portrayal in the propaganda corpus. Contrary to pervasive collective labor images, Pol Pot and high-ranking officials are selectively present. When appearing (e.g., Défilé militaire khmer rouge, Meeting khmer rouge au stade), the mise-en-scène builds rigid hierarchy, visually separating leaders from populace and emphasizing military power. Official visit images (e.g., Visite de la délégation chinoise et laotienne) depict controlled environments and hint at privileges (palaces, cars, banquets) starkly contrasting with the enforced austerity of the population.

Our analysis articulates these filmic constructions with extra-filmic materials: historiography gives context; regime slogans and Pol Pot’s speeches reveal ideological contradictions (such as demanding sacrifice under the sun while using a fan himself); crucially, victim testimonies about forced labor allow perceiving subtle details in the images – fleeting expressions, exhausted bodies – challenging the regime's monolithic narrative of revolutionary fervor and exposing violence masked by the propaganda’s heroic facade. This approach offers cautionary tales from authoritarian archives about visual regimes disciplining history and bodies, insights crucial for navigating complex realities past and present.

In this paper I will investigate the role of the hit parade in Europe with special emphasis on the inclusion of the format within national public service broadcasting from late 1950’s and forth. Using the Danish case as my point of departure, I will demonstrate how the hit parade was an important element in relation to a number of processes taking place simultaneously across Europe:

• A general process of internationalization/anglophonization of popular music (a process also often labeled Americanization)
• A counteractive process of nationalization of popular music (charts for regional music)
• A general turn towards a more populist approach to national public service broadcasting
• The constitution of an international youth music/culture

The hit parade (also called “radio charts”) is a radio show format based on a ranking of music, mostly either based on votes, sales reports or airplay statistics. The format, originating in USA in mid-1930s, was imported to Europe during World War II through American Forces Network and similar radio services for the allied forces stationed across Europe. Until late 1950’s and early 1960s hit parades were primarily presented on either these or commercial stations (Radio Luxembourg, off shore stations).

The history of the Hit Parade provides a remarkable foundation for studying how public service institutions have navigated the enduring balance between populism and idealism over time. Generally, the hit parade did not meet the criteria formulated and executed within the scheme of traditional interpretations of public service broadcasting. Several early examples are found around Europe, but the format did not find roots within national broadcasting until late 1959. From then on hit parades started popping up on national stations, partly as a response to competition from commercial radio, but also as an instrument to reach a specific target group, the teenagers.