FIAT/IFTA World Conference 2025: Full Schedule

For more information on the FIAT/IFTA World Conference, visit the FIAT/IFTA website.

12:00pm CET

Exploring the Impact of Generative AI on Audiovisual Archives

Wednesday October 29, 2025 12:00pm - 12:30pm CET

The Value, Use and Copyright Commission of FIAT/IFTA would like to present the recent year’s work researching the impact of generative AI on the audiovisual archiving sector. GenAI impacts the authenticity, integrity, and future accessibility of archival content, and the goal was to write a paper with insights from broadcasting archives who already implemented GenAI. The paper presents guidelines on these aspects:

• Allowing archives to be used for GenAI training – What are the implications, rights, and permissions?
• Handling GenAI-generated content – Addressing authenticity, ownership, and copyright challenges.

Speakers

Johan Oomen

Manager Research & Heritage Services, Netherlands Institute for Sound & Vision

As Head of Research and Heritage Services at the Netherlands Institute for Sound & Vision, Johan Oomen spearheads efforts to provide access to digital heritage. Additionally, he contributes as a researcher at the User-Centric Data Science group of VU University Amsterdam. Next to... Read More →

Maartje Hülsenbeck

Maartje Hülsenbeck is a lawyer specialising in copyright. She advises the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision on copyright issues that arise in managing the collection and making it accessible. She also conducts contract negotiations with various media- and copyright-related... Read More →

Dale Grayson

Managing Director, Northbound TV

Louise Broch

Archive Researcher, DR

Louise Broch (1973), researcher and archivist, DR Archive, Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR):Louise has 20 years of experience with research and archiving in DR. Today she is a researcher in a cross-media task force that helps producers/journalists in DR with TV, radio, and text... Read More →

Wednesday October 29, 2025 12:00pm - 12:30pm CET
Room 3

Presentation, Parallel Session

Subject Strategic Choices for the Archive’s Management Team

12:00pm CET

Holding the Key to Contextualisation? Strategies for Improved Contextualisation at Public Service Media Archives

Wednesday October 29, 2025 12:00pm - 12:30pm CET

Room 1

A EBU report released in spring 2025 has offered critical insights about the current state of public broadcast media (PSM) archives, as they negotiate new challenges related to AI, misinformation and copyright clearance. Recognising the urgency to unlock the potential of broadcast collections, the report also recognises that PSM archives are well-positioned for this task, given that they ‘hold the key to contextualisation’ (EBU 2025: 22).

Taking the EBU report’s findings as its departure point, this presentation will reflect on the necessity and possibilities for better contextualising past histories of audiovisual collections in PSM archives’ metadata. Preliminary findings will be shared from the current, funded AV-DATA project (2024-2025), a collaborative project with the aim to explore strategies to 1. better integrating broadcast archive histories into institutional documentation (i.e. metadata enrichment) and 2. share the ‘story’ of archival collections with broader audiences.

For the first aspect, an initial consultation has taken place with archive staff across the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision (NISV), ahead of semi-structured interviews with PSM archivist colleagues in the European context. The second concern, of audience engagement, has taken the form of a pilot project to develop a ‘Tilt story’, as an interactive digital heritage format to generate improved public knowledge of AV-collection histories. The presentation will conclude with a preview of the ‘toolkit’ that has been developed as part of the AV-DATA project, and a critical evaluation of the project’s selected approaches to the challenge of improving contextualisation of broadcast archival collections today.

Speakers

Carolyn Birdsall

Associate Professor of Media Studies, University of Amsterdam

Carolyn Birdsall is Associate Professor of Media Studies, University of Amsterdam. Her publications include Nazi Soundscapes (2012) and Radiophilia (2023), as well as “Listening to the Archive” (2019, co-ed. Viktoria Tkaczyk) and “Historical Traces of European Radio Archives... Read More →

Bas Agterberg

Curator, Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision

Wednesday October 29, 2025 12:00pm - 12:30pm CET
Room 1

Presentation, Parallel Session

Subject Archive-Based Research

12:00pm CET

(Re)constructing a Collective Memory: Challenges & Opportunities of Cooperation for AV Heritage in the Balkan region

Wednesday October 29, 2025 12:00pm - 1:00pm CET

Room 2

The Western Balkans, shaped by the legacy of former Yugoslavia, hold a rich and diverse audiovisual heritage that reflects the region’s complex history, cultural plurality, and evolving national identities. However, this heritage faces numerous challenges stemming from political tensions, historical antagonisms, and unequal access to preservation resources. Following the breakup of Yugoslavia, the centralization of archives in Belgrade led to significant disparities in access and preservation capacities across the region.

The linguistic and cultural diversity of the Balkans further complicates efforts to safeguard and promote these archives. Each country encounters distinct obstacles, from a lack of infrastructure and technical skills to varying levels of political will and funding. In this fragmented landscape, collaborative initiatives offer a vital pathway toward bridging these gaps, encouraging mutual understanding, and reinforcing the shared memory that binds the region. By pooling resources and expertise, such initiatives can overcome national limitations and promote a collective responsibility for preserving this common heritage.

To address these issues, national broadcasters from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, Kosovo, and the Vojvodina region will launch the project “My Balkan(s)” in September, with support from the French Embassy in Serbia. The French National Audiovisual Institute (INA) will act as a knowledge partner. A roundtable marking the project’s launch will serve as a starting point for open dialogue and strategic cooperation.

Experts and stakeholders will discuss key challenges related to audiovisual preservation, technical needs, regional cooperation, and content creation. The goal is to foster a shared vision, promote skill exchange, and lay the groundwork for a sustainable and inclusive model of audiovisual heritage valorisation in the Western Balkans.

Speakers

Juliette Cahin

International Affairs Officer, INA

Wednesday October 29, 2025 12:00pm - 1:00pm CET
Room 2

Presentation, Discussion Panel

Subject Archive-Based Research

12:30pm CET

Is the Cloud really Green? Analyzing the environmental cost of the cloud

Wednesday October 29, 2025 12:30pm - 1:00pm CET

Room 3

The presentation is built upon the groundwork laid in my previous year's talk. In 2024, I presented the initial phase of my doctorate’s thesis, which explored the migration of audiovisual documents to the cloud, using Rede Globo of Brazil as a specific case study. This current presentation turns its attention to the second part of my research: the environmental ramifications of choosing cloud infrastructure.

Drawing upon the insights of Bindhu and Vijesh (2019) in their work on mitigating the environmental impact of cloud technologies, the concern regarding the ecological cost of computing initially focused on diminishing energy consumption. However, contemporary understanding - shaped by technological progress - emphasizes the efficient utilization of computers and associated technologies while prioritizing environmental stewardship. The adoption of virtual computers and the transition towards Nano Data Centers should yield an energy expenditure reduction of up to 30% when compared to traditional data center models.

The increasing global environmental consciousness, coupled with more stringent regulatory frameworks and the potential for significant cost savings, has spurred considerable efforts to minimize the ecological footprint of the entire information technology ecosystem vital for modern business operations. Cloud computing has emerged as a compelling solution to these aspirations, giving rise to the concept of 'green clouding'. However, it's important to acknowledge that the energy consumption associated with machine learning processes, the development, and the application of artificial intelligence can be considerable. To investigate this topic in a practical context, I will once again analyze the case of Rede Globo, specifically through the lens of their ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) reports, alongside those of Google Cloud, the cloud platform utilized by Globo.

Speakers

Daniela Pinheiro

Researcher, Fundação Getúlio Vargas - Brazil

Daniela Pinheiro has vast experience in the audiovisual production, and is a specialist in audiovisual archives. She worked as a researcher at Grupo Globo (TV Globo) for almost eight years. There, she used to conduct image researches, to insert metadata in audiovisual documents and... Read More →

Wednesday October 29, 2025 12:30pm - 1:00pm CET
Room 3

Presentation, Parallel Session

Subject Reimagining Media Preservation

12:30pm CET

Updates, successes and challenges preserving American public media: GBH Archives and The American Archive of Public Broadcasting

Wednesday October 29, 2025 12:30pm - 1:00pm CET

Room 1

The American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB), a collaboration between the Library of Congress and GBH Archives, goals are to preserve and make accessible material created for American public tv and radio such as voices, culture, and news from communities across the country. The AAPB fortunately has had funding to support the growth and outreach of the collection, in addition to creating AI tools to help generate metadata. With US federal funding sources shutting down, the future of support for public media archives in the US is limited. How do we continue to support the needed staff, the contributors to the AAPB, and be responsible to the historic record?

The GBH Archives, in addition to the AAPB collaboration, is responsible for the preservation and access of the materials created by GBH, the public broadcasting station in Boston that provides over 30% of the content for the US public media system (PBS). GBH Archives website Open Vault provides access to GBH materials and is also facing funding cuts.

GBH Archives has had success with social media outreach, building a following, and licensing of GBH materials.
Highlighting the use of the collection by scholars, journalists, filmmakers, educators, and the public should support the value of the work. Licensing footage brings some revenue, but not enough to support the whole preservation and access ecosystem. The AAPB has been using non generative of AI tools to help create metadata to increase discoverability within the growing collection. Interest in the use of the collection to train tools, as a dataset, could be licensable, but what are the ethics and rights issues in allowing that? Identifying faces, or voices, raises concern. AAPB will share outreach work, the value of making content accessible (even if it might not be dollars), and some stories from the field.

Speakers

Karen Cariani

David O Ives Executive Director GBH Archives/GBH Project DIrector AAPB, GBH Archives/WGBH Educational Foundation

Karen Cariani, is the David O. Ives Executive Director of the GBH Archives and GBH Project Director for the American Archive of Public Broadcasting, a collaboration with the Library of Congress to preserve and provide a centralized on-line access to content created by public media... Read More →

Wednesday October 29, 2025 12:30pm - 1:00pm CET
Room 1

Presentation, Parallel Session

Subject Strategic Choices for the Archive’s Management Team

4:00pm CET

Broadcast Archives - Re-Broadcast: Bringing national archives back to life for a new audience

Wednesday October 29, 2025 4:00pm - 4:30pm CET

Room 3

Northern Ireland Screen is part of the UTV Archive Partnership alongside UTV and the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, with PRONI storing much of the physical film and tape. Northern Ireland Screen is responsible for the digitisation, curation, hosting, education and creative repurposing of this archive. In 2024 UTV approached us to use our knowledge of their archive to create a six-part TV series. We said, “Yes, please!”

My own background is as an archivist on many television series for BBC Northern Ireland as well as a director of my own feature documentaries. My colleague, Paul McClintock, worked for many years as an editor on a variety of TV shows. Within the archive team of Northern Ireland Screen we had the experience necessary to take the archive and create something new out of it for a modern television audience.

My talk will be about how we went about this process of deciding what the series would be about and what time period to focus on, based upon what would tell the best story of social history and entertainment, combined with it being a period represented by heavily digitised parts of the archive. Of course, for most of UTV’s early history Northern Ireland’s narrative is contentious and the archives represent a divided and violent society. We decided we would bypass the troubled period in history and go back to the start of UTV in October 1959 to tell the story of the 1960s – a time before the violence.

Blending the moving images carefully with the music of the period to create a nostalgic experience, history and entertainment come together. With clips and imagery in the talk, we will tell the story of how a national archive can be repurposed for broadcast again to teach an audience about a more shared past they have forgotten about against a backdrop of all the social change of the 1960s. And, of course, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones drop by as part of the journey.

This is archive truly valorised to live again.

Speakers

Evan Marshall

Broadcast Archivist, Northern Ireland Screen

Wednesday October 29, 2025 4:00pm - 4:30pm CET
Room 3

Presentation, Parallel Session

Subject Strategic Choices for the Archive’s Management Team

4:00pm CET

Ethical Considerations in Publishing Yle's Archive Programs on Yle Areena

Wednesday October 29, 2025 4:00pm - 4:30pm CET

Room 1

The presentation explores the comprehensive archiving and publication processes of Yle's program content, with a particular focus on factual programming. It emphasizes three key areas: archiving program content, republishing or reuse, and the ethical and moral considerations surrounding programs published indefinitely on Yle's online streaming service, Yle Areena.

Initially, the focus will be on the AV archive database designed for Yle's internal use. The primary questions center on journalistic and cultural perspectives, as well as Finnish law, which guide the long-term preservation of Yle's programs. We will examine who can access the archive database and under what conditions, while considering the significance of maintaining the authenticity of archived programs and the conditions under which they may be altered.

Next, we will explore the principles behind republishing archive programs. Publication decisions consider legal, ethical, and journalistic guidelines, with particular attention to personal stories and sensitive topics. We will assess whether such publications require additional conceptualization, such as an accompanying editorial article or at least a note in the program's description. For instance, expressions and behaviors that were accepted in the past are evaluated within the context of today's society, with historical background information provided when necessary to enhance understanding.

Finally, we will explore the principles related to the modification or removal of published archive programs from Yle Areena. Ethical considerations, including privacy and freedom of speech, play a crucial role in these decisions. Additionally, we will detail the responsibilities of the editor in charge when handling requests to remove videos from the online platform.

Speakers

Elina Selkälä

Head of Yle Archives, Yle - Finnish Broadcasting Company

Elina Selkälä is the Head of Archives at Yle, Finnish Broadcasting Company. She manages the archives of the Finnish public service broadcaster, which fosters and curates the archive collections of Yle, provides the company's personnel with information services, and publishes archive... Read More →

Maija Hupli

Executive Producer, Yle - Finnish Broadcasting Company

Wednesday October 29, 2025 4:00pm - 4:30pm CET
Room 1

Presentation, Parallel Session

Subject Accessing the Past & Shaping the Future

4:00pm CET

SAFE: the SustainAbility of Italian non-theatrical Film hEritage

Wednesday October 29, 2025 4:00pm - 4:30pm CET

Room 2

This presentation aims to discuss the ongoing National Research Project funded by the European Union SAFE (the SustainAbility of italian Film hEritage: archival infrastructures, digital preservation, and stewardship Strategies) and its outcomes. The non-theatrical Italian film archive community is daily engaged in dealing with highly complex and internally diverse issues: on the one hand, aligned to international standards or part of recognised federations, on the other and not infrequently on the fringes of institutional, legislative and governmental procedures and frameworks.

To adequately explore the main research questions around three axes - archival infrastructures, digital preservation, and stewardship strategies -, the methodological framework for this research draws on three key areas of study: critical infrastructure along with archival and museum studies; digital film and critical digital humanities; and media archaeology combined with media sustainability. SAFE is carrying out three macro-actions of applied research: monitoring and analysing the infrastructural sustainability of preservation centres; surveying digital preservation practices and protocols, collecting and sharing stewardship strategies. A digital atlas addresses these intentions, being a tool derived from the digital humanities’ methodological framework through data visualization. Such exchanges are crucial for building a resilient and sustainable future for film heritage.

Beyond technical solutions, the SAFE initiative emphasizes the role of archives in fostering cultural memory and community engagement. By addressing environmental, cultural, and ethical dimensions, the project offers a holistic approach to the challenges of the digital age. Its outcomes will not only benefit Italian film archives but also contribute to global efforts to safeguard cultural heritage in an era of rapid technological and ecological change.

Speakers

Rossella Catanese

Research Associate, Università degli Studi della Tuscia

Simone Venturini

Full Professor, Università degli Studi di Udine

Wednesday October 29, 2025 4:00pm - 4:30pm CET
Room 2

Presentation, Parallel Session

Subject Reimagining Media Preservation

4:30pm CET

Skeletons out of the closet. What ethical issues arise when we open the archives?

Wednesday October 29, 2025 4:30pm - 5:00pm CET

Room 1

The Archives of the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK) is cultural heritage and should be available to the Norwegian public. Open archives are an important democratic principle and tell us about our societal development, who we used to be, and who we are today. We call our archive Norway’s diary.

We have over 240,000 unique programs on our streaming platform NRK TV. But how does all our content hold up for modern viewers?

Archive content needs context. We have experienced that time works both for and against us: what was once acceptable may be perceived differently today. At the same time, things that were very difficult many years ago may be completely unproblematic today.

NRKs rule is as follows: NRK shall have a low threshold for publishing content, a high threshold for removing it – and the content we curate, we curate for a contemporary audience.

In the process of publishing the archive we had many discussions and different solutions. In our presentation we will show a wide range of cases of how NRK considers ethics when making the past accessible.

We're going to talk about how we handle our skeletons in the closet.

Speakers

Anne Kirsten Bakke

Media Archivist, Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK)

Anne Kirsten Bakke is an Archive developer in NRK. NRK Archive fosters and curates the archive collections and publish archive material on the online services NRK TV and NRK Radio. Anne Kirsten's role is mainly to develop new workflows to create momentum in the organization. She is... Read More →

Wednesday October 29, 2025 4:30pm - 5:00pm CET
Room 1

Presentation, Parallel Session

Subject Accessing the Past & Shaping the Future

4:30pm CET

The broadcasting archive – an asset for your corporation

Wednesday October 29, 2025 4:30pm - 5:00pm CET

Room 3

The research team in DR Archive has for 10 years worked to change the workflow of producing new programs with archive content. From being in the end of the production chain, the archive team has moved to the beginning of the production chain. This has resulted in better use of the archive, better focus on rights, and a much higher awareness of the archive content as a big asset for the corporation. I would like to explain the new and better workflow from archive to production exemplified by DR’s 100 years anniversary. The archive was consulted way before the editorials started their program workflows, and this very early visibility of the archive team has resulted in many new programs with archive content not only from the surface of the archive, but from all corners of the archive with experts digging to find the very best materials for each production.

Speakers

Louise Broch

Archive Researcher, DR

Wednesday October 29, 2025 4:30pm - 5:00pm CET
Room 3

Presentation, Parallel Session

Subject Strategic Choices for the Archive’s Management Team

4:30pm CET

Why AVI at FIAT-IFTA? AVI plays a key role in enhancing audiovisual heritage and its accessibility

Wednesday October 29, 2025 4:30pm - 5:00pm CET

Room 2

AVI - Italian Association of Video Libraries and Media Libraries was born out of an unexpected event, and accidents can sometimes turn into ‘opportunities’.

Founded as an Association on October 24, 2001, in Cesena, its primary goal was to offer legal guidance on issues related to audiovisual materials management.

Today, AVI represents over 300 Italian audiovisual archives and serves as a key representative body in the cultural, scientific, technical, legal, and legislative fields, advocating for the organization of services and documentation in institutions preserving invaluable cultural heritage.

AVI has supported affiliated public and private institutions through workshops and meetings on topics like conservation, access to collections, and copyright. The evolving nature of copyright remains a challenge due to changes in audiovisual production and distribution, which have expanded access and platforms.

This revolution has pointed out challenges in preserving audiovisual works, particularly in locating both current and past Home Video editions, for which AVI organizes an annual award for the best national and international releases.

These issues, along with the need for professional development have been highlighted to both the public and industry experts. Since 2017 AVI has organized discussions at the annual Convegno delle Stelline - Biblioteche.

What goals does AVI set for the future?

- Encouraging digital lending;
- Promoting specific licenses for multi-subject screenings;
- Building new partnerships;
- Discussions with home video producers for usage licenses;
- Cataloging archives to increase collection visibility;
- Training and updates.

AVI’s connection with institutions such as RAI Teche, Mediaset, RSI, Cineteca di Bologna, Istituto Centrale per i Beni Sonori e Audiovisivi, Archivio Luce/Cinecittà, Museo del cinema di Torino, Images en bibliothèque will undoubtedly play a role in safeguarding audiovisual culture from a contemporary perspective.

Speakers

Anna Caccia

Media Library Manager, Università Cattolica di Milano

Anna Fiaccarini

Head of the Library and Related Film Collections, Cineteca di Bologna

Antonella Scarpa

Librarian at the Iuav University of Venice, Iuav University of Venice

Wednesday October 29, 2025 4:30pm - 5:00pm CET
Room 2

Presentation, Parallel Session

Subject Reimagining Media Preservation

5:00pm CET

Analyzing the Potential Bias of Global AI Models in the Cinematic Archiving: An Applied Study and Comparative Evaluation with Arabic AI Models

Wednesday October 29, 2025 5:00pm - 5:30pm CET

Room 1

The growing reliance on artificial intelligence technologies in film archiving has raised increasing concerns regarding the neutrality of these systems: particularly in representing non-Western productions. Global tools such as Google Cloud Video Intelligence and Amazon Transcribe are commonly used in audiovisual archiving; however, their linguistic and cultural training raises questions about their ability to accurately represent Arab films.

Although advancements in Arabic language processing have improved AI’s capacity to interpret Arabic content, challenges remain. These systems may still reproduce algorithmic biases stemming from unbalanced training data or design assumptions. Furthermore, the complexity of the Arabic language, especially its dialectal and cultural diversity, continues to pose unresolved technical and archival obstacles. This gap has yet to be systematically studied through comparative analysis with specialized Arabic-language AI models. If unaddressed, the integration of such global technologies into Arab film archives risks producing digital repositories that misclassify or marginalize local narratives, thereby distorting cinematic memory.

This research proposes an applied analytical study to examine the potential bias of global smart archiving systems toward Arab films. It evaluates the performance of Google Cloud Video Intelligence and Amazon Transcribe, comparing their results to those of specialized Arabic AI models. The study also explores the potential for integrating Arabic models via a dedicated API to enhance the performance of global systems and proposes practical solutions to foster a more inclusive Arab digital film archive.

Speakers

Faisal Alghamdi

Cybersecurity Analyst, Saudi Aramco

Mr. Faisal Alghamdi is a senior Cyber Security Engineer at ECC Information Security Division, Saudi Aramco. He is responsible for managing real time Security Dataset collected from multiple large scale Saudi Aramco data centers. Faisal also works in different areas in cybersecurity... Read More →

Sarah Albaqami

Director of Research and Curation, National Film Archive - Saudi Film Commission

Wednesday October 29, 2025 5:00pm - 5:30pm CET
Room 1

Presentation, Parallel Session

Subject Archive-Based Research

5:00pm CET

Business Process Reengineering and Media Supply Chain re-evolution in the Digital Landscape: Mediaset Fiction case study

Wednesday October 29, 2025 5:00pm - 5:30pm CET

Room 2

In the rapidly evolving digital landscape, the television industry is increasingly required to adapt to new technologies and workflows to meet both creative and operational demands. The Mediaset Fiction case study illustrates how a comprehensive business process reengineering (BPR) approach can streamline the complex workflows of Media Management, involving end to end processes from prospecting, to production, approval, and distribution of related content.

The project focuses on the lifecycle of Fiction materials, examining the intricate steps involved in managing audiovisual assets—such as episodes, trailers, scripts, and audio files. The core of the project lies in the collaborative efforts of multiple internal departments and external stakeholders and production companies, each playing a crucial role in the process from ideation, to raw material approval till final delivery, including different steps from preview, to validation, ingest, standard and 4K quality control, conversion till publishing in the library, ready for linear and/or OTT distribution. Additionally, the project encompasses other related processes, such as the creation of promotional materials and the delivery of assets for social media and press office activities.

The complexity of this process is underscored by challenges such as managing fragmented content, scheduling processes, capacity constraints, especially in 4K production, emphasizes the evolution of the Media Supply Chain through the adoption of advanced ERP tools for content management, and the automation of approval cycles for faster, more efficient workflows.

As a strategic project, Mediaset Fiction not only highlights the technical complexities and operational efficiencies required in modern media production but also underscores the importance of archive management and the strategic re-use of content. In fact, Mediaset fiction materials play a crucial role even in the sales division, which main activities are commercializing, promoting and selling assets to external networks, TV channels, and other stakeholders.

In the digital era, television archives have evolved from static storage to dynamic assets that drive both operational efficiency and creative innovation. In this context, they are no longer just repositories; they are central to fostering innovation, improving collaboration, and maintaining a competitive edge in the fast-evolving media landscape.

Speakers

Emanuele Balossino

Head of Media Management, Mediaset

Emanuele is currently Project and Digital transformation manager at Mediaset (Italian commercial broadcaster). Graduated in managerial engineering, he previously worked as management consultant over telecommunication and media industry, leading business strategy and technology innovation... Read More →

Alessia Natalino

Media Specialist, Mediaset

Giorgia Montanari

Media Specialist, Mediaset

Wednesday October 29, 2025 5:00pm - 5:30pm CET
Room 2

Presentation, Parallel Session

Subject Managing the Flow

5:00pm CET

Public funding & archive agency: the legacy of UK's Young Audience Content Fund: Managing the preservation of multi-platform Children's TV

Wednesday October 29, 2025 5:00pm - 5:30pm CET

Room 3

In 2019 the BFI launched the Young Audiences Content Fund (YACF), a government sponsored lottery fund which was designed to support programming for children and young audiences against a backdrop of declining industry output in this area. The Fund would go on to award over £40m to 221 projects developed for free-to-access platforms, including UK broadcasters, with specific goals including diversity, innovation and representation of the UK’s nations and regions. Though the Fund closed in 2022, it had resounding successes with award winning programmes including Big Boys (2022-2025), Sol (2020) and Milo (2021).

From the outset, the BFI National Archive worked with the YACF to preserve all the completed programmes that were supported by the Fund, lead to a remarkable collection of over 1000 titles. This presentation will explore the significance of this funding initiative and the cultural significance of the collection. We will set out the challenges in developing preservation workflows that aligned with programme delivery from commissioning to broadcast and outline how expectations changed over the course of the Fund. We will also discuss the ways in which the fund and BFI National Archive attempted to embed Equity, Diversity & Inclusion principles into the preservation workflows – with varying degrees of success.

The presentation will conclude with a look at our open source approach to archiving innovative Ultra Access interactive programming for the final series from the fund - Mixmups (2023) - and how this might inform future collecting plans.

Speakers

Dylan Cave

Collections Development Manager, British Film Institute

Dylan Cave is Collections Development Manager at the BFI National Archive and led the team that delivered the selection of BFI videotapes for the Heritage 22 mass digitisation project. He leads in delivering procedures for acquiring and appraising moving image in the national collection... Read More →

Lisa Kerrigan

Senior Curator of Television, British Film Institute

Lisa is the Senior Curator of Television at the BFI National Archive, leading the team responsible for selecting contemporary acquisitions from partner public service broadcasters and streaming companies to the national television archive. She has supervised research access for PhD... Read More →

Wednesday October 29, 2025 5:00pm - 5:30pm CET
Room 3

Presentation, Parallel Session

Subject Strategic Choices for the Archive’s Management Team

11:30am CET

Digital Preservation in Media Archives: The Challenges and Opportunities of Digital Archives in the Post-Physical Era

Thursday October 30, 2025 11:30am - 12:00pm CET

Room 3

With the disappearance of magnetic tapes and optical discs from digitisation efforts, the archival landscape has undergone a fundamental transformation. As all content now resides within enterprise-scale data centres, the notion of an archive has shifted from a tangible collection to an "invisible" repository. This raises pressing concerns: how can organisations ensure their digital holdings remain accessible, authentic, and safeguarded over time?

The challenge of digital preservation lies not only in maintaining technical integrity but in ensuring awareness and active stewardship. Without the physicality of tapes or discs, archives risk becoming "out of sight, out of mind." To counter this, institutions must establish robust digital preservation policies that define retention strategies, monitoring protocols, and long-term accessibility plans. Implementing these policies requires a blend of automated verification processes, human oversight, and adherence to evolving standards in digital conservation.

The vendor community plays a pivotal role in supporting these efforts. Technology providers must develop solutions that offer transparency into stored data, facilitate auditability, and ensure sustainable preservation strategies. Vendors can also guide organisations in adopting best practices, integrating AI-driven archival management, and maintaining adaptability to future shifts in digital storage technology.

A proactive approach is essential to ensure archives remain not only present but actively usable. By fostering collaboration between archival institutions and technology vendors, the archival world can bridge the gap between the visible past and the intangible future.

Speakers

Miroslav Culjat

Manager, Archiving and Preservation, RTÉ

Miroslav Culjat is the Programme Manager for all projects across RTÉ Archives, recently appointed to the new role of Manager, Archiving and Preservation. His leadership in digital archiving and preservation is instrumental to the digital transformation and continuous improvements... Read More →

Thursday October 30, 2025 11:30am - 12:00pm CET
Room 3

Presentation, Parallel Session

Subject Reimagining Media Preservation

11:30am CET

Poking around in podcast preservation

Thursday October 30, 2025 11:30am - 12:00pm CET

Room 1

Slowly but steadily the podcast as a format gained more and more power as a dominant form of media. It is the way in which millions of people consume news, politics, entertainment and gossip on a daily basis. So since 2021 we’ve been actively working on preserving these audio stories that are created both by media professionals and hobbyists with a microphone on the kitchen table.

In this talk, we share key insights into how we’ve been archiving and preserving podcasts from the Netherlands for over four years. Why, after studying the distribution models of podcasts, we decided to ignore playback platforms like Apple Music or Spotify, but make use of a podcast RSS aggregator service instead. Using the Listennotes API, our script allows us to automatically gather podcasts in MP3 format together with any descriptive metadata that's included in the RSS feed by the podcaster creators. Simply adding new shows to a playlist enables us collect the latest episodes on a weekly basis. As we will walk you through our method, we go in-depth as to how we addepted MP3 as an accepted file format to ingest podcasts in our infrastructure, how we enrich episodes with additional metadata and make the shows accessible on our platforms to users. We explain our selection process using license agreements with creators and how we’re trying to get as wide of a vertical slice as possible of the Dutch podcasting landscape. Finally we address paywall related challenges that have become more frequent and that we are struggling with.This talk provides pointers that will allow anyone to get a grasp on how to preserve podcasts and make sure these stories can be told for generations to come.

Speakers

Jasper Snoeren

Coordinator Online and Interactive Media, Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision

Thursday October 30, 2025 11:30am - 12:00pm CET
Room 1

Presentation, Parallel Session

Subject Managing the Flow

11:30am CET

RAI Newsreels Digitisation: From 16mm film to High Quality Master Files

Thursday October 30, 2025 11:30am - 12:00pm CET

Room 2

This project addresses the urgent need to preserve an important piece of heritage at risk: approximately 10K hours of RAI news programs produced between 1952 and 1985, currently stored on 350K 16mm reels. These reels document the formative years of Italian television and are threatened by deterioration due to the vinegar syndrome, necessitating immediate physical and digital preservation.

The project goals include having a digital equivalent of film reels for long term digital preservation, having digital copies suitable to any repurpose in current media environments, and preserving the cleaned and repaired films in the best possible condition, to stop physical deterioration.

The project, slated for completion in early 2026 with partial funding from the Ministry of Culture, employs state-of-the-art digitisation technology to create high-quality digital versions in standard, interoperable formats. RAI oversees the entire process, coordinating external providers and ensuring rigorous technical quality control, logistics management, and the creation of synchronised audio-video clips.

A key aspect is the application of AI techniques for automated metadata generation, including transcriptions, facial recognition, summaries and more. This metadata, alongside the digitised content, is integrated into RAI’s content management system, enabling future reuse in production and research.

A low-resolution version of the entire collection, including metadata, will be made accessible for research and educational purpose, through a national digital platform, to public bodies and universities.

This end-to-end migration project, executed within a constrained timeframe, represents a significant undertaking involving diverse teams and a competitive public tender process.

The integration of AI-powered metadata extraction, the commitment to both long-term preservation and immediate exploitation make this project a compelling case study in digital heritage preservation.

Speakers

Roberto Borgotallo

Senior Researcher, RAI Radio Televisione Italiana

I'm a senior RAI researcher working for archives and their innovation. One of the topics I closely follow is quality control of audiovisual content in particular concerning files generated by the digitisation of older media carriers, including tapes and films.

Giuliano Donnini

Technical Coordinator, RAI Radio Televisione Italiana

Thursday October 30, 2025 11:30am - 12:00pm CET
Room 2

Presentation, Parallel Session

Subject Reimagining Media Preservation

12:00pm CET

Re-writing Danish music history via free sound search

Thursday October 30, 2025 12:00pm - 12:30pm CET

Room 1

Since the advent of the Internet mid 1990’s, free text search has been a central tool. First via indexes of online webpages in readable formats, then all sorts of digitized materials made searchable via OCR. However, written sources are by definition secondary sources, not least in relation to media archives. In this paper, we will demonstrate how the use of free sound search has been instrumental in two recent research projects on Danish music history, conducted at the Royal Danish Library.

The base is the tool xcorrSound. Via indexing of sound archives, it is possible to match sound files and perform searches into big amounts of data. Via a custom-built interface, the results are delivered in tables with relevant data, including a direct link to the file in the media archive and a custom-built media player, directly executing the files.

In this case, we used it to identify the use of specific songs in Danish radio and television from 1989 to 2020, indexed across the Danish media collections. From the data we could not only map airplay of specific songs year by year within minutes, but also analyze the contexts to a much higher degree than before. For instance, how a specific track was introduced or how the reception of a given song changes over time.

The tool has changed generally dark archives into vivid and rich resources for re-telling Danish media history. For now, the searches are performed track by track, but the perspectives of AI implementations are evident.

Speakers

Henrik Smith-Sivertsen

Senior Researcher, Royal Danish Library

Henrik Smith-Sivertsen is a senior researcher at the Royal Danish Library, responsible for the Danish popular music archives. He did his PhD on popular music translation and cover theory, and has primarily worked with European popular music history from a wide range of perspectives... Read More →

Thursday October 30, 2025 12:00pm - 12:30pm CET
Room 1

Presentation, Parallel Session

Subject Archive-Based Research

12:00pm CET

The Preservation and Utilization of motion picture films: A Case Study of Domestic Public Broadcasters in South Korea

Thursday October 30, 2025 12:00pm - 12:30pm CET

Room 2

Motion picture film was the primary recording medium in the early days of broadcasting, and it is still considered an important asset in the digital age due to its excellent image resolution and preservation capabilities. However, the potential value of motion picture films is not being fully recognized because most domestic public broadcasters in South Korea are not systematically managing or effectively utilizing motion picture films. In particular, despite the potential of motion picture films to be used as a source of new content in the digital technology and advanced media environment, its value is limited due to the lack of a management system and the absence of a utilization plan. This study aims to analyze the current state of motion picture films management and utilization by the domestic public broadcasters in South Korea, and also to propose practical ways to utilize them in the modern broadcasting environment and future media production. To this end, the study focused on the management methods of motion picture films by domestic broadcasters, representative cases of motion picture films utilization, and ways to expand the utilization of motion picture films in the future media environment. Domestic broadcasters struggle to manage motion picture films due to a lack of staff, awareness, and preservation strategies. This study highlights KBS-2TV’s TV Literature Hall in UHD as a case where original camera negative film was digitized and enhanced into UHD. Improved image and sound quality allowed the program to be reused for modern broadcasting and OTT platforms, proving the ongoing relevance and potential of film through digital convergence.

Speakers

Juwon Park

Film Archiving Specialist, FRD Corp., Restoration Team

Thursday October 30, 2025 12:00pm - 12:30pm CET
Room 2

Presentation, Parallel Session

Subject Archive-Based Research

12:30pm CET

Bridging the Semantic Gap at the RTVE Archive: A Multimodal Retrieval Approach for Film in Production Research

Thursday October 30, 2025 12:30pm - 1:00pm CET

Room 2

The extensive audiovisual archives of Radio Televisión Española (RTVE) represent a rich, underutilized resource for production research. A particularly valuable yet challenging collection is the RTVE Film Archive, encompassing news programs from the 1950s to the late 1980s. While undergoing digitalization to improve accessibility, a significant portion of this news collection lacks accompanying sound and suffers from non-informative titles, hindering effective retrieval.

Our central research questions focus on how to effectively explore this news film collection for production needs, evaluate the performance of multimodal information retrieval technology in this context, and determine the feasibility and integration strategy of resulting metadata into the existing archive management system.

Focusing exclusively on non-textual, video-only content, we explore how to effectively represent video content in the absence of accompanying text or metadata by embedding both textual queries and video visual features into a shared vector space. This methodology utilizes the CLIP model to generate embeddings of video frames and natural language queries, constructing a multimodal semantic space where semantic similarity is measured by the proximity of representation vectors. The VTR system pipeline encompasses video analysis, semantic analysis, vector database ingestion, and search with relevance feedback, allowing users to query the film archive using natural language or example images.

The main contributions of this PoC include a demonstration of a functional VTR system for retrieving information from a film archive without relying on existing metadata, an evaluation of the effectiveness of joint semantic space representation for this task, and insights into the potential and challenges of integrating such technologies into existing media archive workflows.

Speakers

Virginia Bazán-Gil

President / Head of Archives, FIAT/IFTA / RTVE

Virginia Bazán-Gil  is head of Archives at RTVE and President at FIAT/IFTA. As a member of the RTVE University of Zaragoza Chair, she is also involved with AI applied to the AV archive. Her teaching experience includes academic and professional training for different companies... Read More →

Eduardo Lleida

Professor, University of Zaragoza

Thursday October 30, 2025 12:30pm - 1:00pm CET
Room 2

Presentation, Parallel Session

Subject Managing the Flow

12:30pm CET

How to Make Archival Material Timeless

Thursday October 30, 2025 12:30pm - 1:00pm CET

Room 3

SVT’s archive is extensive. We have nearly 1000 square meters of archival facilities filled with film. The oldest film dates to 1897 (re-copied in the 1950s), and the most recent series recorded on film was made in 2011. In addition to this, we had a tape robot, which has now been decommissioned, and during an EU project, we migrated all tapes to low-resolution files. Once that project was completed, we launched the ‘Save the Films’ project with the goal of making the analog archive accessible.

We have over 500,000 hours of film, and initially we used a TeleCine scanner that ran the film in real-time – which would have taken us a lifetime to complete. Instead, we purchased scanners capable of scanning all material at five times the speed. Within five years, we had made 80% of the analog archive available in Full HD. However, there was demand for material in higher resolution and better audio capture, etc., so we invested in new scanners capable of scanning up to 4K and retired the old TeleCine scanner.

Now we have a MAM system filled with files in a mix of different formats and resolutions, and much of it does not meet today's technical standards. With the new scanners, we can rescan films up to 4K, but when the material was originally recorded on tape and has a resolution of only 576 pixels, the challenges are greater.

To help us, we have brought in an AI service that offers digital restoration and cleaning of files, upscaling from low resolution to high resolution, and colorization of black-and-white film.

David, a media technician, will share his experiences not only working with scanning but also supporting many major productions with colorization.

Speakers

Micaela Skoglund

Team Leader, SVT

David Appelgren

Media Technical, SVT

Thursday October 30, 2025 12:30pm - 1:00pm CET
Room 3

Presentation, Parallel Session

Subject Reimagining Media Preservation

12:30pm CET

The Flesh of Digital Sound Archives: Materiality, Embodiment, and Labour in the Digitization

Thursday October 30, 2025 12:30pm - 1:00pm CET

Room 1

The digital age is burning out our most precious resources, and the future of the past is at stake. Cultural memory institutions such as libraries and archives have been manipulated in ways that prioritize technological efficiency over sustainable archival practices. This paper critically examines the embodied experiences of archivists in the digitization of sound archives, interrogating how the materiality of digital sound archives intersects with the pressing challenges of digitization, digital sustainability, and digital transformation.

While digital technologies have enabled unprecedented access to sound collections, they have also introduced systemic vulnerabilities, including the obsolescence of formats, reliance on extractive infrastructures, and the erasure of embodied archival knowledge. Through a post-phenomenological lens, this research highlights the materiality and sensory dimensions of digital sound archives embedded in the human-technology relations, revealing how archivists’ interactions with these collections shape digitization, preservation, and interpretation. This paper argues that digital sound archives require sustainable strategies that account for the labour, expertise, and sensory engagements embedded in their daily work.

Drawing on primary material collected from semi-structured interviews with archivists and sound engineers from fieldwork research supported by the British Library’s Unlocking Our Sound Heritage (UOSH) Project network, this study foregrounds the embodied labour of archivists as central to the future of cultural memory. In doing so, it calls for a re-imagining of digital sustainability—one that moves beyond technological determinism to recognize the human, material, and affective dimensions of digital sound preservation.

Speakers

Zhuolin Li

PhD Researcher, University of Leicester

Zhuolin Li is currently a PhD candidate at the School of Museum Studies, and a predoctoral fellow with ‘Future 100’ Scholarship at the Institute for Digital Culture, University of Leicester. He is also a research associate in the project ‘Museum Data Service’, which is a joint... Read More →

Thursday October 30, 2025 12:30pm - 1:00pm CET
Room 1

Presentation, Parallel Session

Subject Reimagining Media Preservation

2:00pm CET

Precarious Contexts, Sustainable Practices and Green Archives in Latin America

Thursday October 30, 2025 2:00pm - 2:30pm CET

Room 2

Discussions, regulations, and protocols to guide sustainable development in archives are often championed by professional associations and widely disseminated online, in-person meetings, and forums. Many of these global standards, best practices, and green sustainable practices are easier to implement in technologically advanced countries and more challenging in those with unequal economies, political instability, long histories of colonization, and neocolonization. This paper calls attention to the need to move away from the convenient and homogeneous division of the global north / global south to understand specific contexts of sustainability work by audiovisual archives in Latin America and the Caribbean. The discussion focuses on research practices, recycling, and equipment repurposing as key aspects of promoting green archives. Illustrating specific examples of research leading to the fabrication of AD stripes, archival supplies, and adapting telecines to scanners yields a discussion of intrinsic characteristics of archival institutions to engender a more fair and informed dialogue with contemporary global efforts to foster and support green archives.

Speakers

Juana Suárez

Moving Image Archiving and Preservation Program, Director, New York University

New York UniversityMoving Image Archiving and Preservation ProgramDirector

Thursday October 30, 2025 2:00pm - 2:30pm CET
Room 2

Presentation, Parallel Session

Subject Reimagining Media Preservation

2:00pm CET

Routing the Pilgrimage: Devising Ratna Asmara: A feminist journey of navigating Silence, Absence and Decay in the Archives

Thursday October 30, 2025 2:00pm - 2:30pm CET

Room 1

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.

Speakers

Lisabona Rahman

Film Archivist / Programmer / Reseacher, Kelas Liarsip / International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF)

Julita Pratiwi

Film Researcher, Kelas Liarsip

Umi Lestari

Film Researcher / Scholar / Curator, Kelas Liarsip / Universitas Multimedia Nusantara

Thursday October 30, 2025 2:00pm - 2:30pm CET
Room 1

Presentation, Parallel Session

Subject Accessing the Past & Shaping the Future

2:00pm CET

The Quadruplex situation in 2025: Where are we at with the oldest videotapes?

Thursday October 30, 2025 2:00pm - 3:00pm CET

Room 3

Archives have strived to digitise all their Quadruplex tapes before the format becomes completely obsolete due to lack of equipment and loss of skills. Despite their best efforts, many tapes remain locked in their vault, their content untouched, and the worldwide supply of spare parts and heads is quickly dwindling.

For archives engaging in digitising their remaining quadruplex tapes, many upended questions, with fewer people able to answer them, arise: Who still has the capacity to play back 2inch tapes? How to deal with the multiple sub-types and standards? What would be the cost and resources needed to embark in such a project? Can new digital tools compensate for lack of equipment?

This discussion panel, which aims to be the launching pad of further exchanges, will be led by experts (to be selected) from various backgrounds, such as archive institutions or service providers - all confronted to the challenge of quadruplex obsolescence in different ways.

Speakers

Sarah Vandegeerde

Head of Audiovisual Operations, INA

Thursday October 30, 2025 2:00pm - 3:00pm CET
Room 3

Presentation, Discussion Panel

Subject Reimagining Media Preservation

2:30pm CET

Reshaping the Ethnographic Archive: A Digital Approach to Restoring Context

Thursday October 30, 2025 2:30pm - 3:00pm CET

Room 2

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.

Speakers

Avigail Rotbain

Researcher and Collection Administrator, National Museums of World Culture

Kristofer Cavallin-Aijmer

Archivist, National Museums of World Culture

Thursday October 30, 2025 2:30pm - 3:00pm CET
Room 2

Presentation, Parallel Session

Subject Accessing the Past & Shaping the Future

2:30pm CET

«Just listen to women »: A 360 archives-driven exploration on abortion’s history in France

Thursday October 30, 2025 2:30pm - 3:00pm CET

Room 1

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. 

Speakers

Thomas Arbez

Head of Productions, INA

Thursday October 30, 2025 2:30pm - 3:00pm CET
Room 1

Presentation, Parallel Session

Subject Accessing the Past & Shaping the Future

3:00pm CET

Audiovisual Atlases and Amateur Footage: Rethinking Collective Memory Online, Shaping a new way to look back

Thursday October 30, 2025 3:00pm - 3:30pm CET

Room 1

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.

Speakers

Francesco Giorgi

Film Director, Independent

Francesco Cascio

Cultural Manager, Independent

Thursday October 30, 2025 3:00pm - 3:30pm CET
Room 1

Presentation, Parallel Session

Subject Accessing the Past & Shaping the Future

3:00pm CET

Building Public Access to Government-Produced Audiovisual Content in South Korea: Case study in Public Policy Broadcasting Service (KTV), South Korea

Thursday October 30, 2025 3:00pm - 3:30pm CET

Room 3

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.

Speakers

Hyojin Choi

Senior Researcher, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Information and Archival Science Research Institute

Majored Audiovisual Heritage Management for Master’s degree in INA-Sup (School in Institut National de l’Audiovisuel, French National Audiovisual Archives, 2011-2013)Currently, present as a researcher at Institute of Information and Archival Science of Hankuk University of Foreign... Read More →

Thursday October 30, 2025 3:00pm - 3:30pm CET
Room 3

Presentation, Parallel Session

Subject Accessing the Past & Shaping the Future

3:00pm CET

The Gleaners and I: An Innovative Project for Image Education: Passing on Agnès Varda's work and social commitment to younger generations

Thursday October 30, 2025 3:00pm - 3:30pm CET

Room 2

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.

Speakers

Thomas Monteil

Project Manager, INA

Thomas Monteil joined INA in 2010 as a sound engineer, specialist in the restoration of radio archives in the Technical Operations Department. Since 2020, he works as project manager in the INA Expertise and Consulting department and designs, coordinates, and leads cooperation projects... Read More →

Thursday October 30, 2025 3:00pm - 3:30pm CET
Room 2

Presentation, Parallel Session

Subject Accessing the Past & Shaping the Future

9:00am CET

AiDitor: How to make AI applicable in media production

Friday October 31, 2025 9:00am - 9:30am CET

Room 2

AiDitor is ORF's in-house AI lighthouse project, spearheading innovation in the area of editorial workflows and multimedia content worfklows. This cutting edge initiative aims to revolutionize the way editorial teams operate by harnessing the power of artificial intelligence to streamline processes, enhance efficiency, and unlock new creative possibilities.

At its core, AiDitor is an intelligent content workflow assistant that aggregates and integrates multiple AI services, making them accessible through a user-friendly, one-click operation interface. This centralized AI hub, that is based on individualized workspaces empowers editorial teams to leverage state of the art technologies with ease, enabling them to transcribe audio and video content, generate concise summaries, Headlines or craft engaging social media posts, and even generate entire online stories.

AiDitor's capabilities extend far beyond text-based tasks. It offers advanced video intelligence tools, such as gender analysis, enabling editors to gain valuable insights. Additionally, it provides audio enhancement features, ensuring that audio quality meets the highest standards. One of the most exciting aspects of AiDitor is its integration with the latest large language models, which serve as a powerful AI playground for the entire company.

Speakers

Stefan Kollinger

Chief Innovation Officer, ORF

Marco Mursteiner

Innovation Manager, ORF

Friday October 31, 2025 9:00am - 9:30am CET
Room 2

Presentation, Parallel Session

Subject Managing the Flow

9:00am CET

From Custodianship to Curation: The Evolution of the BBC Archivist role

Friday October 31, 2025 9:00am - 9:30am CET

Room 1

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.

Speakers

Josephine Haining

Senior Curator, BBC

Friday October 31, 2025 9:00am - 9:30am CET
Room 1

Presentation, Parallel Session

Subject Managing the Flow

9:00am CET

Strategies for Large Scale Archival Digitization: Integration of digital archives into existing MAM workflows and infrastructure

Friday October 31, 2025 9:00am - 9:30am CET

Room 3

This presentation will focus on the need for CBS/Paramount to develop an archival digitization strategy that would integrate with CBS News' global initiatives for utilizing archival content to enrich production, be accessible across business units, and create new revenue streams for the content.

Speakers

Robert Berger

SVP, Customer Technical Solutions, GrayMeta

Myra Cole

VP, Sales & Business Development, GrayMeta

Kenneth Kellner

Director, CBS News Archives, CBS/Paramount Global

Friday October 31, 2025 9:00am - 9:30am CET
Room 3

Presentation, Parallel Session

Subject Managing the Flow

9:30am CET

Leveraging Computer Vision for Capturing Sign Language Motions in Video Archives

Friday October 31, 2025 9:30am - 10:00am CET

Room 2

Sign language is a crucial mode of communication for the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing (DHH) community. However, sign language content in video archives often lacks structured indexing and accessibility, making it difficult to search, analyze, or utilize for linguistic research and education. This proposal aims to develop a computer vision-based system to automatically detect, track, and analyze sign language motions in video archives, enabling efficient retrieval and study of sign language content.

This project proposes a novel approach to enhancing sign language accessibility in video archives using computer vision and deep learning. By implementing automatic recognition, annotation, and searchability, the proposed system will provide valuable tools for researchers, educators, and the DHH community.

Speakers

Takashi Koyano

Executive Producer, NHK Enterprises, Inc.

Friday October 31, 2025 9:30am - 10:00am CET
Room 2

Presentation, Parallel Session

Subject Archive-Based Research

9:30am CET

PMC presents: The Guide to Quality Control in Migration Processes: A new publication by the Preservation & Migration Commission

Friday October 31, 2025 9:30am - 10:00am CET

Room 3

Published in April 2025 after 2 years in the making, The Guide to Quality Control in Migration Processes (short: the Quality Guide) is a comprehensive document that aims at describing all quality arrangements that make for a successful migration project, from preparation of legacy carriers to long-term digital preservation. It is intended as a help for anyone dealing with migration of audiovisual content.

This session will provide an overview of what is found in this guide, how it can be of use, and by whom.

Speakers

Laurent Boch

Responsible of Research Projects Administration, RAI Radio Televisione Italiana

Laurent Boch, graduated in Electronic Engineering in 1990 at “Politecnico di Torino”, has been working for RAI – Radiotelevisione Italiana since 1992, at the Centre for Research and Technological Innovation (CRITS). He has been involved in several EU funded projects dealing... Read More →

Etienne Marchand

Multimedia Engineer, INA

Graduated from EICAR in 2008 after training as a sound engineer, Etienne Marchand has since been working on a great variety of archive documents - audio, video and film - and on every aspect of the technical workflows: assessment, cleaning and physical restoration of audiovisual carriers... Read More →

Friday October 31, 2025 9:30am - 10:00am CET
Room 3

Presentation, Parallel Session

Subject Reimagining Media Preservation

9:30am CET

The role of archives in content production: Reuse to Reinvent

Friday October 31, 2025 9:30am - 10:00am CET

Room 1

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.

Speakers

Emanuele Balossino

Head of Media Management, Mediaset

Alessia Natalino

Media Specialist, Mediaset

Giorgia Montanari

Media Specialist, Mediaset

Friday October 31, 2025 9:30am - 10:00am CET
Room 1

Presentation, Parallel Session

Subject Managing the Flow

10:00am CET

Beyond the Screen: From Production Design to Broadcast Archives - How Integrated Asset Management Unlocks Strategic Value in Television Archives

Friday October 31, 2025 10:00am - 10:30am CET

Room 2

Although audiovisual archives have traditionally focused on preserving the final broadcast content, there is growing recognition of the strategic value embedded in the production process itself. This presentation is based on a Master’s research project that investigates how production design archives — including art direction, set design, costume design, makeup, props, and graphic design — can become assets for innovation, productivity gains, and memory preservation in media companies.

The presentation highlights how the integration of these production design assets into Digital Asset Management (DAM) platforms — combined with the use of ontologies, taxonomies, metadata governance, and artificial intelligence — enables new forms of reuse and supports strategic decision-making. These often-overlooked records hold significant potential to enrich future productions and to feed AI-based systems for metadata generation and generative content creation.

The session will discuss how aligning artistic production archives with a broader archival strategy — especially through MAM/DAM system integration — creates synergies that elevate the archive from a passive repository to a dynamic competitive resource, through interoperability between platforms. It will also address the risks of neglecting these materials, particularly in a landscape where AI tools rely on rich, diverse, and well-structured data.

Through concrete examples, this presentation aims to provoke reflection among archive managers: are we truly valuing everything that forms the history of our content? Does our organization recognize that what happens behind the scenes — the production design process — is also one of its most valuable assets?

Speakers

Cristiane Costa

Master’s Student at PUC-Rio and Independent Knowledge Management Consultant, PUC-Rio | SAIBA Consultancy | FIAT/IFTA Media Management Commission

Friday October 31, 2025 10:00am - 10:30am CET
Room 2

Presentation, Parallel Session

Subject Strategic Choices for the Archive’s Management Team

10:00am CET

ORF-Archives: A Creative Force – From Research to Production: A Time Travel Through 30 Years of Archive Innovations, Productions & Programs

Friday October 31, 2025 10:00am - 10:30am CET

Room 1

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.

Speakers

Ruth Stifter-Trummer

Archive Journalist, ORF

I have been with the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation for 30 years, as a documentalist, researcher and archive journalist. External non-commercial requests fall within my area of responsibility, among of which are the educational sector and the academic community. To be more accessible... Read More →

Regina Nassiri

Archive Journalist, ORF

Friday October 31, 2025 10:00am - 10:30am CET
Room 1

Presentation, Parallel Session

Subject Archive-Based Research

10:00am CET

Is this the last train for migration? And are we really sure of the destination?

Friday October 31, 2025 10:00am - 11:00am CET

Room 3

The spectre of obsolescence has been looming over audiovisual archives for many years, but is the end really imminent? Does it apply to all types of legacy formats? How can we objectively measure its progression and anticipate its impact? Does the problem end when everything turns to digital files?

The Preservation and Migration Commission of FIAT/IFTA organised an online seminar in June 2025 with the slightly provocative title "Is this the last train for migration?".

This session marks an opportunity to delve further into the subject by confronting the points of view of all parties involved, including archive owners, service providers and equipment manufacturers.

Speakers

Charles Fairall

Videotape & Engineering Advisor, British Film Institute

Charles Fairall has served the BFI National Archive for 35 years as a technologist and as Head of Conservation over the past decade, took primary responsibility for leading the technical teams who pioneered innovative techniques to conserve, preserve and make accessible through digitisation... Read More →

Miroslav Culjat

Manager, Archiving and Preservation, RTÉ

Friday October 31, 2025 10:00am - 11:00am CET
Room 3

Presentation, Discussion Panel

Subject Reimagining Media Preservation

10:30am CET

Exploring Experimental Machine Learning in Film Restoration: Ethical, Local AI Models for Color, Spatial, and Generation Recovery

Friday October 31, 2025 10:30am - 11:00am CET

Room 1

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.

Speakers

Fabio Bedoya

Film Restoration Technician, Independent

Film Restoration Artist at Duplitech

Friday October 31, 2025 10:30am - 11:00am CET
Room 1

Presentation, Parallel Session

Subject Accessing the Past & Shaping the Future

11:30am CET

Aigaio TV: Insular Community Heritage in Transition

Friday October 31, 2025 11:30am - 12:00pm CET

Room 1

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.

Speakers

Jacob Moe

Director, Archipelago Network

Friday October 31, 2025 11:30am - 12:00pm CET
Room 1

Presentation, Parallel Session

Subject Archive-Based Research

11:30am CET

Assessment of massively digitised content through retrospective quality control

Friday October 31, 2025 11:30am - 12:00pm CET

Room 3

In RAI's massive digitisation of Betacam and IMX tapes, Quality Control was set up since the beginning to ensure the best possible result.

However, QC activity must necessarily adapt to the required pace. Since the original carriers were retained for potential re-digitisation in case issues are later found with the digitised content, QC could tolerate a certain error rate, as errors would not be irreparable.

Over time it became clear that accessing again the original carriers is not viable, in addition to the fact that the players will not be available much longer than the digitisation process itself.

Quality of legacy content can be low for plenty of reasons: the original recording, past format migration, carrier deterioration and, finally, digitisation.

We decided to run a retrospective QC activity, on a representative sample basis, for assessing, with a different QC methodology, if quality lower than acceptable, due to specific criticalities, was not detected.

Retrospective QC is a means to obtain statistical knowledge about the results of digitisation so far. Knowledge useful for assigning value to the digitised content, making decisions about the original carriers, and evaluating how to proceed with ongoing digitisation.

A few aspects are worthy of attention. Retrospective QC was done having as input the same information that was available to QC operators, but viewing the whole content timeline, at maximum double speed. Provenance, together with year and context of production, were considered for assessing content quality. The quality of digitisation has been rated as either bad, low, acceptable, good, or very good, with only the first two levels requiring a retry of digitisation. This is because minor or short issues can be addressed through intervention on digital content at repurposing time.

The original acceptance decision was found correct for 98,7% of the sample. It’s a success, we are going to explain why.

Speakers

Laurent Boch

Responsible of Research Projects Administration, RAI Radio Televisione Italiana

Silvia Proscia

Researcher, RAI Radio Televisione Italiana

Friday October 31, 2025 11:30am - 12:00pm CET
Room 3

Presentation, Parallel Session

Subject Reimagining Media Preservation

11:30am CET

Broadcasting the Stranger: How Italian public television shaped the image of the other

Friday October 31, 2025 11:30am - 12:00pm CET

Room 2

This project explores how Italian public television has constructed the figure of the "foreigner" – colonized subject, migrant, refugee, the "other" – through the lens of the RAI audiovisual archive. The investigation focuses on a curated selection of programs and archival footage from the 1950s to the present, analyzing the evolution of language, imagery, and narrative frames linked to otherness. In the absence of television material from the colonial era, the project examines how that historical experience has been portrayed retrospectively, shedding light on how public broadcasting has either restored or erased its memory. From this starting point, the analysis moves through narratives of internal migration, immigration flows from the 1980s onward, and evolving discourses around multiculturalism, national identity, and public security.

The aim is to show how the audiovisual archive functions not only as a repository of public memory, but also as an active agent in shaping cultural categories and hierarchies. In an information-saturated world, still dominated by polarized discourse, revisiting the archival past becomes a way to reflect critically on its responsibilities in the present. Particular attention will be devoted to the language used in TV programs, highlighting how expressions such as vu cumprà (a derogatory term for migrant street vendors), extracomunitario (a bureaucratic term for non-EU foreigners, often used pejoratively), and maranza (slang for a working-class youth with stereotyped behavior and style, sometimes racialized) have helped shape a distorted and often stigmatizing imaginary. Through this focus on vocabulary and visual rhetoric, the project contributes to the broader debate on the public role of broadcast archives, not only as tools for historical inquiry, but as critical spaces for understanding the continuities and fractures in representations of the other, and for exploring the complex relationship between media, society, and alterity.

Speakers

Elena Caterina

Archivist, RAI Radio Televisione Italiana

Elena Caterina is an audiovisual archivist for Rai Teche since 2019. She is a PhD student in “Documentation Studies, Linguistics and Literature” at Sapienza University of Rome where she previously completed a bachelor’s degree in Philosophy and a master's degree in Archival... Read More →

Marta Zoe Cagliero

Archivist, RAI Radio Televisione Italiana

Friday October 31, 2025 11:30am - 12:00pm CET
Room 2

Presentation, Parallel Session

Subject Accessing the Past & Shaping the Future

12:00pm CET

Accessing the past, shaping the future: What Remains of the Italian migrants in Tunisia! Let Archives Tell!

Friday October 31, 2025 12:00pm - 12:30pm CET

Room 2

On both shores of the Mediterranean, Tunisia and Italy have a shared past. Waves of migration have followed one another for centuries between the two shores, leading to the settlement of the Italian community in Tunisia.

Migration and integration have accompanied the trajectory of Italians in Tunisia, we propose through this multi-media audiovisual and written research to present the evidence provided by the archives on the Italian-Tunisian heritage, this archive search concerned the archives of Tunisian Television, namely the two collections of television programs from the 80s “Italiet” and “Sikiliet”, on Italy and Sicily as web as the two seasons of the Ramadan soap opera “harga” from the years 2021-2022.

We also used written references from the Tunisian National Archives and the National Library, as well as online resources and books written by Italian researchers with a migratory past from the cities of Livorno, Tuscany, Sicily, and Genoa.

This research is essential for tracing the contemporary history of Tunisia and Italy, of the Italians who remained in Tunisia since its independence in 1956.

It is essential to represent the cultural framework of Italian migrants and the framework of the professions practiced in Tunisia, as well as the impact of their integration into Tunisian culture in search of a shared Mediterranean identity.

Resources:
- Tunisian Television Archives
- Archives of the National Archives of Tunisia
- Archives of the National Library
- Online Resources

Speakers

Beesma Bsir

Assistant Professor, Higher Institute of Documentation

Kaouthar Benboubaker

Information Science Researcher, SILAB Laboratory – High Institute of documentation

Fatma Layeb

Head of Department, The National Library of Tunisia

Friday October 31, 2025 12:00pm - 12:30pm CET
Room 2

Presentation, Parallel Session

Subject Accessing the Past & Shaping the Future

12:00pm CET

Last chance to play: Time is running out for legacy video digitization

Friday October 31, 2025 12:00pm - 12:30pm CET

Room 3

For audiovisual archives, the need to digitize magnetic media is urgent and immense. This urgency is driven not only by the physical degradation of tapes but also by the rapid disappearance of the equipment, spare parts, and technical knowledge required to play them back. Unlike film, which benefits from ongoing scanner development, videotape formats rely entirely on fragile, aging machines—many of which are no longer manufactured, increasingly difficult to maintain, and often irreplaceable. Without these tools—and the expertise to use them—segments of audiovisual heritage risk becoming permanently inaccessible. The window for mass digitization is closing.

This presentation explores the tension between mission and means in addressing this challenge. While broadcasters have often led the way in digitization and still face significant backlogs, the remaining analog collections extend far beyond this sector (including performing arts institutions, universities, government agencies, and local archives). The Netherlands Institute for Sound & Vision faces a difficult decision: whether to invest in preserving and operating a vast fleet of legacy video playback equipment, originally held by a private digitization partner at risk of dissolution.

We examine the rationale behind this proposed acquisition—not only as a response to shrinking digitization capacity but also as a symbolic affirmation of institutional responsibility. At the same time, the financial sustainability of this move remains uncertain. Will enough collections be offered for digitization in the coming decades to justify the cost? Can such infrastructure serve both the institution’s own needs and those of the broader field?

Ultimately, this presentation reflects on what it means for a public institution to act as a steward—not just of content but of the tools required to access it. It poses the question: if archives like ours don’t act, who will? And what happens if we don’t?

Speakers

Arnoud Goos

Manager Mediaprofessionals, Netherlands Institute for Sound & Vision

Responsible for opening up the archives for third party AV collections and archives (for city archives, government, university's, museums, etc).

Friday October 31, 2025 12:00pm - 12:30pm CET
Room 3

Presentation, Parallel Session

Subject Reimagining Media Preservation

12:00pm CET

The Futures That Were: Experiments in the Archives

Friday October 31, 2025 12:00pm - 12:30pm CET

Room 1

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.

Speakers

Dana Mustata

Assistant Professor in Television and Audiovisual Culture, University of Groningen

Friday October 31, 2025 12:00pm - 12:30pm CET
Room 1

Presentation, Parallel Session

Subject Archive-Based Research

12:30pm CET

Breaking the narrative: Finding multivocality through Oral History and archival footage

Friday October 31, 2025 12:30pm - 1:00pm CET

Room 2

Since 1959 the Netherlands have been sourcing natural Gas through a company (NAM) from under the feet of the people of Groningen. This has been a success story for more than 50 years. Working in the Natural Gas Industry was something to be proud of.

Then came the earthquakes. In the province of Groningen people started seeing cracks in their homes. It took years to get the Dutch government and the NAM to acknowledge the root cause of the problem, the mining of natural Gas.
The government decided to handle the situation, but nothing much happened. The inhabitants of Groningen that were effected sometimes had to leave their home for years.

In short, the government failed their people as was acknowledged: Between 2021 and 2023, the Dutch House of Representatives conducted a parliamentary survey on the extraction of natural gas in the Groningen field and the long-term problems that resulted from this. The aim of this survey was to gain insight into the decision-making process on natural gas extraction, earthquakes, damage handling and reinforcement.

The Groningen Archives (Groninger Archieven) has made it company policy to document everything about the mining of Natural Gas, the good years and the bad.

We have hundreds of 16mm films of the early years of Gasunie (an energy network operator. In the Netherlands. We also preserve oral history interviews. The interviews reflect the early years as well as the end years of this period. The interviews are conducted by a foundation, Ooggetuigen van de geschiedenis (Eye witnesses of history).

We were an advising party, as well as the preserving and publicising party. We want the stories of the people to be part of this archive, researchable online, and we think that we can add to truth finding and our work can help relieve the trauma of the effected people by letting them be part of the archive. Actual people with a voice and a story.

The talk will be about our future plans and idea’s for an inclusive approach to archiving.

Speakers

René Duursma

Curator AV, RHC Groninger Archieven

Friday October 31, 2025 12:30pm - 1:00pm CET
Room 2

Presentation, Parallel Session

Subject Accessing the Past & Shaping the Future

12:30pm CET

Meeting Pol Pot Again: Staging Leadership and Violence in Khmer Rouge Propaganda Archives

Friday October 31, 2025 12:30pm - 1:00pm CET

Room 1

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.

Speakers

Tomyo Costa Ito

Postdoctoral Researcher, University of São Paulo (USP)

Friday October 31, 2025 12:30pm - 1:00pm CET
Room 1

Presentation, Parallel Session

Subject Archive-Based Research

12:30pm CET

One Size Fits None? RSI Archivi on their way towards trusted digital repository certification

Friday October 31, 2025 12:30pm - 1:00pm CET

Room 3

Over the past 10 to 15 years, the field of digital preservation has expanded significantly, bringing with it a growing need for certification of trusted digital repositories. The OAIS model (ISO 14721) has become a foundational standard, leading to certification frameworks such as Trusted Digital Repository (ISO 16363), Germany’s DIN 31646, and the CoreTrustSeal (CTS, NL), formerly known as the Data Seal of Approval (DSA). A few audiovisual archives – such as Sound and Vision (NL) and NCAA (India) – have already completed certification, and others, like meemoo (BE), are in progress. Notably, no archive managed directly by a broadcaster has yet achieved such certification.

Article 33 of the Swiss Ordinance on Public Broadcasting mandates that “archiving is carried out […] according to recognised professional standards.” In response, RSI (the public broadcaster of Italian-speaking Switzerland) has launched a self-audit based on the Flemish-Dutch ScoreModel for Digital Sustainability, which is aligned with CTS criteria. The goal is to eventually undergo a full audit and, if feasible, obtain certification.

This process, however, has highlighted several challenges: current standards are not designed with broadcast archives in mind. Even within the audiovisual field, applying certain criteria requires contextual interpretation and adaptation.

This presentation outlines RSI’s journey from initial motivation to current status, reflecting on the common difficulties in interpreting and meeting certification standards. It also advocates for developing a tailored standard that supports – rather than limits – the long-term digital sustainability of in-house broadcaster archives, reflecting their specific realities and operational contexts.

Speakers

Brecht Declercq

Head of Archives, RSI

Brecht Declercq (MA, MSc) is the President of FIAT/IFTA, the world association of media archives, and Head of Archives at RSI, the public broadcasting of Italian-speaking Switzerland. From 2013 until 2022 he was responsible for the preservation of the Flemish audiovisual heritage... Read More →

Friday October 31, 2025 12:30pm - 1:00pm CET
Room 3

Presentation, Parallel Session

Subject Reimagining Media Preservation

4:00pm CET

AI-Powered Retrieval of Artwork Explanations from Media Archives

Friday October 31, 2025 4:00pm - 4:30pm CET

Room 3

I present an AI-driven system for the automatic retrieval and segmentation of video content in which specific artworks are discussed. Given only the title of a work of art, the system identifies and extracts short, relevant video portions where that artwork is explicitly explained—even when it appears within broader, more general content.

The pipeline follows a multi-step process. First, I perform a keyword-based search across large-scale media archives to retrieve a ranked list of candidate videos—the top-K most likely to contain references to the target artwork. Each selected video is then transcribed using Whisper, with speaker diarization to distinguish different voices.

Next, I segment the transcription into longer monologue-style blocks, where a single speaker talks continuously for at least 30 seconds. These segments, along with the artwork title, are processed by a large language model (LLM), which identifies the portions of speech specifically related to the artwork. All original timecodes are preserved, enabling precise extraction of temporally-aligned subclips.

The output is a curated set of “shorts”—concise video segments that explain the chosen artwork—ready for use in educational, curatorial, or commercial settings. Museums can assemble engaging displays, educators can embed authentic expert commentary into lessons, and media organizations can trace and manage rights related to artwork representations across archives.

Additionally, the LLM can automatically generate relevant questions based on the content of each segment. This makes it possible to associate specific shorts with the questions they answer, enhancing both discoverability and pedagogical value within the archive.

Speakers

Lorenzo Canale

Researcher, RAI Radio Televisione Italiana

Friday October 31, 2025 4:00pm - 4:30pm CET
Room 3

Presentation, Poster

Subject Archive-Based Research

4:00pm CET

Archiving the Aurora: Contextualizing Starfish Prime through Archival Media

Friday October 31, 2025 4:00pm - 4:30pm CET

Room 3

Integrating audiovisual media with related materials in other formats in a user-accessible manner presents a significant challenge for many institutions. However, making these resources available on a unified platform can allow materials to be even more technically expressive and valuable to research. At Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos National Laboratories this integration is particularly critical. Researchers frequently rely on both original motion picture footage of nuclear tests and the corresponding technical documentation to conduct thorough analysis and data interpretation. The labs have recently initiated efforts to address this need by leveraging a video streaming platform that allows us to collocate audiovisual materials with related textual documents, greatly improving accessibility and contextual understanding.

This poster will explore the benefits of combining diverse media formats, the challenges associated with making them accessible to researchers, and the technical obstacles involved in digitizing and preparing historic film materials—particularly those dating back to the early 1960s. As a case study, we will examine the film footage from Starfish Prime, the largest nuclear test conducted in outer space, with associated reports and documentation. This consolidation of information will provide valuable insights into the environmental impacts of the nuclear test and the unexpected effects of an electromagnetic pulse on Hawaii’s electrical grid.

Speakers

Megan Rose Kilidjian

Motion Picture Film Archivist, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Laura McGuiness

Metadata Librarian, Los Alamos National Laboratory

Los Alamos National Laboratory

Friday October 31, 2025 4:00pm - 4:30pm CET
Room 3

Presentation, Poster

Subject Archive-Based Research

4:00pm CET

Consumer or Cultural Product? Analyzing Large Versus Small Private Broadcast Archives in India

Friday October 31, 2025 4:00pm - 4:30pm CET

Room 2

In the Indian entertainment market, competition between television, online streaming content and film is fierce. With managers reluctant to put money where it cannot grow exponentially, broadcast archives of studios are a rarity. As large conglomerates take over smaller media houses, it appears that they are disinterested in preserving their own content, unless it functions as a commodity.

The recent surge in re-releases of older films has prompted studios to scramble for distributor copies for restoration. This is motivated by profit than genuine concern for the film’s artistic or archival significance, highlighting a power dynamic how broadcast data from private studios is valued, influenced by ‘relations of privilege and social control’. (Appadurai 1994).

But small private collectors ardently rescue, safeguard, digitize and archive broadcast collections. Applying the four types of commodities theory by Jacques Maquet (Appadurai 1994) these are ‘ex-commodities’ - materials retrieved from the commodity state and placed in some other state. Broadcast archives of large studios are ‘commodities by destination’- objects intended principally for exchange.

This paper unpacks ‘Everything is possible, and nothing is true’ in broadcast archiving by analyzing the production and archiving policies of two major production studios in the South Indian city of Hyderabad. We ask, what is the cultural and archival value of the content and material when everything is created for consumption, but nothing is deemed fit for retention? We place this treatment next to the meaning-making practices of two private film- related material archives, The Cinema Resource Centre and Archive of Indian Music in South India. With safeguarding their collection and public engagement at the core of their work, we see that individual collectors place immense social and cultural value in preservation and digitization with profits not being their mainstay and collections as ex-commodities.

Speakers

Aparna Subramanian

Film Research Officer, Film and Television Institute of India

Aparna Subramanian is an accomplished audiovisual archiving and cultural heritage expert with around 15 years of experience across India, Southeast Asia, and the United States. Aparna is a Fulbright Fellow and alumnus of NYU’s Moving Image Archiving and Preservation program. She... Read More →

Madhavi Reddy

Head of Department, Department of Media and Communication Studies, Savitribai Phule Pune University, Pune, India

Shruti Hussain

Project Associate, Department of Media and Communication Studies, Savitribai Phule Pune University, Pune, India

Friday October 31, 2025 4:00pm - 4:30pm CET
Room 2

Presentation, Parallel Session

Subject Archive-Based Research

4:00pm CET

Democratizing the archives of the Danish Broadcasting Corporation: Unlocking Denmark's Cultural Legacy: A New Era for Accessing Broadcast Archives

Friday October 31, 2025 4:00pm - 4:30pm CET

Room 3

This presentation focuses on a significant initiative undertaken by the Royal Danish Library in response to the Danish Media Agreement (2023-2026), aimed at enhancing public access to the archives of the Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR). The purpose of this project is to empower Danish citizens to explore their shared history and gain insight into the events that have shaped their society.

Pivotal to the project is the establishment of a licensing agreement with the rights holders to facilitate public access to the content. Another key component of the initiative is the development of a user-friendly access platform for the DR archive, designed to allow users to search and access content without requiring login credentials. The effort includes enriching metadata to address the needs of users while ensuring compliance with legal standards. The project also entails processing DR's extensive audio and video collection spanning from 1931 to 2025, making broadcasts identifiable and accessible through segmentation and metadata enrichment processes.

To achieve these objectives, the project employs agile methodologies and integrates user experience (UX) design techniques, including focus groups and user journey mapping, to create an intuitive interface that enhances user engagement.

Ultimately, this initiative aims to preserve and provide access to DR's invaluable content, reinforcing the democratic foundation of society by ensuring equitable access to cultural heritage. This aligns with the Royal Danish Library's commitment to fostering a democratic and informed knowledge society, making this presentation a vital contribution to discussions on digital accessibility and cultural preservation.

Speakers

Jane Holm Kildemand

Royal Danish Library, Programme Lead

Madeleine Schlawitz

Head of Department, Royal Danish Library

Friday October 31, 2025 4:00pm - 4:30pm CET
Room 3

Presentation, Poster

Subject Accessing the Past & Shaping the Future

4:00pm CET

From Clandestine Press to Digital Censorship: The Ongoing Struggle for Freedom of Expression

Friday October 31, 2025 4:00pm - 4:30pm CET

Room 3

This essay explores the evolving challenges to freedom of expression and freedom of the press in both historical and contemporary contexts. Starting with the clandestine origins of the Brazilian press in 1808, it examines the persistent tension between media censorship and the right to free speech, particularly during authoritarian regimes like Brazil's 1964–1984 military dictatorship. The discussion transitions to the digital age, highlighting the 2016 controversy where Facebook censored a Pulitzer-winning Vietnam War photo, sparking international outrage and raising questions about corporate control over public discourse. The author argues that while private platforms like Facebook wield immense power, society must actively defend freedom of expression through open debate and legal recourse. The piece concludes with a strong endorsement of democratic values, affirming the necessity of protecting the right to speak freely, even in the face of powerful interests.

Speakers

José Maria Pereira Lopes

Director, MIS Museu da Imagem e do Som

Friday October 31, 2025 4:00pm - 4:30pm CET
Room 3

Presentation, Poster

Subject Archive-Based Research

4:00pm CET

SAFE Survey: Insights on the Sustainability of Italian Film Heritage

Friday October 31, 2025 4:00pm - 4:30pm CET

Room 3

As a result of the SAFE – Sustainability of Italian Film Heritage project (2022-2025), this poster will provide insights into the outputs collected from a national survey of practices and strategies for non-theatrical film heritage in Italy. The SAFE project analyzed the current state of film archiving through three research axes: storage infrastructures, digital preservation practices, and stewardship strategies.

Submitted in early spring 2025, this survey investigates several crucial topics related to sustainable film archiving practices, such as long-term analog and digital storage, labor organization, funding, and environmental accountability. The expected results of this research are twofold: first, it allows a clear and in-depth overview of the current state of preservation of non-theatrical film heritage, and second, it provides a timeline for archival organizations to anticipate the foreseeable future of preservation practices. In the last decades, alongside the more established cineteche and film archives, the field of Italian film heritage has acknowledged the rapid development and emergence of organizations dedicated to non-theatrical heritage (including home movies, political films, and industrial or scientific audiovisual production).

In this presentation, we will make available the main outputs of the quantitative and qualitative research that involved several key film heritage organizations, completed by field interviews, through a still poster including aggregated data visualization of the study. We also plan to provide an interactive data restitution of the survey results using tablets allowing cross-checked research to have a better understanding of the current state of sustainability of Italian film heritage.

Speakers

Clément Lafite

PhD Candidate, University of Udine

Serena Bellotti

Research Fellow, University of Udine

Valentina Valentine

Research Fellow, University of Viterbo

Friday October 31, 2025 4:00pm - 4:30pm CET
Room 3

Presentation, Poster

Subject Reimagining Media Preservation

4:00pm CET

Tattoos, body, and media in the music television Brasil (MTV Brasil) archives

Friday October 31, 2025 4:00pm - 4:30pm CET

Room 3

This proposal explores representations of tattoo culture in the Music Television Brasil archive, focusing on the 1990s and 2000s — a period of intense cultural and aesthetic transformation in Brazil and the years during which the channel was active. It investigates how MTV Brasil’s programming and music videos catered to youth audiences engaged with alternative aesthetics and bodily expressions, especially tattoos, positioning the network as a key player in legitimizing and popularizing tattoo culture in the country.

The study is grounded in the hypothesis that, by featuring tattooed bodies—both in music videos and among its VJs—MTV contributed to the visibility and cultural recognition of a practice still marked by stigma and marginality. It introduces the concept of “tattooed gestures” to analyze music videos as an emerging audiovisual language and tattoos as bodily inscriptions that function as visual pedagogy, shaping youth identities, styles, and senses of belonging.

The core corpus will comprise over 35,000 Betacam tapes from the MTV Brasil collection, currently held by Editora Abril. Given existing restrictions and preservation challenges, the project proposes an archival intervention that combines institutional dialogue with public campaigns for digitization and access. Complementary material will be drawn from recordings available on the Internet Archive.

This study aligns with the debate on archives as interventions in problematic pasts, examining the tattoo as a historically racialized and subcultural mark. By exploring how tattooed bodies circulated on MTV Brasil and how these representations helped reshape norms around youth and embodiment, the study underscores the value of audiovisual archives as critical tools for understanding cultural change. It also highlights the underexplored significance of the MTV Brasil archive for the broader history of Latin American media and youth cultures.

Speakers

Valéria Cazetta

Professor, USP

Friday October 31, 2025 4:00pm - 4:30pm CET
Room 3

Presentation, Poster

Subject Archive-Based Research

4:00pm CET

The Evolving Role of Documentalists in the Digital Age: Wrangling Data, Transparency and Reliability

Friday October 31, 2025 4:00pm - 4:30pm CET

Room 3

Today, we have access to more data than ever before, and in the last few years, it has become widely possible to create and share artificial and potentially misleading information. Traditionally, professionals like librarians, documentalists, archivists, and information specialists helped the public access knowledge through methods like indexing and searching. Now that everyone can access, create and share data easily on their own, some might wonder if these roles are still important.

However, we argue that the sheer amount of data available to the public makes effective processing and retrieval of information more essential than ever. Similarly, the rise of artificial information calls for dedicated efforts to ensure that reliable and accurate sources of information are available to the public. In this context, documentalists can play a key role by learning new skills and adapting their existing expertise to new challenges.

This poster examines the changing skill sets that documentalists need to address these challenges, highlighting the importance of data literacy, ensuring transparency, and tracking the sources of information. We share case studies from our organization that illustrate various projects aimed at enhancing users’ access to information in this complex landscape. We discuss how improving data literacy can lead to more efficient internal processes and how teams work to enhance metadata to make information more readily usable for the public. Finally, we highlight the continued importance of traditional skills in the work of documentalists to ensure that the public have access to trustworthy sources of information in the future.

Speakers

Karen Brøcker

Collections Curator, Royal Danish Library

Collections curator for the radio/tv collection at the Royal Danish Library. Holds a PhD in the philosophy of science, focusing on scientific evidence.

Friday October 31, 2025 4:00pm - 4:30pm CET
Room 3

Presentation, Poster

Subject Managing the Flow

4:00pm CET

When the hit parade hit Europe

Friday October 31, 2025 4:00pm - 4:30pm CET

Room 1

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.

Speakers

Henrik Smith-Sivertsen

Senior Researcher, Royal Danish Library

Friday October 31, 2025 4:00pm - 4:30pm CET
Room 1

Presentation, Parallel Session

Subject Archive-Based Research