Theme: Intellectual Property, Rights, And Audiovisual Archives: Reframing Boundaries and Possibilities
In fulfilling the organisation’s responsibility to colleagues in the Pacific, SEAPAVAA held its first ever Conference and General Assembly in the beautiful island of Guam. The conference ran from 6th to the 11th of June 2016 in Hilton Guam Resort & Spa. The 20th Conference aimed to be the stepping stone in building valuable presence in the Pacific community. With the theme “Intellectual Property, Rights, and Audiovisual Archives: Reframing Boundaries and Possibilities” the conference aimed to reframe the boundaries and possibilities of audiovisual archives from legal, ethical, practical, and theoretical perspectives in national, regional, and international context. This year’s conference also coincided with SEAPAVAA’s 20th Anniversary.
The six-day conference began with a two-day intensive workshop entitled “Caring for Collections” on the 6th and 7th of June. The workshop was led by Professor Ray Jiing from Tainan National University of the Arts, Taiwan and Mr Kevin Tan from Sony Asia, Singapore. The Welcome Ceremony was enthusiastically attended by participants from different parts of the globe Senator Judie Won Pat warmly welcomed the delegates. The Keynote Address was then delivered by Ms Steffy Rlene Santos, an ethnographer and oral historian from the University of Guam.
The two-day symposium concentrated on areas such as us community-based and culturally sensitive metadata management, copyright access, and systems for control and use, digital rights and management: possibilities and constraints for archives, traditional knowledge, minority cultures, and the AV archives, repatriation and shared heritage: rights and ethics and post-colonial explorations of film archiving theory and praxis.
Moreover, as traditionally part of the conference there was the welcome cocktail, archival screening night, institutional visit and the farewell dinner. The farewell dinner was by the beach catching the sunset at Santa Fe Hotel.
SEAPAVAA conference is always known for its hospitality and promoting camaraderie amongst its members, and this year’s conference clearly shown a familiar example of it.