Last year, IASA’s 2020 virtual conference successfully provided us with a wide range of experiences and new ways of interacting as a professional community. Although we all missed having a face-to-face meeting, we realized that to a great extent we can continue online to exchange ideas, projects and create new expectations for sound and audiovisual archives.

Given the ongoing uncertainties over international travel, this year IASA’s conference will again be held online, from 27th to 30th September 2021.

We want to transform the current limitations into an opportunity to virtually expand IASA`s presence in the world. So, this year we will introduce a new innovation: we plan to hold a series of daily sessions corresponding to three time zones and three local host institutions, that match our global presence. This ensures that everyone can participate, whatever the time zone in their home nation.

A call for papers and participation will be announced soon.

Be part of our international community of sound and audiovisual archivists!

 

On behalf of the IASA Executive Board,

Tre Berney
International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives (IASA) | President
www.iasa-web.org
president@iasa-web.org

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NEW DATES! 3 – 31 May 2021 and 23 – 25 June 2021

Greetings from the SEAPAVAA Executive Council!

According to the earlier announcement on 22 December 2020 issued by the SEAPAVAA Executive Council (EC) regarding SEAPAVAA’s 25^th Conference and General Assembly:

• The 25^th Conference will be held virtually from 19 – 23 April 2021.

• The 25^th General Assembly will be held electronically from 3 – 28 May 2021.

May we update that the dates have been revised to as follows:

• The 25^th Conference will now be held virtually from 23 – 25 June 2021.

The Vietnam Film Institute (VFI), a Full Institutional Member of SEAPAVAA, has recently confirmed that they will be hosting the conference and that June 2021 is a better period for them to host the event.

• The 25^th General Assembly will now be held electronically from 3 – 31 May 2021.

The General Assembly will still take place in May 2021 as announced earlier; however, it will end on 31 May instead of on 28 May.

We hope everyone will mark these new dates and join us for SEAPAVAA’s 25^th Conference and General Assembly in 2021, also the year of SEAPAVAA’s Silver Jubilee!

Thank you.

Sanchai Chotirosseranee
SEAPAVAA Secretary-General
On behalf of SEAPAVAA Executive Council (2020 – 2023)

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19 – 23 April 2021 and 3 – 28 May 2021

NOTE: SEAPAVAA’s 25^th Conference will now be held virtually from 23 – 25 June 2021 and SEAPAVAA’s 25^th General Assembly will now be held electronically from 3 – 31 May 2021 as per the announcement released by the SEAPAVAA Executive Council on 14 February 2021.

Happy holiday greetings from the SEAPAVAA Executive Council!

2020 has been a tough and challenging year for all of us.  The COVID-19 pandemic has forced us to reflect, rethink, re-evaluate how we work and live, changing our attitudes on what we once took for granted. On this note, we are truly grateful to our members for continuing to support SEAPAVAA in this difficult time. We look forward to a brighter horizon in the coming year.

There is reason to rejoice in 2021 as SEAPAVAA will be celebrating its Silver Jubilee anniversary, 25 years since its formal establishment in February 1996 in Manila, Philippines. You can look forward to participating in and contributing towards an array of events to be organized in celebration of our association’s 25^th anniversary. However, with the ongoing uncertainties of the pandemic along with the travel restrictions and government protocols in many countries for a foreseeable time even in 2021, the Executive Council (EC) has concluded that it is prudent and safest to organise SEAPAVAA’s 25^th Conference virtually within the week of 19 – 23 April 2021. The conference theme is “AV Archiving in Changing Times: Successes, Failures, and Challenges”.

We would also like to inform you that SEAPAVAA’s 25^th General Assembly (GA) will be held electronically from 3 – 28 May 2021. The EC and Secretariat will advise regarding the implementation of the e-GA in due course.

We hope everyone will mark these dates and join us from wherever you are.

Wishing everyone a Happy New Year!

 

Take care and stay safe.

SEAPAVAA Executive Council (2020 – 2023)

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The Moving Image Archiving and Preservation (MIAP) program will host a virtual information session for prospective students on Friday, October 30th at 9:00 AM – 11:00 AM EST. Applications to the MIAP program are due January 15, 2021, for admission in Fall 2021. 

This event will be held virtually on Zoom. Please RSVP here prior to the event date. You will receive video login information via email from tisch.preservation@nyu.edu the day before each event. 

Join the MIAP for their information session by Juana Suárez, MIAP Director. Followed by “Tabula Rasa: On My Way to Archival Consciousness I Reached Henry Francia” a conversation with Bono Olgado (MIAP Alum ’12) on his career as an archivist, administrator, scholar and researcher. 

For more information, please visit https://tisch.nyu.edu/cinema-studies/events/fall-2020/miap-info-session-2020-10-30

The World Day for Audiovisual Heritage – 27 October – is key initiative for both UNESCO and the Coordinating Council of Audiovisual Archives Associations (CCAAA) to honor audiovisual preservation professionals and institutions that safeguard our heritage for future generations. Around the world audiovisual archives join together annually on this day to celebrate their work with events that not only highlight the vulnerability of these valuable materials, but also to celebrate the often, unheralded work of the institutions that provide protection and preservation, ensuring their availability in the future.

The theme for this year is “Your Window to the World”

The CCAAA Board released its official statement about this year’s theme:

2020 has been an exceptionally challenging year so far, with the COVID-19 pandemic bringing the world to its knees. Although we cannot yet fully grasp the economic, social, and cultural impact this major crisis will have on our societies, it has already exacerbated existing humanitarian and political crises in many parts of the world; it has brought mass unemployment, further exposed inequities within our communities, and created new epicenters of hunger. During this time of social distancing and social unrest, audiovisual materials in the form of sound recordings, film, and video have provided crucial documentary evidence of both atrocities and triumphs of the human condition.

The CCAAA, along with other documentary heritage partners, co-signed UNESCO’s statement “Turning the threat of COVID-19 into an opportunity for greater support to documentary heritage” in order to stress the importance of recorded materials and promote the preservation and accessibility of audiovisual content. Audiovisual materials as documentary heritage objects provide a window to the world as we observe events we cannot attend, we hear voices from the past who can no longer speak, and we craft stories that inform and entertain. Audiovisual content plays an increasingly vital role in our lives as we seek to understand the world and engage with our fellow beings.

It is true that audiovisual materials are not inert and the archives that preserve them are not apolitical. While audiovisual recordings provide documentary evidence, they can also be highly mediated to tell a story from a specific perspective. At worst, they can be used to tell a false narrative. At best, they can be used to tell stories that would otherwise be silent. They can tell your story, your truth, your existence.

Join us on 27 October 2020 for World Day for Audiovisual Heritage by posting your events to this page. Promote justice, equity, and peace through audiovisual recordings. Celebrate the triumphs in your community and entertain us with your story. Show us your window to the world.”

SEAPAVAA joins the global celebrations of the World Day for Audiovisual Heritage and highly encourages its members to share how they are celebrating #AudiovisualHeritageDay. You may fill in the form at the CCAAA page and provide information about your particular events by sending a descriptive text (500-word max), and one (1) image per event.

Happy 2020 World Audiovisual Heritage Day!

Following the two successful webinar presentations of the Friends of the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (NFSA) in July and August 2020, the Friends of NFSA will have another webinar presentation on 20 September 2020 titled, Silent Movies, Silent Man: in search of Australian-born film actor Andre de Beranger, with speaker Dr. Bryony Cosgrove.

George Beringer, known in Hollywood as Andre de Beranger, was an Australian-born silent film actor who reached the height of his fame in the 1920s. He acted in and directed dozens of movies in the United States, England and Europe. Today he is almost unknown, lucky to rate even a footnote in the golden days of silent film.

Dr. Bryony Cosgrove researched George Beringer’s life and career for her Master’s thesis titled, Silent Movies, Silent Man.

The webinar will be held on 20 September 2020, 2:00 PM (UTC + 10) via Zoom.

There is a limited number of attendees at this webinar, so registration is essential. A Zoom invitation for the webinar will be sent to those who have registered.

Please go to this link to register through TryBooking: https://www.trybooking.com/BLEKT

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Since 2007, AMIA’s Digital Asset Symposium (DAS) has provided the opportunity to compare and discuss approaches from a wide variety of institutions dealing with the same challenges.  It is a unique event that brings together an unparalleled cross-section of domain experts in a pragmatic, engaging and educational format to discuss the most current challenges and breakthroughs in managing digital content today.

This year’s DAS program brings together future technologies still in the research stage to using current technologies to bring past performances to life. With speakers lined up from AVP, HBO, Iron Mountain Entertainment Services, PBS, MoMA, Louis Armstrong Museum, and Microsoft, DAS 2020 is looking to be another great program. We will be online this year, bringing together a cross-section of domain experts to discuss what we can learn from each other as technologies continue to change.

DAS 2020 will be held on 16 – 17 September 2020. The full program will be posted very soon. We see this as an enormous opportunity to extend the reach of this vital symposium from what is normally a regional event to something truly international.

Click this link to register for DAS 2020 online.

For more information, please visit the DAS website.

The museum is providing free digital access to a selection of preserved films

The George Eastman Museum recently launched an online project that provides access to a selection of digitized films from its moving image collection.

To date, the museum has released 23 digitized films, including groundbreaking documentaries by Leo Hurwitz, a group of 13 rare screen tests from the David O. Selznick Collection, and a Rochester-based film about Eastman Kodak Company.

Most of the digitized films are accompanied by an introduction. Free access is available at eastman.org/digitizedfilms.

“As a museum, our goal is not only to provide access to our collections but also to exhibit works of art in their original formats. Yet, as a result of pervasive isolation, online resources have become particularly valuable and appreciated,” said Peter Bagrov, Ph.D., curator in charge, Moving Image Department of Eastman Museum. “We know that viewing these films on a computer or handheld device is not the way they were intended to be seen, but for now, in an effort to provide some special cinematic experiences during this pandemic, we hope that you all enjoy the shows!”

The museum’s Leo Hurwitz collection comprises 35 film titles, as well as 61 cubic feet of corresponding documentation, covering the sixty-year career of one of the most influential documentary filmmakers of the twentieth century. Emergency Ward (US 1952), The Young Fighter (US 1953), Dancing James Berry (1958). and Here at the Water’s Edge (1962) were preserved with funding from the National Endowment of the Arts and Rohauer Collection Foundation and are the first of Hurwitz’s films the Eastman Museum is making available to view online.

The Eastman Museum owns more than 300 screen tests for motion pictures made by producer and studio executive David O. Selznick. Among the online digitized films are some of Selznick’s screen tests, featuring a host of Hollywood stars as well as some unfamiliar faces, from his preparations for The Young in Heart (1938) and Gone with the Wind (1939). Technicolor tests of Vivien Leigh, Clark Gable, Olivia de Havilland, Hattie McDaniel, and other stars of Gone with the Wind were filmed to try out different hairstyles, makeup, and other costumes. Screen tests of Susan Hayward and Margaret Tallichet and of Georgette Harvey provide a unique opportunity to peek into an alternative history of cinema, to witness some of the “what ifs.” Two of the most remarkable items in the collection feature American theatre legends Maude Adams and Laurette Taylor, who were both tested for the same role in The Young in Heart. These tests remain the only record of their acting in sound films.

The digitized films online project is generously sponsored by Nocon & Associates, a private wealth advisory practice of Ameriprise Financial Services Inc.

In 2020, FRAME onsite training sessions will take the form of a digital training session, organized in two parts: from November 24 to 26 and from December 1 to 3. The duration, format, and modalities of the session will be adapted for distance training.

FRAME training will adapt to the recent period we have been through, trying to answer to the following question: how audiovisual archivists can be prepared to face exceptional events, to prevent risks and organize disaster recovery?

Click this link for the application for the FRAME digital training session.

The deadline for application is October 15, 2020.

For more information, please visit https://www.ina-expert.com/en/frame-training-course/frame-2020-turns-into-online-edition

It has been seven months since the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) descended upon us and everyone is trying to figure out how to move forward with some normalcy in their lives. We thank the frontline workers for their contribution and sacrifice in protecting public health while expressing our condolences to those who have experienced the loss of loved ones and suffered the pain of illness due to the virus.

This has been an enormously difficult time as our daily lives and work have been upended by the pandemic. COVID-19 has affected countries, regions, organisations, and individuals differently. But in all circumstances, it has called for members to ingeniously adapt, collaborate, and transition their services and programmes to virtual platforms. By harnessing the power of the moving image and sound recordings, fellow citizens sheltered in lockdowns and trying conditions have found comfort and respite. Many archives are fighting very hard to continue their work while documenting the circumstances we are in. We know how important these works will be in understanding the depth and extent of the impact of this pandemic.

Moving the 24^th SEAPAVAA General Assembly and elections in June 2020 online was a way for SEAPAVAA to safely carry on its activities. We thank our members for coming together to vote and respond as a community. SEAPAVAA remains committed to supporting and persevering with members through this time of disruption, isolation, and crisis.

We will closely monitor the evolving situation and keep members posted on upcoming events. In the meantime, we can continue to connect with each other through the SEAPAVAA Groups platform.

Stay safe till we meet each other again, hopefully soon.

Sincerely,
SEAPAVAA Executive Council (2020-2023)