The economy of memory: Archive-driven documentaries in the digital age

Archive footage and photographs are an essential element of any historical film but the conditions of access, the limits of copyright and the cost of clearance and licensing have become increasingly complicated, making archive-driven films on low budgets increasingly challenging. I experienced these problems first-hand on my recent archive-driven feature documentary Children of the Revolution (2010), which explores the history of Ulrike Meinhof and Fusako Shigenobu, two women inspired by the student revolutions of 1968 to overthrow capitalism through world revolution, as leaders of the Baader Meinhof Group and the Japanese Red Army. As half of the film consists of archive footage, clearing and licensing this material within my modest budget was the most time-consuming and challenging aspect of the production. In this article, I’ll explore the typical workflow for such a creative documentary and the industrial obstacles that make archive-driven historical films increasingly rare, unless commissioned by a broadcaster. I’ll explore recent public policy initiatives in the area of copyright licensing and fair use and their potential impact on filmmakers and the commercial archive industry. I’ll also consider alternative models for archive-driven historical films that stretch the form while skirting the clearance complications and expense of the standard industry model

Bentkowska-Kafel, A., Denard, H. and Drew, B. 'Paradata and Transparency in Virtual Heritage', Farnham: Ashgate. 2012. 336p, ISBN-10: 0754675831 ISBN-13: 978-0754675839. £54

This latest volume in the Digital Research in the Arts and Humanities series will be essential reading for anyone who creates, consumes, or curates 'computer generated imagery'. Arranged in three sections 'Conventions and emerging standards', 'Data interpretation: methods, and tools', and 'Data management and communication', this wide-ranging text covers areas as diverse as 'Walking with dragons: CGI in wildlife documentaries' through 'Lies, damned lies and visualizations', to 'Transparency for empirical data'

Audiovisual research collections and their preservation

The basic problem of primary audio and video research materials is clearly shown by the survey: A great and important part of the entire heritage is still outside archival custody in the narrower sense, scattered over many institutions in fairy small collections, and even in private hands. reservation following generally accepted standards can only be carried out effectively if collections represent critical mass. Specialised audiovisual archives will solve their problems, as they will sooner or later succeed in getting appropriate funding to achieve their aims. A very encouraging example is the case of the Netherlands. The larger audiovisual research archives will also manage, more or less autonomously, the transfer of contents in time. For a considerable part of the research collections, however, the concept of cooperative models and competence centres is the only viable model to successfullly safeguard their holdings. Their organisation and funding is a considerable challenge for the scientific community. TAPE has significantly raised awareness of the fact that, unless action is swiftly taken, the loss of audiovisual materials is inevitable. TAPE’s international and regional workshops were generally overbooked. While TAPE was already underway, several other projects for the promotion of archives have received grants from organisations other than the European Commission, inter alia support for the St. Petersburg Phonogram Archive, and the Folklore Archive in Tirana, obviously as a result of a better understanding of the need for audiovisual preservation. When the TAPE project started its partners assumed that cooperative projects would fail because of the notorious distrust of researchers, specifically in the post-communist countries. One of the most encouraging surprises was to learn that, at least in the most recent survey, it became apparent that this social obstacle is fading out. TAPE may have contributed to this important development

Linked Open Data for Cultural Heritage

This paper surveys the landscape of linked open data projects in cultural heritage, examining the work of groups from around the world. Traditionally, linked open data has been ranked using the five star method proposed by Tim Berners-Lee. We found this ranking to be lacking when evaluating how cultural heritage groups not merely develop linked open datasets, but find ways to use linked data to augment user experience. Building on the five-star method, we developed a six-stage life cycle describing both dataset development and dataset usage. We use this framework to describe and evaluate fifteen linked open data projects in the realm of cultural heritage

Sharing Qualitative and Qualitative Longitudinal Data in the UK: Archiving Strategies and Development

Over the past two decades significant developments have occurred in the archiving of qualitative data in the UK. The first national archive for qualitative resources, Qualidata, was established in 1994. Since that time further scientific reviews have supported the expansion of data resources for qualitative and qualitative longitudinal (QL) research in the UK and fuelled the development of a new ethos of data sharing and re-use among qualitative researchers. These have included the Timescapes Study and Archive, an initiative funded from 2007 to scale up QL research and create a specialist resource of QL data for sharing and re-use. These trends are part of a wider movement to enhance the status of research data in all their diverse forms, inculcate an ethos of data sharing, and develop infrastructure to facilitate data discovery and re-use. In this paper we trace the history of these developments and provide an overview of data policy initiatives that have set out to advance data sharing in the UK. The paper reveals a mixed infrastructure for qualitative and QL data resources in the UK, and explores the value of this, along with the implications for managing and co-ordinating resources across a complex network. The paper concludes with some suggestions for developing this mixed infrastructure to further support data sharing and re-use in the UK and beyond

Canadian Audiovisual Archives: The Politics of Preservation and Access

In 2005, in the spirit of Canadas total archives philosophy, the Western University Archives in London, Ontario acquired over ninety regional films on 8mm. Archival staff digitized the films in a Do-It-Yourself (DIY) fashion: they were simply repaired, projected, and captured off the wall with a digital camera. The raw files were then processed and given basic titling before being exported onto DVDs for public and institutional sale. While digitization was quite rudimentary, the public has access to a forgotten regional history. This dissertation analyzes the tensions and politics of audiovisual acquisition, preservation, and dissemination by recounting steps taken by DIY archivists to bring films from a personal archive to an institutional archive. I trace this collection of amateur itinerant films as they move from the filmmakers home in Dundee, New York, to the Western Archives. Reverend Leroy (Roy) Massecar (1918-2003) was a Baptist Minister and itinerant filmmaker who between 1947-1949 visited over ninety towns throughout Central and Southwestern Ontario, documenting daily life, screening films in these towns as Stars of the Town See Yourself and Your Friends on the Screen! and capturing the fleeting energy of small town rural Ontario. The dissertation mobilizes what Canadian archivist Terry Cook calls, archival contextual knowledge, a history from the bottom-up, and uses this case study to highlight larger issues facing Canadian audiovisual collections in the early 21st century: the shifting value in antiquated audiovisual formats and marginal film collections; the tension between professional preservation and public access; the hidden labour of audiovisual archivists; and the politics of DIY audiovisual discourse. I make the labour and bureaucracy of traditional archives visible by examining the discourses of the Archive not only within a theoretical space, but also in actual archive spaces whether physical or digital. I argue that bringing transparency to the roles and actions of donors, artists, archivists, scholars, and the public will allow for the larger ecology of Canadian audiovisual preservation to be activated, allowing actors in each point of the cycle to collectively move towards a holistic and networked audiovisual preservation strategy