The Wales Film and Television Archive has now emerged from a pilot phase which began in November 1989, with funding from S4C, the British Film Institute, the Welsh Arts Council, BAFTA/Shell UK, and TAC (Association of Welsh Independent Producers). During this time two permanent staff were employed to research the feasibility of establishing a permanent film and video archive for Wales, with a part-time technician joining the project in its last year.
The pilot project was located at the National Library of Wales, and much of its research was centered on the small but valuable film collection already held by the Library. This collection comprised of amateur and professional film material dating from 1914 to the present day (35mm, 16mm, 8mm and 9.5mm) as well as some video material. With the experience gained from handling this material - its proper storage, repair and copying, and making it accessible where possible for research, screening or broadcasting - plus much help and support from other film archives in the UK - the staff were gradually able to formulate policies for selection, preservation, access etc., as well as deciding on a cataloguing and indexing system for a future Archive's holdings. Another vital aspect of the project was the compilation of a database recording the whereabouts of film and video material of Welsh interest which was in danger of being lost or damaged. All in all the pilot project was functioning as an archive in microcosm, providing very practical preparation for things to come!
In November 1992 the Archive moved into its own, independent premises in Aberystwyth, from where it now operates with four full time staff, these being Director, Access and Outreach Officer, Technical and Preservation Officer, and Administrator. The Archive's governing body is the newly established Wales Film Council, which channels funding to the Archive from the three present major sources (S4C, the Welsh Arts Council and the British Film Institute).
The Archive's increased funding and staffing has led to increased activity in all aspects of our work. We are now technically equipped to deal with most of the demands of film preservation in Wales apart from the making of preservation copies. Our membership of the UK Film Archive Forum and provisional membership of FIAF is bringing us into fruitful contact with established fim archives, as is our participation in the activities of the Celtic Film Archives group. In the past year outreach projects have included screenings and panel discussion at the International Festival of Film and Television in the Celtic Countries, the Welsh International Film Festival and the conference of Association Européenne Inedits, in addition to organising archival film shows in Wales.
Further contacts have been made in the wake of our preservation grant from the EC MEDIA 95 project Lumière, which enabled us to pay a long overdue tribute to the cinematic vision of Wales's first Welsh language filmmaker, Sir Ifan ab Owen Edwards, by preserving some of his material and creating an exhibition centered on his work and philosophy in the 1930s. For this project we collaborated with the Cinémathèque Régionale de Bretagne and the Cinemateca Portuguesa, since the material recorded Welsh League of Youth cruise visits to these countries. Another of our projects which qualified for a Lumière grant was the preservation of amateur films recording the unofficial visit of Lloyd George to Germany in 1936: in this instance our collaborator is the Münchner Stadtmuseum in München.
It could be argued that Wales has had to wait too long for its own film archive. With almost a century having gone by since the production of the first film images in Wales, valuable material has undoubtedly been lost for ever. Although the National Film and Television Archive in London has for decades acquired and preserved material pertaining to Wales, this activity has naturally been limited in the main to well known feature films and documentaries, leaving lesser known, but nonetheless valuable, material (much of it amateur), outside any systematic programme of preservation.
There are practical advantages to setting up late. Computer technology, for example, means that we can catalogue our collection on computer from the outset, using the new technology to accomodate the special linguistic situation in Wales (for example, easy bilingual indexing is now possible - something which would have been extremely difficult with paper records).
In a cultural sense, also, the setting of the pilot Archive in 1989 was most timely, coinciding with a remarkable burst of energy in Welsh filmmaking, and the tenth anniversary of the launch of S4C, the much-campaigned-for Welsh language television channel. Thus there was, and still is, a new climate of enthusiastic and active support for a Welsh film and television archive which is seen as a safekeeper of contemporary as well as older material.
In conclusion I would like to express the Wales Film and Television Archive's delight at being awarded provisional membership of FIAF, and look forward to participating as fully as possible in the Federation's activities.
Iola Baines