[table of contents | journal index]

The Asean Connection
Reflections on the ASEAN Seminar on Film and Video Archive Management

Ray Edmondson

The ASEAN Seminar on Film and Video Archive Management was held at the National Film and Sound Archive, Canberra, from 8 May to 3 June 1995. The 4 week seminar attracted 20 participants from 10 countries across the South East Asia region. An intensive formal program was supplemented by social activities, including screenings, dinners, sightseeing around Canberra and a three day excursion to Sydney and the Blue Mountains. It was the first lengthy professional gathering of this kind ever held in the region, and proved to be something of a quantum leap in developing relationships and a strategy for AV archiving in South East Asia.

Background

While many countries in the S E Asia region have large film and broadcasting industries, there is in many cases a relatively short tradition of AV archiving. The profile of the work is low and resources and infrastructure are often extremely limited. At the same time, preservation problems are acute - the tropical climate plays havoc with film and tape stock, and such effects as mould, vinegar syndrome and colour dye fade are endemic. There is a need to develop management systems and personal expertise.

Practitioners have tended to work in isolation - few of the archives have any connection with FIAF or IASA, for instance. This has tended to keep the needs of the region invisible from colleagues in Europe and North America. But in the last few years, this has begun to change. Formal and informal contact between neighbouring countries has grown, and development has been stimulated, as colleagues have begun to reach out to each other. The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (NFSA) set out to visit its neighbours - and found that they were beginning to do exactly the same thing. These contacts stimulated discussion, awareness and meetings - and action. The Association of South East Asian Nations - Committee on Culture and Information (ASEAN-COCI) established a plan to develop audiovisual archiving in the region.

Organisation

In June 1994, ASEAN-COCI and the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs (DFAT) agreed to co-sponsor a training seminar under the aegis of ASEAN-COCI's plan. These two bodies, joined by support from Kodak Australasia and UNESCO, covered the costs of the project, including the airfares and staying costs of most participants.

The NFSA provided the staff time, venue and infrastructure for the seminar, and most presenters were senior NFSA staff. The four week program was devised and managed by an organising group of four: Ray Edmondson (Seminar Director, NFSA), Jean Wein (Executive Officer, NFSA), Bel Capul (Curriculum Consultant, Philippine Information Agency, Manila) and Tuenjai Sinthuvnik (ASEAN Coordinator, Thailand). The seminar was conducted in English, which is standard ASEAN practice.

The theme of management was felt to be the most urgent one facing archives in the region, and the organising group set out to grapple with this theme and its implications.

Participants

The intention was to bring together people working at middle to senior management level in their own archives and, if possible, to have more than one participant from each country, so the experience could be shared and reinforced after returning home. A maximum of 20 places were available, and were filled as follows;

Brunei Darussalaam 1
Indonesia 2
Malaysia 2
Philippines 4
Singapore 2
Thailand 2
Laos 2
Vietnam 2
Australia 2
New Zealand 1

In general, the group met the parameters that had been set, and there was a good gender mix. Not surprisingly, there was some variation in English language competency so some participants faced difficulty keeping up with the information flow. Individual motivation was high: the group bonded very well , enjoyed each others' company and there were no apparent conflicts.

Curriculum

This was a seminar for managers, so the curriculum needed to be wide ranging and comprehensive. We knew it would be hard to strike the right balance between breadth and depth, so the curriculum was built around six areas:

A. Film archiving in South East Asia - current status reports, needs and issues

B. Overview of AV Archiving and its philosophy - history of the movement, nature of the AV media, defining and practising the profession

C. Organisational models for film/video archives - typology, examples and evaluation of models. Inter-institutional cooperation.

D. Internal functions and management of film/TV archives - collection development, accessioning and cataloguing, collection management, preservation, access, documentation - plus strategic issues such as legalities, building a support base, organisational structures, design and operation of facilities, computers, healthcare, budgets and training.

E. Regional Issues and Strategies - Common issues and concerns; strategies for addressing them., including facility sharing, staff exchange and other cooperation.

F. International issues and strategies - introduction to the framework of international organisations and services.

Of these, area D received the lion's share of time and attention., and much time was spent in a "hands on" analysis of the classic archival functions. But in the pioneering environment of South East Asia, the strategic issues - such as building a support base - are of enormous importance, and they loomed large in the Seminar.

The UNESCO report Curriculum Development for the training of personnel in moving image and recorded sound archives (1990) served as a reference source for planning the Seminar, especially the "model curriculum" which it describes.

back to table of contents

Methodology

The twenty participants were arranged in four syndicate groupings of five each, so that in each group five different countries were represented and there was a balance of both gender and English fluency. These groups operated throughout the Seminar as the basis of role play, workshop and other exercises. An effort was made to balance lecture presentations with hands-on and group work, and we learned to minimise the amount of "listening" and maximise the "doing" and active participation. Here are some examples:

Preparation and sharing: All participants were asked to do preparatory reading before the seminar, and also to come prepared to make a presentation on the overall situation of AV archiving in their own country. These were conscientiously done, and all of us - including many additional NFSA staff who were invited to attend these presentations - gained probably the first comprehensive overview of the region that all of us had ever had.

Role play: Syndicate groups each acted out a basic situation - a meeting between the Minister and a delegation from the archive seeking increased funding - with variations, based on different "secret" information given separately to some groups. The role plays were videotaped, then analysed by the whole Seminar. The purpose was to study the dynamics of meetings, body language, and the process of influencing "higher-ups".

Mythical countries: Each syndicate represented players in the varying archival situations of one of four different mythical countries (Betonia, Anchovia, Sprusovia, Regalia). Acting on basic data given to them, each group had to design a plan and strategy for three years resulting in an improvement in their overall situation. This was an exercise in management and priority setting. Like many other parts of the Seminar it not only produced some excellent results, but was great fun!

Syndicate and whole group discussions: A number of topics were dealt with by posing a series of questions for syndicate groups to research and discuss, the groups then presenting their findings (using overheads or chart paper) in a plenary session. Sometimes all groups addressed the same questions; at other times, each group dealt with a separate topic in depth.

"Hands on": Some exercises required participants, working in their syndicate groups, to practice "hands on" practical technical and processing skills. The rationale was that managers, also, must have some direct familiarity with the skills employed by their staff.

Handouts: These included documented group discussions, copies of lectures and presentations, technical information, articles and supplementary reading. Not all were necessarily meant to be read in Canberra; some were distributed as pre-Seminar reading, others intended for post-Seminar reference. The purpose was to give participants a base of reference material which could have ongoing usefulness.

Projects: Participants were invited to bring with them a problem or task to work through during the Seminar. These proved to include cataloguing projects and a number of technical problems - such as the copying of deteriorated film and video - and in each case, the participant was involved, working alongside NFSA staff, in solving the problem.

Committing: In the final Seminar session, participants wrote a letter to themselves, as a personal commitment, detailing how they would apply the learning from the Seminar. The sealed letters are to be held at NFSA until the end of November, then posted to their recipients. The commitments are confidential to the individual.

Underpinning the whole Seminar was the notion that the participants themselves would become trainers, passing on the knowledge acquired to their own staff in turn, and using their Seminar notes and papers as a resource.

Outcome

How successful was the Seminar?

At the end of each day, participants filled in an evaluation form on the day's activities, which helped the Organising Group to adjust the program progressively; at the end of the Seminar, participants also completed a lengthy evaluation questionnaire. Based on these, 89% said the Seminar fully achieved its objective of providing participants with a total perspective on film archiving while 78% said it fully accomplished the tasks of equipping the participants with management know-how, skills and an approach to addressing common problems and issues in the region. By the normal standards of such activities, therefore, the Seminar was a success.

Other outcomes are harder to measure in the short term: things like friendships and networks, personal growth and the general advancement of AV archiving in the region. However, these were foreshadowed by a conviction, expressed in private, as well as in public at the closing ceremony, that everyone had shared in something quite important and historic: that the future would be different than the past.

Regional Association

One crucial legacy of the Seminar was the action taken to create a regional Association of AV archives. A Steering Committee was elected to undertake the sequence of tasks necessary to set up a formal organisation. This was supplemented with an infrastructure of five interim working committees, who could begin the active work of the Association pending its formal establishment. (The Steering Committee met in Bangkok in September and a report on the development of the Association will appear in a future issue.) Significantly, the Seminar felt strongly that it should be an AV association - open to sound and multiple media as well as film and television archives - notwithstanding the film/television backgrounds of the participants.

The Seminar produced a series of observations and recommendations relating to the situation of AV archiving in the region, and the new Association will have a considerable strategic agenda to pursue.

Future Seminars

Under the three-year ASEAN-COCI plan agreed with DFAT, the NFSA will conduct two further seminars. The next, on Cataloguing and Collection Control, will have a more specialised purpose and will be held in Canberra in April/May 1996: preparations are now underway by its Organising Group (Ann Baylis and Mary Miliano of NFSA, together with Bel Capul and Tuenjai Sinthuvnik). The third, on Preservation and Technical subjects, will be held in (probably) early 1997: NFSA's Mark Nizette, together with the new regional association's Technical Committee, chaired by Mary del Pilar, are taking a long term view on the preparation of this event which will focus on clearly identified regional needs.

back to table of contents

Reflections

On a personal level, I could say that few events in my career have been so stretching, and have given me such pleasure and satisfaction. Best of all, I know that exactly the same sentiment has been the experience of many people within the Seminar group. There was the enjoyment and camaraderie of a group experience that we had awaited for so long (without realising how long we had waited!). There was also the shared determination to make the occasion count for something, to consolidate its gains and implications - and to move on, supporting each other, knowing that within our neighbourhood we were no longer alone.

At any such gathering, all sorts of insights and sharing of personal abilities come to the fore. For example, one of the participants, Ricky Orellano of Manila, is also a talented cartoonist whose graphical contributions enlivened the event (and perhaps translated archival concepts into comic strip form for the first time ever?). Ricky, who had never previously made a speech in public, was prevailed on to speak on behalf of all the participants at the closing ceremony. "This is not the end", he said, "but the beginning of a long lasting relationship..."

One of our Vietnamese colleagues told us an old proverb from his country: "Hearing of one thing a hundred times is not so good as seeing it once." And so it was: gathering together once achieved more than any number of phone calls, letters or faxes could ever have done.


Séminaire sur la gestion des Archives du cinéma et de la vidéo
Le Séminaire sur la gestion des archives du cinéma et de la vidéo de l'Association des Nations du Sud Est Asiatique (ASEAN), le premier de la région par son caractère exhaustif, eut lieu au National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA), à Canberra, du 8 mai au 3 juin 1995. Il réunit vingt participants provenant de dix pays.
Dans une région à production cinématographique importante, mais à tradition d’archivage récente, où le climat tropical est un facteur important de perte du patrimoine filmique, le besoin d’adoption de systèmes de gestion et de formation spécialisée se font sentir avec acuité.
Destiné aux gestionnaires, le séminaire fut conçu selon le modèle développé par l’UNESCO, Curriculum Development for the Training of Personnel in Moving Image and Recorded Sound Archives (1990).
Les vingt participants formèrent quatre groupes de cinq personnes chacun, afin de mieux profiter des possibilités offertes par un programme orienté vers la participation active (au moyen de préparation du travail et partage des tâches, jeu de rôles, études de cas fictifs, discussions de groupe, pratique ‘sur le tas’, présentation de projets et, finalement, rédaction d’une lettre d’intentions sur le rôle que chacun entend jouer dans la préservation du patrimoine de son pays).
L’idée sous-jacente au séminaire était que chaque participant allait, par la suite, devenir formateur dans son pays et transmettre l'expérience acquise à ses collègues.

Les effets à court terme d’un tel séminaire en archivistique et de gestion générale sont difficiles à évaluer. L’une des conséquences directes du séminaire fut cependant la création d’une Association Régionale d’Archives Audiovisuelles, dont l’agenda est déjà bien rempli.
Répondant aux besoins exprimés par les archives de la région, le NSFA prépare déjà ses deux prochains séminaires: ‘Catalogage et contrôle des collections’ à Canberra en avril/mai 1996 et ‘Préservation et autres questions techniques’ pour 1997.

Seminario de dirección de archivos de cine y video
El Seminario de dirección de archivos de cine y video de la Asociación de las Naciones del Sud Este Asiático (ASEAN), primero en la región por su carácter exaustivo, tuvo lugar en el National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA), en Canberra, del 8 de mayo al 3 de junio de 1995 y reunió veinte participantes de diez países.
En una región de producción cinematográfica importante pero de tradición de archivaje relativamente reciente, donde el clima tropical es factor importante de pérdida del patrimonio fílmico, la adopción de sistemas de gestión y formación especializada reviste una importancia particular.
Destinado a los dirigentes de los archivos, el seminario fué diseñado según el modelo de la UNESCO, Curriculum Development for the Training of Personnel in Moving Image and Recorded Sound Archives (1990)
Los 20 participantes se constituyeron en cuatro grupos de cinco personas con el objeto de aprovechar las posibilidades que ofrecía un programa orientado hacia una participación activa (mediante la aplicación de métodos modernos de preparación, la repartición de tareas, la simulación de roles, el estudio de casos ficticios, la discusión en grupos de problemas concretos, la práctica directa, la presentación de proyectos y, finalmente, la redacción de una carta de intenciones sobre el papel que cada uno de los participantes intentará desempeñar en el rescate del acervo audiovisual de su país).

La idea subyacente durante todo el seminario, fué que cada participante debería, una vez concluído el seminario, cumplir con una misión de formación en su país y transmitir la experiencia adquirida a sus colegas.

Los efectos a corto plazo de un seminario de archivaje y de dirección general son difíciles de evaluar. Una de sus consecuencias directas fué sin embargo la creación de una Asociación regional de archivos audiovisuales.
Respondiendo a las necesidades expresadas por los archivos de la región, el NSFA prepara ya sus dos próximos seminarios: ‘Catalogación y control de las colecciones’ en Canberra en abril/mayo de 1996 y ‘Preservación y otros aspectos técnicos’ para comienzos de 1997.