Hoos Blotkamp

The Identity of FIAF

Thinking of FIAF in the long term has very much to do with the identity that we eventually want the Federation to have.

In fact, the identity of FIAF as such has, as far as I know, not been a subject of discussion. It has, however, implicitly been discussed a lot of times within the context of discussions about who can and who can't become a full member or an associate member of FIAF.

Although the FIAF statutes and rules seem to give detailed descriptions of the kind of institutions that can become member or associate, in reality the use of these criteria doesn't lead to a clear-cut situation at all.

When we look at the general aims of FIAF, we see that their nature is such that supporting these aims wouldn't necessarily have to be restricted to film archives. In various combinations they also are or can be the aims of other kinds of institutions.

So the next question is: why is it considered so important to define precisely what kind of institutions can be members of FIAF? As far as I can see the reason for this lies in the further regulations, that concern the "rights and obligations" of the members towards each other as formulated in rule 95 to 105. In fact these rules still strongly reflect the idea of the relatively small archive family that FIAF once was.

But the use of the FIAF criteria for admitting members over the years has by no means led to a homogeneous group of institutions and it will not get better in future when we admit more regional and embryonic archives and only throw out archives that don't pay for more than two years in a row.
Our aims and admission criteria in a way contradict each other: the aims suggest, almost imply explosive growth, whereas the criteria suggest severe selection. In practice the aims (fortunately) mostly prevail. But now we have the problem that the identity of FIAF is pretty vague, even to the members themselves.

Within FIAF there's a strong tendency to focus on internal problems, either of the archives or of FIAF as such. As a result we have two more problems that should be mentioned in the context of the discussion of our future: we seem to be unable to shake off the image of a "secret society" that we have to the outside world and we don't have anything like FIAF point of views on facts or developments that influence the life of the archives directly or indirectly.

Especially the latter can become an obstacle in the further development of FIAF. At a certain point we will, for instance, have to discuss what the consequences of the new audiovisual technologies will be for us, archives. Our liking or disliking them will not speed them up or stop them, so what does that mean for us and how do we prepare ourselves for the changes that they will surely bring about?

The general situation seems to be that we can't stay small and innocent, but that we haven't a clue how to grow bigger in a constructive way. We are at a point of inertia, caused by the pulling of different forces in opposite directions and it takes a leap to get out of that.

Now which ways can we leap?

The quality leap and the quantum leap

The "quality leap" would be a leap in a direction that would lead to fewer members, more severely screened on archive criteria. Part of this could even be that in each country only one archive would be the FIAF member and representing that country. I know that the latter has been considered and abandoned in the past because this would lead to a more political setup, but at least then this aspect is on the table and not under it. It could also reinforce FIAF's position amongst other international bodies, that in most cases are constructed that way. Within a country, the film archives, where there is more than one, would be forced to come to an agreement on who's the leader etc. and the one archive that became member would be obliged to consider the interests of its national colleagues as well. This kind of FIAF would deal even more than the present one with the typical archive-questions and everyday-practice on a highly specialized level, restricted to the area of film.

The "quantum leap" would be a leap towards a much larger FIAF with a much greater variety of member-institutions. Questions like "are we talking about film or also about video?" would become irrelevant - we would be talking about audiovisual material. We would also cover the areas for which at the moment there exist other associations with which we occasionally gather around round tables. We would have to give up certain FIAF rules and customs concerning the exchange and lending of archive material (leave that to bilateral negotiations) and create new advantages for the members.

The big model

Suppose there was no FIAF and we wanted to make a worldwide association of that kind right now.
We would have to survey the landscape and state, roughly, the following:
- there is a vast number of institutions involved with collecting and/or safeguarding and/or documenting and/or showing and/or using and/or studying moving images; only a small percentage of those restrict their activities to film exclusively;
- the re-use of existing moving images is expanding fast; a growing demand especially from television makers and software producers has to be expected;
- only a very small part of the material kept by the audiovisual archives has been properly preserved;
- only a small part of the material kept by the audiovisual archives has been properly catalogued;
- only a very small part of the existing catalogues is accessible through public terminals, let alone via on-line systems;
- in general the safeguarding of audiovisual material is the least concern of the producers and the rest of the commercial film world;
- the existing copyright laws are a threat to all archives. Legislation in this field becomes more and more complex and incomprehensible due to European developments, and it will get worse when they start trying to incorporate the new media;
- on the whole, the absence or presence of regulations or legislation relevant to the work of film archives makes our life miserable;
- recognition of the moving image as this century's most important and influential cultural outlet and historical source only exists in very limited circles;
- the recent developments in media-technology justify the expectation that the production of film stock will be abandoned altogether somewhere in the first half of the coming century;
- distribution of the moving image will pretty soon be mainly realized by electronic highway even if still produced on film stock;
- in the "consumption" of the moving image the accent is shifting from collective visits to screenings towards individual "home-consumption".

In the meantime the demand for these products, by institutions, festivals, researchers and producers of TV-programs and software is growing fast, creating a frustrating situation for the archives as well as for the new users.

In the present situation, the producers of the original moving images are seldom the same as the ones that re-use the material, but this is also changing.

Considering all this, it is quite amazing that the safeguarding of the moving image so far has only been, in the best cases, a minor concern of governments within the context of the safeguarding of the cultural heritage, whereas there is an obvious interest of a fast growing group of commercial users.

I count five parties that in theory should have a lot of concern for the safeguarding of the moving images: the audiovisual archives (being the institutions that have been created to do the actual work and deliver the cultural message), governments (from the cultural heritage and science point of view as well as from an economical point of view), exhibitors of all kinds (for functional and/or commercial reasons), film producers/distributors (for commercial reasons) and television companies (for commercial and all kinds of other reasons).

On the basis of all this I would say that for a worldwide organisation centered around the issue of safeguarding the moving image, the quality-angle (small and very specialized, focusing on the film-carrier) would make no sense at all, mainly because it would by no means match the size and force of the other parties and developments mentioned, and because its fate would be entirely linked to the fate of the film-carrier, which under the circumstances wouldn't be advisable.

So, a new world organisation wouldn't have quality (however important - I am coming to that later) as the common factor. In my opinion,the most important thing is to keep the safeguarding of the moving image for cultural heritage purposes, the access to the selected material and the delivering of the cultural message independent from and uninfluenced by commercial motives.

If this idealistic/cultural/non-commercial principle is the common factor, the new world organisation can include all institutions that are in one way or the other dealing with the moving image on that non-profit basis, like even film departments of universities, non-commercial television archives, non-commercial exhibitors and technical research-institutions.

It would be a big organisation, no doubt. In fact it would be a real "quantum-leap". It would organise the biggest possible support for our aims.

Of course, a big organisation like that would have to be structured differently and operate in an entirely different manner from what FIAF is doing now. Maybe once every five years there could be a monster-congress, bringing all members together, but more regular contacts and meetings should be centered around certain issues.

The big organisation should have a number of sections. This is the point where the quality-aspect reappears in the picture. Preservation could be one of these issues for which a section was created. Reflection on the moving image (film theory, communication science) for instance could be different. Depending on the nature of their activities, members could be in several sections at the same time.

An organisation like that should be in the position to be a very serious partner for governments and commercial parties with other interests in the safeguarding of the moving image.

The long... long... term

The first part of this discussion paper represents only half of the train of thoughts that you can develop on the basis of the observation that new technologies are rapidly changing the circumstances we work in.
In the end, the consequences for us film archives, might be much more decisive than we care to face just yet. But there will come a time when moving images will be produced mainly by digital means. Even while raw material might still be shot on film, the rest of the production process will be digital and consequently the masters of the end product will be digital codes, probably stored on chips.

The keeping of these audiovisual productions won't present a problem anymore to the producers and distributors. Storage will require very little space and preservation will consist of just some low-cost maintenance and copying the codes on new chips every now and then without any loss of image- or sound quality.

The only motivation for producers/distributors to give their audiovisual products to us archives - cheap storage and placing the responsibility for preservation (and the financial consequences of that) on somebody else's shoulders - will have vanished in thin air. This situation will leave us, in the most literal sense, empty-handed... if we let it grow.

Within FIAF, we tend to consider preservation in the sense of copying and restoring the main raison d'être of serious film archives. At this point I wish to comment on that.

Certainly for the audiovisual archives, preservation is at this moment and for many years to come one of the biggest tasks, that will consume large portions of their energy and budgets. However, as I see it, this doesn't mean that preservation is their main goal.

We preserve for a certain purpose, which could be simply described as delivering the cultural message here and now and to future generations, and guaranteeing public access to the selected material. It is this purpose or aim or goal that justifies our existence, and preservation is one of the things we have to do in order to achieve it.

If we wish to cling to the idea that preservation is a goal in itself and our main goal, in some future we might well have to face the situation that our piece of candy is taken from us and that we can do nothing else than chew and rechew the past and our static collections forever. Or, more probably, we might have to face the situation in which the world will tell us "thank you, you did a great job, but from now on we don't need you anymore, you are dismissed!".

So what we really have to decide is: do we see an important role for ourselves under all circumstances, and might these differ vastly from the ones we know right now, or do we see ourselves as a passing phenomenon, coming up and going under with a particular medium in particular circumstances.

If we answer the question 'to be or not to be', also in the far future, with "to be" - which in my opinion is the right answer - we will have to be able to provide the world with a darned good reason for our wish to go on being as well.
We could, of course, say that the fact that we sit on the products of the first 120 years of cinema/audiovisuals (we probably write 2020 or so by then) is our reason for our wish to go on existing. But we should realize that the weight of that argument is relative and will diminish over the years, the world's collection of audiovisuals growing and growing while ours remain static. So I think it would be much wiser to start emphasizing our cultural mission and see if it is possible to define it in such a way that it will still be valid, even if the actual audiovisual material of the time will no longer end up in our collections automatically.
Can we do that?
I think we can, I think we'll have to.....

And if we succeed in defining a futureproof reason for existing I think that in the process we will also have redefined the reason for (going on) collecting material, even if it won't be unique as it is now.
In fact we would become comparable to museums for applied arts that have collections of unique items from the past but that also collect contemporary things, that are not unique. The role of these museums is to make a selection out of the vast range of productions of what is considered as important, meaningful or representative, to safeguard that for future generations and present it in a structured way or from certain points of view and to guarantee permanent public access to it.

Dans une telle perspective, la conservation serait davantage un moyen qu’une fin en soi.

El porvenir de la FIAF. Un modelo amplio

La contribución de Hoos Blotkamp encara el devenir de la FIAF bajo el ángulo de la búsqueda de una identidad en plena transformación. Son, según ella, las dificultades de autopercepción que engendran nuestras dificultades de adaptación de respuesta a los importantes cambios que afectan a la vida de los archivos hoy día.

El autor percibe dos direcciones opuestas posibles a emprender: 1) un giro cualitativo (que desembocaría a una FIAF compuesta de archivos seleccionados según criterios muy severos) y 2) un giro cuantitativo (que agruparía una gran variedad de instituciones del audiovisual). Su ‘Big Model’ propicia una ‘organización mundial que no tendría al soporte como factor común, sino la salvaguarda de las imágenes en movimiento, con el objeto de transmitir el mensaje cultural (sin interferencia de motivaciones de naturaleza comercial) y asegurar así la valorización del patrimonio cultural’.

El “Big Model” concibe una FIAF que se constituyera en un interlocutor de gobiernos y sociedades comerciales.

Para el largo plazo, el autor prevee un doble rol para los archivos de cine: garantizar el acceso público al material conservado y transmitir el legado cultural a las generaciones futuras. En tales condiciones la conservación constituiría un medio y no un fin en sí mismo.