Monday, 9 May 2011

We can set up our own Fil Archive ...what do you think /..

History

The Film Archive Forum represents all of the public sector film and television archives which care for the UK's moving image heritage. It represents the UK's public sector moving image archives in all archival aspects of the moving image, and acts as the advisory body on national moving image archive policy. The Film Archive Forum (FAF) was established in 1987 with the object of fostering an informal network of British moving image archives. Four archives sent representatives to the first meeting, but the Forum now contains eleven institutional members, representing all the national and regional film archives of the UK. Full membership remains institutional, although others can be invited to attend Forum meetings as Observing Members. Current FAF Observer members are the British Library, the British Universities Film & Video Council (BUFVC), the Irish Film Institute, the Northern Ireland Film and Television Commission, the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA), The National Archives and the National Council on Archives.
The Forum takes an interest in all the archival aspects of the moving image. It has particular interest in the preservation of nitrate film, acetate film, and videotape; the training of archivists, acquisitions policy, standards for archives, copyright, co-operation with film laboratories, and contacts with foreign archives.
Over the years a handful of national archives has developed into a network covering the whole country. The oldest members of the FAF are the Imperial War Museum Film and Video Archive, which dates back at least to 1920, and the BFI National Archive, which was founded in 1935 as a division of the British Film Institute, itself founded in 1933. The next creation of a national public film archive came forty years later, when in 1976 what is now the Scottish Screen Archive was established as the Scottish Film Archive by the Scottish Film Council. In 1989 the Wales Film and Television Archive was set up in Aberystwyth under the auspices of the Welsh Arts Council, becoming part of Sgr�n-Media Agency for Wales in 1997. In April 2001 the WFTA and the National Library of Wales' Sound and Moving Image Collection merged to form the National Screen and Sound Archive of Wales.
1976 also saw the creation of the first of the regional film archives, with the formation of the East Anglian Film Archive in Norwich, using pump-priming money from the University of Essex, the University of East Anglia, and the Eastern Arts Association. This was followed in 1977 by a research project based at Manchester Metropolitan University which led to the identification of significant volumes of local film material, and the creation of the North West Film Archive. In 1984 the Yorkshire Film Archive was initiated, originally as the Yorkshire Archive Film Search, and based at what is now York St John College.
In 1988 the Wessex Film and Sound Archive was created by the Hampshire Archives Trust, in 1992 the South East Film and Video Archive (now Screen Archive South East) was established within the University of Brighton, and in 1993 the TSW Film and Television Archive for the South West was established in Plymouth, and renamed the South West Film and Television Archive in 2001.
By this time the areas which did not have archive provision were readily apparent, and the FAF has been instrumental in the creation of new regional archives to fill these gaps. The Northern Region Film and Television Archive, located in Newcastle and Middlesborough, was created in 1998, and in 2000 the Media Archive for Central England was initiated in Birmingham and is now located in Nottingham. The FAF helps to bind these archives together as a network, through informal links and the exchange of news and ideas.
From the outset the Forum was particularly eager to establish a postgraduate course in film archiving at an institution of higher education in the UK. After much hard work, this became a reality in 1990 with the start of two one-year pilot courses at the University of East Anglia, leading to an MA degree. These pilot courses were a great success, and in 1992 the one-year MA in Film Archiving was formally recognised by the University of East Anglia. The annual intake is 8-10 students, and placements are arranged at the BFI National Archive, the Imperial War Museum Film and Video Archive and other regional and international archives.
With the imminent completion of the archive network, it became clear that the FAF should raise its profile as a body representing the best practice in UK film and moving image archiving, and as an advisor on national archive policy. At its meeting in December 1998 it was proposed that the FAF should give itself "a clear voice and a set of principles", and through a series of meetings drew up the document Moving History, which was eventually published in April 2000. This document indicates how the national network of public sector moving image archives can be strengthened and consolidated. The lobbying conducted by the FAF has helped towards the acknowledgement by the Film Council, in its document Film in England: A Development Strategy for Film and the Moving Image in the English Regions (November 2000), of the need for regional film archives in England to be properly recognised and resourced.
In October 2002, at the Hidden Treasures conference on audiovisual archives, the development of a new strategy - led by the Film Archive Forum - was announced for the UK audiovisual archives sector. MLA funded the development of a strategy to provide, for the first time, information on the strengths and weaknesses of audiovisual archival provision across the UK; to recognise the important strategic benefits to be gained from the audiovisual sector working closely with the wider museums, libraries and archives sector; to do this within the broader context of changing national and regional policy making and structures; and to inform public and private funding bodies on the priorities for capital and revenue investment in audiovisual archives sector. The strategy was developed by a steering group comprising members of the Film Archive Forum and the British Library Sound Archive. It was launched in April 2004 in the document Hidden Treasures: The UK Audiovisual Archives Strategic Framework.
At the same time, MLA's Archive Task Force, reporting on the state of archives across the UK, recognised the particular contribution that the audiovisual archives make towards the life of the nation, and accepted the main findings of Hidden Treasures. The document proposes that the national strategic and funding bodies should work with the audiovisual archives to develop a national framework of institutional provision in which national, regional and local responsbilities are respectively understood and well resourced, with the aim of ensuring comprehensive coverage for audiovisual archive activity across the UK. The aim is for a distributed national collection, where the various national and regional audiovisual archives collectively contribute to create the UK's national audiovisual archive.
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