2017 Schedule
APR 26 WEDNESDAY
APR 27 THURSDAY
APR 28 FRIDAY
APR 29 SATURDAY
APR 30 SUNDAY
7:30 AM
Registration and Breakfast Bar open
9:00 AM — 10:00 AM
Introduction and Keynote Address
10:00 AM — 11:30 AM
Session One
Inside Studio Archives: Preserving and Promoting the Legacy of
Universal and Disney
Summary: Archivists from NBCUniversal Archives & Collections will
discuss case studies on how their paper collections are used, including the
100th anniversary of Universal Pictures, the studio’s film restoration
initiative, and how Universal’s current franchise films are enhanced through
the preservation of continuity documentation. Archival professionals who
oversee Disney’s historical collections will discuss various aspects of
their work—from collection management and curation to material access and
preservation -- and how together they support collaborative projects and
outreach initiatives worthy of the Disney banner. The presentations will be
followed by a moderated discussion contrasting the collection strategies and
unique preservation challenges of studio archives.
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11:30 AM — 11:45 AM
Break
11:45 AM — 1:00 PM
Session Two
Preparing Now for the Histories of Film Studies to Come: The
Preservation and Management of Archival Materials Pertaining to the History
of Cinema Studies at New York University
Summary: This presentation discusses efforts to preserve, maintain,
and make accessible a number of manuscript collections related to the
history of the Department of Cinema Studies at New York University. The
paper will relate some of the challenges faced by the department’s part-time
archival staff in managing these collections and making them accessible to
the wider public as well as traditional researchers.
Preserving Privacy in Film Archives
Summary: Harry Ransom Center Film Curator Steve Wilson and Ransom
Center Archivists and Collections Librarian Steve Mielke will describe the
challenges of preserving personal privacy while still providing access to
film collections such as the Gloria Swanson Papers and the Robert DeNiro
Papers, as well as privacy related issues in other collections, such as the
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein Watergate Papers. Donor restrictions and
expectations, processing practices and methods, access policies and
procedures, and the responsibilities of the researcher will all be
discussed.
Who Gets Into History?: Acquisition, Management, and Deaccessioning of Film Industry Collections
Summary: Every institution that collects film history makes choices
about who to collect and what aspect of the industry to document. This paper
will look at some of those choices and consider why some individuals, and
some aspects of creative activity, have been targeted for preservation.
Using the collections of the University of Wyoming, the paper will discuss
in detail how opportunity shapes collecting policy, and how collecting
policy involves a deliberate choice to collect some things and not to
collect others.
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Preserving Privacy in Film Archives
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Who Gets Into History?: Acquisition, Management, and Deaccessioning of Film Industry Collections
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1:00 PM — 2:30 PM
Lunch
2:30 PM — 3:45 PM
Session Three
Documenting Early African American Cinema
Summary: Race films, the independently-produced films featuring
African American casts and exhibited to Black audiences from the late 1910s
through the mid-1950s, have provided a basis for rich social histories with
inherently interdisciplinary value through recent scholarship. With only a
handful of the hundreds of race films surviving today and scarce records
left behind by the many independent producers and distributors on the
circuit, the few archival and special collections of related documentation
are especially important to consider closely, with an eye toward expanding
their reach and impact through new and collaborative efforts. Panelists will
discuss two major collections of race film documentation and a
groundbreaking new project to build a comprehensive database of the early
race film industry.
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3:45 PM — 4:00 PM
Break
4:00 PM — 5:15 PM
Session Four
Training the Next Generation of Film Scholars: Tales from the Front Lines
Summary: Effective research in film and media studies requires an
ability to navigate a complex combination of theoretical, historical,
archival, scholarly, and popular sources. The proliferation of both print
and online sources has made it more challenging for students to search,
evaluate, and synthesize relevant information. Cinema and media studies
librarians play a critical role in teaching students the research methods
necessary for their success as would-be film scholars. In this moderated
discussion, four academic film librarians will share insights, strategies,
techniques, successes—and even failures—gleaned from years of experience
working with film students and professors of all levels.
Participant(s): |
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5:30 PM — 6:45 PM
Reception
7:00 PM
Harold and Lillian: A Hollywood Love Story screening
8:00 AM
Registration and Breakfast Bar open
9:00 AM — 10:15 AM
Session Five
A Collaborative Model of Building Research Resources - the
Media History Digital Library
Summary: The Media History Digital Library (MHDL) has created a new
model for access, digitizing a broad range of out-of-copyright magazines and
books covering motion pictures, broadcasting and recorded sound, under an
open access model. This panel will discuss the MHDL’s collaborative model,
along with the curation of collections, the web services to make those
collections available, and case studies of how the materials are used by
researchers and educators. The speakers will also address the challenges of
leading a project without any full time staff and invite suggestions from
conference attendees for ways to improve the MHDL collection and user
experience.
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10:15 AM — 10:30 AM
Break
10:30 AM — 11:45 AM
Session Six
Providing Joint Access to Europe’s Film Heritage: The European
Film Gateway
Summary: The European Film Gateway (EFG) is a web portal giving free access to digitized film and non-film collections from currently 38 European cinémathèques and film libraries. For EFG, the contributing archives collaboratively addressed key issues for access to digital content, such as technical and semantic interoperability of metadata, harmonization of multilingual data and best practices for rights’ clearance and IPR management. The presentation will focus on experiences with the complex tasks of enabling access to distributed and diversely structured archival content and information and will give insight into lessons learned.
A Digital Library of Film Documentation: The Internet Archive’s Projects and Partners
Summary: The Internet Archive has been a leader in digitization,
metadata curation and collection building within the GLAM (Gallery, Library,
Archive and Museum) community. Together with our university and library
partners we are selecting, digitizing, curating and making discoverable
petabytes worth of archival resources for the use of researchers, teachers
and the general public. This presentation will delve into the background of
these collaborations focusing on the analogue and digital aspects of
curating film-related resources. It will cover workflows and standards for
quality control, as well tools like full-text search and linked data sharing
which aim to make our collections broadly discoverable and accessible.
Life begins at 45: FIAF’s International Index to Film Periodicals
Summary: This presentation attempts to give a comprehensive overview
of the history, mission, and organization of FIAF’s Periodicals Indexing
Project (P.I.P.) since its inception in 1972. It surveys the various
publication formats of its main publication, the International Index to Film
Periodicals, over the past 45 years, and discusses recent developments.
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A Digital Library of Film Documentation: The Internet Archive’s Projects and Partners
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Life begins at 45: FIAF’s International Index to Film Periodicals
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11:45 AM — 1:15 PM
Lunch
1:15 PM — 1:30 PM
Fotoplayer demonstration
1:30 PM — 2:45 PM
Session Seven
From cataloguing items toward collections’ archival and
museum-type representation
Summary: In 2011, the CNC and the Cinémathèque française decided to
design a collaborative digital portal on film heritage in France, based on
their analysis that current databases and catalogues no longer fulfilled the
needs of their users. Meeting expectations from both staff and users
required the establishment of a strong, organic interaction between « film »
and « non -film » collections, and the building of an integrated information
system for a network of institutions charged with preserving and making the
collections available. The goal was to lose the information silo approach in
order to build a genuine Knowledge Base, taking into account new objects of
description. This presentation will show how linking the documents (posters,
photographs, archives, drawings and sketches, etc.) and valuable items
(costumes, sets, machines and devices) with the cinematographic work led to
a change of paradigm - from library science to a film heritage collection,
museum-type approach.
‘The Most Important of All the Arts’? Methodology and Mapping in the Study of Soviet Feature-film Studios through Paper-based Archival Collections
Summary: This presentation will explore some of the practical and
methodological challenges facing cinema historians whose work examines the
history of Soviet feature-film studios in the post-war era. Drawing on
current doctoral research working with paper-based archival collections in
Russia, it will discuss how Russian state archives format studio-specific
collections that span networks of professional film production, informal
ideological screening and official state political authority. Consequently,
it will assess the functionality of their catalogues and ask how the
management of these rich film-historical resources might transcend their
current arcane status to encourage greater exploitation by researchers.
Transcending Hollywood: A Study of the International Collections Archived by the Academy’s Margaret Herrick Library
Summary: While the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was
partly founded on the notion of preserving the history of the American
studio system, it is not widely known that the organization has a much
broader range of materials in its holdings that originate far beyond the
borders of Hollywood. This paper will discuss key international collections
the Academy has acquired over the years, including the Satyajit Ray papers,
the Richard Koszarski Polish poster collection, the Stephen Chin collection
on kung fu films and others, and discuss the Academy’s current global
mission toward collecting and preservation.
Participant(s): |
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‘The Most Important of All the Arts’? Methodology and Mapping in the Study of Soviet Feature-film Studios through Paper-based Archival Collections
Participant(s): |
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Transcending Hollywood: A Study of the International Collections Archived by the Academy’s Margaret Herrick Library
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2:45 PM — 3:00 PM
Break
3:00 PM — 4:15 PM
Session Eight
Online, in venue, on show: Transforming Access to the BFI’s
Collections
Summary: In 2011, the British Film Institute underwent a radical
reorganization as it became the lead body for film in the United Kingdom. At
the heart of its new vision was a commitment to open up access to the
collections the BFI holds on behalf of the nation and to provide innovative
ways of interpreting and understanding them. This presented the Collections
and Information department with a unique opportunity to turn around the
decline in visitor numbers to the BFI library by building a new modern
library for the 21st century at the BFI’s cultural complex on London’s South
Bank, as well as modernize the way the public could access information about
the collections through the development of one integrated collection
database. The panel will address the key phases of this multifaceted
project.
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4:15 PM — 4:30 PM
Break
4:30 PM — 5:45 PM
Filmmakers panel with moderated discussion
5:45 PM — 6:00 PM
Closing Remarks
6:00 PM — 7:15 PM
Dinner Break
7:30 PM
Party Girl screening
8:30 AM — 5:00 PM
Tours of the Academy’s Margaret Herrick Library and the Walt Disney Animation Research Library (reservations required)
8:30 AM
Buses load at Pickford
9:00 AM — 9:30 AM
Transfer to MHL for tour
9:30 AM — 11:30 AM
MHL tour
11:30 AM — 12:30 PM
Lunch
12:45 PM
Buses leave for Walt Disney Animation Research Library
1:30 PM — 3:30 PM
Walt Disney Animation Research Library tour
3:45 PM
Buses return to Pickford
6:00 PM
Reception at Paramount Studios — joint event with AMIA and FIAF (reservations required)
9:30 AM — 11:00 AM
Walking tour of Hollywood with John Bengtson (reservation required; more information to follow) (Group 1)
10:30 AM — 12:00 PM
Walking tour of Hollywood with John Bengtson (reservation required; more information to follow) (Group 2)
9:30 AM — 1:00 PM
Academy Museum of Motion Pictures site tour (reservations required)
9:30 AM
Buses load at Pickford
10:00 AM
Buses depart for Museum site
10:45 AM
Tours begin
12:00 PM
Buses load to return to Pickford
Deadlines
- April 14, 2017: Last day for cancellations