Students from the MA programme Preservation and Presentation of the Moving Image participated in the 2014 World Conference of FIAT/IFTA. They share their impressions in a series of blog reports. Aleksas Gilaitis opens the series.
The annual FIAT/IFTA World Conference moved from a hot and sunny Dubai in 2013 to a rainy and windy Amsterdam this year. This choice of location signified a large participation of European members, although this doesn't mean that the four-day event only concentrated on European issues in the field.
The official opening of the conference took place during an early session on Thursday - even if the event in fact started on Wednesday - in the magnificent venue of Pakhuis de Zwijger. The conference started with FIAT/IFTA president Jan Müller’s invitation to a journey into the digital domain, highlighting the importance of digital future for the television archiving world.
[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"16149","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","height":"320","style":"font-size: 12.7272720336914px; line-height: 20.0063037872314px;","typeof":"foaf:Image","width":"480"}}]]Conference venue Pakhuis de Zwijger. Photo Credit: Oscar Timmers.
The opening session continued with guest star Matthijs Leendertse, who did not leave the digital realm. Matthijs took off with his doubts about the contemporary media revolution. He compared it to the “horseless carriage” - as when cars took over carriages for transportation, existing ways of thinking took a long time to be revolutionized. Even if the example of early car design creation does not look very connected to the current digital world, it does represent the archival world of today, unfortunately: Its slow-paced revolution from old-fashioned archive systems towards the digital domain seems to be passively postponed each year.
Tom de Smet during the coffee break. Photo Credit: Oscar Timmers.
Mr. Leenderste mentioned in his session that now is the time where the world of archives is undergoing its big switch. It is moving from a storage- to a user-focused network. The technological era is opening many ways to revolutionize the systems of today. He took education systems as the main example to present a possible switch towards a more user-friendly world in the digital realm. Even if his examples of learning and finishing university without a real need of attending packed lecturing classes are quite radical for today's world, changes towards it are possible - even by means of simple adaptations.
The newly elected Executive Committe. Photo Credit: Oscar Timmers.
His enthusiastic and optimistic start of the conference paved the path toward the session of General Assembly, moderated by Tom de Smet. In it, the organisation selected its new executive committee. The gathering was tastefully flavoured with a screening of a documentary on Academy Award nominated films restored from the Sound & Vision collection.
More info
- See more photos, presentations and papers over at the FIAT/IFTA website