Heritage under threat
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Climate change
Audiovisual heritage is under threat, also in Europe. For example, due to the effects of climate change, such as the 2024 floods in Valencia. Or closer to home: the flooding in the bunker where the Eye Filmmuseum stores its nitrate films. Here Eye employees are working hard to prevent further damage.
Cyberattacks
And then there are cyberattacks. In September 2021, for example, there was a attack on the Swiss film archive. The digital lab was badly affected: machines were out of action for months, and two film restorations were lost. The film department also came to a standstill because databases and scanning stations were down.
1930s
However, the threat to audiovisual heritage is anything but new. Since the 1930s Dutch broadcasters looked for ways to preserve their audio collections. Plans for a national audio archive were being discussed and Dutch broadcasters already took measures to safeguard their recordings. In 1936, for example, the AVRO moved into this new building in Hilversum, complete with dedicated archive rooms.
German Occupation
But then the Second World War breaks out. In May 1940, Germany invaded the Netherlands. Not long after, German propaganda troops arrived at the AVRO complex. They brought enough Dutch-language records with them to cover two weeks of broadcasting. They also took over the central control room of Dutch radio. Political recordings from the archive were taken to Berlin.
“Very vulnerable”
Broadcasting company employees immediately realise how dangerous it can be to possess archive material under German occupation. At VARA, they took a drastic decision: they burned anti-fascist materials from their archives. AVRO also took action, as radio archivist Bep van Heukelom-van den Brink recalls in this oral history interview.
German Bunker
During the occupation, AVRO managed the archive material of all the Dutch broadcasters, and from 1947 onwards also that of the (NRU). During this period, the archive staff realised that not only music was worth preserving, but also spoken word programmes, such as radio plays. They stored the radio plays in a former German bunker in Hilversum, whose cool temperature offered some protection for the flammable sound film strips on which the radio plays were recorded.
Political Speeches
In the early 1960s, there was a growing awareness that the archives of the broadcasting companies also had great cultural value. Take, for example, the NRU's lacquer discs containing speeches by political figures. Surely these should be preserved? Coenraad Brandt, professor of Modern History, was committed to this cause. He collected the speeches and stored them in a special sound archive at Utrecht University. In 1970, this archive was transferred to the .
Cultural Heritage
With the ratification of the in 1972, there was a growing awareness of radio and television recordings as cultural heritage. At that time, the NOS only preserved a fraction of its radio broadcasts. Staff at the raised the alarm and ensured that Dutch broadcasters began to supply more material. Within the broadcast organisations, there was growing attention to the management of production archives: they invested in electronic databases, tape preservation copies and new methods of archiving.
Sound & Vision
In 1997, a merger resulted in the creation of the Netherlands Audiovisual Archive. Its goal was clear: to build a national archive that would preserve audiovisual heritage, particularly broadcasting material, and make it available to broadcasters and educational institutions. In 2006, the archive opened its iconic, colourful building at the Hilversum Media Park and changed its name to the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, or Sound & Vision for short.
