Conference Program

Please note that additional programming, events, and screenings will continue to be added.  Also, program information is subject to change.

You can keep track of any last minute changes by downloading the AMIA Conference Mobile App.

 

 

 

8:30 AM – 5:30 PM |  Separate Registration Required
Small Gauge Projector Maintenance and Repair

Presenters

  • Taylor McBride, Smithsonian Institution
  • Dino Everett, USC SCA Hugh M. Hefner Moving Image Archive
  • Kristin Lipska, San Francisco Symphony
  • Genevieve Havemeyer-King, Media Preservation Coordinator, New York Public Library
  • Emily Mercer, AMIA Projection and Technical Presentation Committee

The Small Gauge Amateur Film Committee and Presentation Committee host a full-day pre-conference workshop on small gauge projector maintenance and repair. The workshop will cover an array of 16mm, 8mm, and Super 8 projector models and their repair and maintenance protocol. Attendees will have the chance to work hands-on with the playback machinery and will leave with the knowledge of how to care for the projectors needed to view their archival film.  Our thanks to Boston Light & Sound for their sponsorship of the workshop.

 

__________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________

 

 

 

8:30 AM – 12:30 PM |  Separate Registration Required
Technology Selection and Implementation for Humans

Presenters

  • Kara Van Malssen, AVP
  • Erwin Verbruggen, Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision

Technologies such as DAM, MAM, CMS, or digital preservation systems have the potential to completely transform how our assets are managed, preserved, and made available. But choosing the right solution can be overwhelming, and even more daunting is planning for successful implementation. Where do we start? And how do we ensure that the project doesn’t fail (a whooping 25% of all technology projects do), or not fulfill the promise we envision (which another 25% likely will)?    This workshop will walk participants through the process of technology selection and implementation, using a clear, step-by-step methodology, and leveraging a human-centered design approach. Participants will learn how to work with stakeholders to identify needs, goals, and requirements. They will also learn how to craft a comprehensive RFP/RFI, evaluate proposals, and plan for implementation and ongoing management. The workshop will be interactive, fast-paced, and fun!

_______________________________________

9:00 AM – 5:30 PM |  Separate Registration Required
Describing Moving Images: Data Models, Standards, and Tools

Presenters

  • Randal Luckow, HBO
  • Murray Browne, Turner Broadcasting
  • Meghan Fitzgerald, NASA
  • Rebecca Fraimow, WGBH Boston
  • Andrea Leigh, Library of Congress

This highly-interactive workshop will provide participants with real-world strategies to evaluate and implement data models, descriptive standards, controlled vocabularies, and shared data authorities, through practical hands-on exercises. Dynamic presentations will illustrate the role and purpose of putting in place a strong data model for bibliographic description, using BIBFRAME and FRBR examples, and the value of implementing standards such as LCSH, LCGFT, and AAT as data authorities. Participants will put these cataloging and metadata concepts directly into practice utilizing tools emerging from the NEH-funded PBCore Development and Training Project.   A special hands-on session will apply genre/form headings to moving images, and show how they are used symbiotically with Library of Congress Subject Headings to describe both what a work is and what it is about.   This workshop is intended for those with a moderate level of understanding of metadata standards and implementation strategies.

_______________________________________

9:00 AM – 5:00 PM |  Separate Registration Required
AMIA/DLF Hack Day

A partnership between AMIA and the Digital Library Federation, Hack Day is a unique opportunity for practitioners and managers of digital audiovisual collections to join with developers and engineers for an intense day of collaboration to develop solutions for digital audiovisual preservation and access. Within digital preservation and curation communities, hack days provide an opportunity for archivists, collection managers, technologists, and others to work together develop software solutions, documentation or training materials, and more for digital collections management needs.

_______________________________________

11:30AM
Tour:  The Hollywood Theatre |  Separate Registration Required

The Hollywood Theatre opened in 1926 – the last Portland venue built as both a vaudeville house and a movie theatre.  It was a “palace of luxury, comfort and entertainment unsurpassed by any theatre on the Coast.”  In 1983 it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. This 30 minute tour is a chance to peek behind the curtain with Dan Halsted – sometimes referred to as the Kung Fu Master of the Hollywood Theatre – and talk to him about the Hollywood, it’s history, and maybe his legendary 35mm kung fu film collection, too.  You can get to the Hollywood Theatre on light rail, taxi, or ride-share.

_______________________________________

12:30 PM – 5:30 PM |  Separate Registration Required
The Reel Thing
Chairs

  • Grover Crisp, Sony Pictures
  • Michael Friend, Sony Pictures

Curated by Grover Crisp and Michael Friend, The Reel Thing addresses current thinking and most advanced practical examples of progress in the field of preservation, restoration and media conservation.

_______________________________________

1:30 PM – 5:30 PM |  Separate Registration Required
Archivist’s Guide to QuickTime
Presenters

  • Dave Rice, CUNY
  • Annie Schweikert, NYU MIAP

QuickTime can refer to a video encoding, a proprietary Apple file format, a profile of an ISO file format, or a video player. You can actually use QuickTime to put QuickTime into your QuickTime. This workshop provides a technical tour of all things QuickTime with an emphasis on QuickTime, the audiovisual container.    This workshop will review the architecture of QuickTime and demonstrate many features relevant to archival work, such as how significant characteristics such as interlacement, edit lists, color data, user metadata, timecode, and aspect ratio are stored (or not) within the format. We’ll cover QuickTime policies such as TN2162 that add additional requirements for the usage of uncompressed video with QuickTime. Join us to review how to inspect, validate, respond to, and manipulation QuickTime files.

_______________________________________

5:45PM – 6:45PM
Newcomer’s Orientation

Chairs

  • Casey Davis Kaufman, AMIA Board
  • Teague Schneiter, AMIA Board

Are you new to AMIA? Is this your first time at the annual conference? Have you been to our annual conference before but would like a refresher on how to make the most of it?  If you answered “Yes” to any of these questions, then be sure to join us! This lively and participative orientation is a great way to have a clear understanding of what AMIA is and does; meet other newcomers to the annual conference; get advice on conference sessions to attend based on your interests; meet AMIA volunteer leaders who will help introduce you to other members; feel that you are meeting up with old friends when you come to AMIA 2019 in Baltimore next year!

_______________________________________

6:45 PM – 7:45 PM
Opening Night Reception

It’s opening night in Portland!  A chance to say hello to friends, meet new colleagues, and get ready for the days ahead.

_______________________________________

8:00PM – 10:00PM
Trivia Night at AMIA

Test your skills, win prizes, and see if yoiu can be the team that unseats the current AMIA Trivia champs – “Andy Warhol Wants His Wig Back.”  Put your name on that monkey trophy!  Everyone is welcome – sign up as a team or as an individual player (we’ll match you to a team).

 

8:00pm – NW Film Center
Surprise Screening! 

A newly restored classic from the 60s.  Provided by Park Circus.

 

__________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________

 

 

 

8:00AM – 9:00AM
Welcome to AMIA 2018!
Moderator

  • Dennis Doros, AMIA President

Please join us for the welcome to the 2018 Conference and to recognize the 2018 Scholarship and Internship recipients.   And get ready to sing!

_______________________________________

9:00AM – 9:45AM
AMIA 2018 Keynote Address:  Fackson Banda

Fackson Banda is Programme Specialist for UNESCO’s Memory of the World Secretariat, Section for Universal Access and Preservation (KSD/UAP), Communication and Information Sector.  While best known for the Memory of the World Register, the program promotes preservation and access to documentary heritage as a way of achieving the three-fold objective of sustainable development:  environmental, social, and economic sustainability.

Prior to his role with Memory of the World, Fackson Banda served as Programme Specialist for Media & Civic Participation at UNESCO, and was Section Chair of Media and Democracy in the School of Journalism and Media Studies at Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa. A scholar of African political thought and media, he has published in the areas of postcolonial theory and media, technology and development, civic education and communication as well as community media and policy, among others.

_______________________________________

11:00AM – 12:00PM
Selection and Safe Handling of Moving Image Related Objects for Exhibitions
Chairs and Speakers

  • Anne Coco, AMPAS
  • James Mockoski, American Zoetrope
  • Megan Gruchow, NBC/Universal Archives & Collections
  • Dawn Jaros, AMPAS

Archivists and Librarians who manage the exhibition of moving image related collections must make decisions regarding the selection, safe handling, and display of these special items. This session, will inform attendees on how to manage exhibitions through their full life-cycle from overall exhibition planning decisions to how to select and present a specific piece for display. This 60-minute session will include presentations by librarians, archivists, and conservators on how to select items for exhibition from collections, how to work with borrowers, and how to make good shipping and handling decisions. This session brings together private, corporate and public collection managers and conservators to examine their considerations and work flows. This session is presented in partnership with the Moving Image Related Materials Committee and the Film Librarians Group.

 

11:00AM – 12:00PM
Comrades in Archiving: Preserving the Unedited Reds Witness Interviews
Chairs and Speakers

  • Jeffrey Osmer, Paramount Pictures
  • Nikki Jee, Paramount Pictures
  • Trisha Lendo, Paramount Pictures

Reds and Portland native John Reed take us on a theatrical journey back in time to the Russian Revolution. Interspersed through the theatrical release were interviews with the real people represented within the films narrative. These witnesses include a diverse group of writers, labor leaders, politicians, and classmates of the main character John Reed. The panel details the process of locating a quarter million feet of unedited film from the movie Reds, the creation of digital files for this footage, and the file cataloging process. Our task was to digitally preserve the assets and make uncut interviews easily available to all.  The hybrid nature of this Academy Award winning film, intertwining documentary footage with a historical recreation, made this a rather unique archiving project. This is a panel for archives undertaking their own massive digitization process (and/or for fans of the Bolshevik revolution).

 

11:00AM – 12:00PM
Case Study: Quality Control for Media Digitization
Presenters

  • Darrell Myers, Indiana University
  • Mike Casey, Indiana University

Quality control is a critical part of media digitization projects that requires the same diligence and consideration as digitization and other preservation system functions to achieve accurate long-term preservation. Small mistakes can have large consequences for future access and research. This presentation will explore the types of QC used for audio, video and film by Indiana University’s Media Digitization and Preservation Initiative, which will digitally preserve over 300,000 AV items by 2020. It will detail the comprehensive, machine-based, automated QC system built in-house as well as approaches to human-intensive QC. Software (open-source and proprietary) that enables review of 37TB of content daily will be explored. Finally, the presentation will cast quality control as an exercise in risk management, examining areas where IU has chosen to reduce, avoid, transfer or accept risk. The basic principles and approach utilized are relevant to any institution undertaking media digitization, regardless of size.

 

11:00AM – 12:00PM
CCAAA: International Collaboration on Advocacy, Training, and Resources
Chairs and Speakers

  • Rachael Stoeltje, CCAAA Chair
  • Dennis Doros, AMIA President
  • Fackson Banda, UNESCO
  • Erwin Verbruggen, Netherlands Sound & Vision
  • Tom De Smet, Netherlands Sound & Vision
  • Kara Van Malssen, AVP

In 1999, the Roundtable of Audiovisual Records recognized the need to become more proactive in shaping policy, and collaborating for greater preservation efforts worldwide.  In 2000, it was reborn as the Coordinating Council of Audiovisual Archives Associations (CCAAA).  The CCAAA represents the interests of worldwide professional archive organizations with interests in audiovisual materials including films, broadcast television and radio, and audio recordings of all kinds.  Today, CCAAA serves as a bridge, bringing together the eight member organizations tasked with preserving the world’s audiovisual heritage.   This panel will address the work supported by the CCAAA, especially in areas of Archives at Risk, Disaster Preparedness, World Day of Audio-Visual Heritage, the Joint Technical Symposium, and Memory of the World.

_______________________________________   

12:00PM – 1:00PM
Meeting: Cataloging & Metadata Committee

12:00PM – 1:00PM
Meeting: Nitrate Committee

12:00PM – 1:00PM
Meeting: News, Documentary, and Television Committee

12:00PM – 1:00PM
Meeting: Small Gauge Amateur Film Committee

_______________________________________   

12:00PM |  Separate Registration Required
Tour:  John Reed’s Portland Walking Tour

Want a some local Portland culture?  REDS, the film directed and starring Warren Beatty,  centers on the life and career of Portland native John Reed, the journalist and writer who chronicled the Russian Revolution in his book Ten Days That Shook the World.  This tour is a compact look at sites related to events portrayed in REDS, and addresses what is known and what is imaginative conjecture on Warren Beatty’s part. Beatty’s portrait of John Reed was impressively researched, and although not one inch of REDS was shot in Portland, we can point out sites where Reed scholars believe specific events, portrayed in REDS, took place.  Tour will leave from Hotel lobby.  The tour is organized by the Oregon Cartoon Institute who has also created a map of John Reed’s Portland.  In addition, the Wilson Room (rare books) in Multnomah County Library, will have John Reed related items on display during the conference dates. The Wilson Room is across the street from another site on the map – Louise Bryant’s writing studio (still standing)

_______________________________________   

12:30PM  |  Separate Registration Required
Tour:  The Hollywood Theatre

_______________________________________   

1:00PM – 2:00PM
Meeting: PBCore Advisory Subcommittee

1:00PM – 2:00PM
Meeting: Education Committee

1:00PM – 2:00PM
Meeting: International Outreach Committee

_______________________________________   

1:30PM  |  Separate Registration Required
Tour:  The Hollywood Theatre

_______________________________________   

2:00PM – 3:00PM
Preserving Atrocity
Chair and Speakers

  • Nick Gold, Chesapeake Systems
  • Nicole Martin, Human Rights Watch
  • Yvonne Ng, Witness
  • Jason Byrne, International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (former), artist & filmmaker

Challenges associated with the archiving and preservation of video footage and rich media abound, and these are only compounded when the collection involves materials associated with, and perhaps even capturing, human rights violations. Workflows may have to incorporate evidentiary processes, deliberate obfuscation of metadata and other information, and other specificities associated with this type of work. Ongoing exposure to such materials also presents real challenges to those tasked with its preservation. Yet we know that this media can be extremely powerful in righting wrongs, and telling the stories of injustice. And with the prevalence of smartphones, more and more of this type of documentary evidence is generated every day. This panel, moderated by AMIA Digital Asset Symposium Conference Chair Nick Gold of Chesapeake Systems, will conversationally address these and other issues with those who operate in the trenches of human rights rich media preservation.

 

2:00PM – 3:00PM
Selection, Conservation, and Care of Costumes in Moving Image Related Collections
Chairs and Speakers

  • Sonja Wong Leaon, AMPAS
  • Sophie de Bois Hunter, AMPAS
  • Steve Wilson, Harry Ransom Center
  • Mary Huelsbeck, Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research
  • Randall Thropp, Paramount

Archivists and Librarians and Museum professionals working with collections of moving image related materials can struggle with difficult decisions regarding the selection, care, and long-term storage of these special items. This session will inform attendees on how to manage costumes through their full life-cycle: from how to make overall collection level decisions, to how to determine conservation treatment for a specific piece of wardrobe. This session will include presentations by registrars, curators, conservators, librarians, and archivists on how to select items to add to the collection, how to work with and find a conservator when things go wrong by understanding and identifying inherent vice in materials, and how to make good housing and storage decisions.     This session is presented in partnership with the Moving Image Related Materials Committee and the Film Librarians Group.

 

2:00PM – 3:00PM
Projection Impossible: Colossal and Confidential Film Discoveries at Lincoln Center
Chairs and Speakers

  • Bonnie Marie Sauer, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
  • David Neary, The Whitney Museum of American Art
  • Becca Bender, The Rhode Island Historical Society

New surveys of the film holdings of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts Archives have turned up some startling rediscoveries. In this panel, LCPA Archives shares reports on two of the most dramatic finds – the home movie collection of Kodachrome co-invetor Leopold Godowsky, Jr. (which includes a long lost film of Albert Einstein and his wife Elsa), and “Variations…”, a three-projector experimental documentary produced for Lincoln Center’s 20th anniversary in 1979, and projected onto five screens draped down the facade of the Metropolitan Opera.

 

2:00PM – 3:00PM
Animating Canada’s Audio-Visual Heritage through Partnerships:
CINEMAexpo67 and Archive|Counter-Archive
Chairs and Speakers

  • Monika Gagnon, Concordia University
  • Paul Gordon, Library and Archives Canada, Senior Film Conservator
  • Stéphanie Côté, Cinématheque québécoise
  • Janine Marchessault, York University

This panel engages two large-scale media archival projects in Canada, one ongoing, the second one, brand new, to explore the critical need for collaborations between researchers, archivists and institutions (both national and community based). This panel brings into conversation two archivists from the Cinémathèque québécoise and Library and Archives Canada, with two university researchers (initiators of CINEMAexpo67 and Archive|Counter-Archive) to elucidate their vantage points and experiences with the Expo 67 films, as well as their unique collaborations which have effectively brought together technical expertise, research capacity and financial resources to enable further collaborations activating Canada’s moving image heritage. Following a presentation of re-animated films from CINEMAexpo67, the panel will discuss the recently funded Archive|Counter-Archive Partnership, uniting 40 artists, academics and archivists in Canada over 6 years to engage with similarly “difficult” audio-visual, film and video archives at 23 community and institutional archival sites across Canada, and discuss how it can draw on the challenges, experiences and networks formed through the earlier project.

_______________________________________   

3:30PM – 4:30PM
NMAAHC: The Pearl Bowser Collection In Action
Presenter

  • Ina Archer, NMAAHC

In this session Ina Archer will outline NMAAHC’s media conservation and digitization team’s particular engagement with the Pearl Bowser collection. She will highlight team favorites from the collection (Jazz Karate!) and describe how Bowser has continued to support preservation and black independent cinema.

 

3:30PM – 4:30PM
Tackling Cataloguing Challenges of Non-Traditional Materials with the FIAF Manual
Chair and Speakers

  • Ashley Thomas, Simmons College
  • Meghan Monroe, Simmons College
  • Kendra Long, Simmons College

The expansion of audiovisual archives to include non-traditional materials have presented descriptive and metadata challenges for archivists. The adoption of the FIAF Moving Image Cataloguing Manual can provide cataloguing versatility which can address some of these pressing issues. Using two examples of non-traditional materials – ephemera and pornographic media – this panel considers how the FIAF Manual can be an important tool to establish intellectual control and descriptive metadata to all assets held in our archives.

 

3:30PM – 4:30PM
Nazi Propaganda as Linked Open Data: A Case Study
Chair and Speakers

  • Julia Vytopil, Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision
  • Tom de Smet, Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision
  • Lizzy Jongma, Dutch Network for War Collections WWII (NOB)

There are over 400 World War 2 collections in the Netherlands, many of them digitized. Online publication however lags behind, due to the complexity of copyright and privacy matters. To stimulate open access to World War 2 collections, the Network War Resources was founded in 2016. The Network pushes its 73 partners to publish metadata and content on their thematic online portal.  When NWR asked the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision for WW2 collections to publish online, the National Socialist propaganda collection surfaced. Copyright research suggests a public domain status. Ethical questions arise, however. What about the privacy of people shown in these films as part of the national socialist movement? How ethical is it to “give away” propaganda films for free re-use?  In our presentation we will discuss the role of a thematic network like Network War Resources and present the outcomes of the National Socialist propaganda case.

 

_______________________________________   

 

4:45PM – 5:45PM
Enhancing Exploration of Audiovisual Collections with Computer-based Annotation Techniques
Chair and Speakers

  • Johan Oomen, Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision
  • Giovanna Fossati, EYE Filmmuseum
  • James Pustejovsky, Brandeis University
  • Christian Gosvig Olesen, University of Amsterdam

Automatic annotation techniques for metadata extraction enable fundamentally new uses, comprising (1) “Distant reading” approaches, meaning studying trends and latency across entire collections rather than one specific item (2) radically new exploratory interface and interaction designs (3) new ways of linking collections. As such methods enter our community and open new perspectives, this panel reflects on their opportunities for exploring archival content in novel ways. To do so, this session’s panelists present four cases from the US and the Netherlands that facilitate discussion about possibilities for audiovisual archives, focusing on how four different user groups may benefit; the general public, archivists, artists and scholars – while providing practical insights.

 

4:45PM – 5:45PM
Pop-Up Session:  Streaming Video: Research Collections and Film Studies
Presenter

  • Nancy Friedland, Columbia University

Academic research libraries include in their mission statement the desire to collect materials in multiple formats to support the teaching and learning activities of their institution. With the advent of the videocassette and later DVD format in the early 2000s, libraries collected film content in a traditional model of acquiring a tangible object, the right of first sale, and traditional practices of cataloging, preserving, and making these items accessible through loan or in library use. Simultaneously, film studies programs grew at a rapid pace. There was a growth in the scholarly output as researchers had access to the object of study in this non-print format. Today, libraries are faced with numerous challenges in the “collecting” of streaming film content, the latest in a continued format evolution for moving images intended for either the large or small screen. The most important factor in this new format is the support of film studies on both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Expectations for streaming video by students and faculty are at an unsurprisingly all-time high but the actual content required for research and instruction is not as available compared to what libraries were able (and continue) to collect in DVD format. This paper will examine large-scale and niche services and the sustainability of this format, the challenges of Netflix and the lack of educational license for in-demand content, the long term preservation of commercially accessible moving image content, cost, and examine the essential question of how this new format change will impact the current and future study of film.

 

4:45PM – 5:15PM
Building Common Grounds: A Collaborative Digital Humanities Project for Latin American Archives
Presenter

  • Juana Suarez, New York University

This presentation addresses a current collaborative digital humanities project targeting resources for Latin American archives, through concerted efforts of collaborations. It has much to say in suggesting ways to organize at a grassroots level; it is certainly a model that can be duplicated at different regions of the world that can benefit from decentralizing the control of the State. The presentation focuses on the collective system of governance, main resources, and portability of the project.

5:15PM – 5:45PM
The “Other” Silent Film History : Silent Agricultural Films 1942-1978
Presenter

  • Tone Føreland, Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences

The burgeoning research on non-theatrical, useful, industrial, ephemeral and orphan films in the last decade seems to have given this part of film history a well-justified acknowledgement. In my presentation, I will use a Norwegian production of agricultural films that belongs to this “other” part of film history as a case study. In this film production, the death of silent film did not coincide with the coming of sound in the 1930s and I would like to share the considerations we had to do regarding the question of projection speed in digital preservation of these silent films. Normal speed or natural movement were not correct answers.

_______________________________________

7:30PM – 10:30PM
Awards + Archival Screening Night

Please join us to celebrate our 2018 AMIA Awards honorees.  Following the Awards is AMIA’s annual Archival Screening Night.  Archival Screening Night is a showcase for AMIA members’ recent acquisitions, discoveries and preservation efforts.  The program represents the magnificent spectrum of media formats, works, and collections protected and preserved by the AMIA community.

 

__________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________

 

 

 

Programming today includes a five session program stream: No Islands In This Stream: Building, Maintaining and Sharing Regional and Community Archives.  Sessions in this stream are indicated by Community & Regional Archives in the title.

 

8:00AM – 8:45AM
Plenary Session – Indigenous Cultural Heritage: Ethical Stewardship
Moderator and Presenters

  • Jennifer Jenkins, University of Arizona
  • Michael Pahn, Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian Cultural Resource Center
  • Jen Hart, Medweganoonind Library, Red Lake Nation College

Indigenous and tribal communities around the world are taking steps to reaffirm control over their cultural heritage, including images and sounds of their communities. Many materials in archives, museums, and libraries remain out of reach for tribal communities, while culturally sensitive materials may not be properly restricted. Issues of colonialism, cultural appropriation, and variability in knowledge systems (and ways of knowing) can make ethical stewardship of these materials complex, with unique cultural, political, and spiritual sensitivities. How can audiovisual archivists and indigenous communities work together? What is the role of the audiovisual archivist in this collaboration with indigenous communities to ensure and reaffirm authority and control over their cultural heritage? There is not one answer to these questions, but there are guidelines for partnerships between cultural institutions and indigenous communities that foster ethical stewardship and build positive, sustainable relationships

_______________________________________

9:00AM – 10:00AM
Community & Regional Archives: Regional Archives Roundtable Discussion
Chair and Speakers

  • Afsheen Nomai, Texas Archive of the Moving
  • Kelli Hix, Nashville Metro Archives
  • Janel Quirante, Henry Ku’Ualoha Giugni Moving Image Archive of Hawaii
  • Ben Truwe, Southern Oregon Historical Society
  • Rene Ramos, Florida Moving Image Archives
  • Candace Ming, South Side Home Movie Project

This interactive session will kick off the Regional and Community Archives stream with a panel composed of representatives from regional and community archives from across the United States. Panelists and attendees will engage in discussions that address specific issues unique to creating and sustaining regional and community archives. The goal of this panel is to foster a welcoming and open environment where both panelists and attendees can share knowledge, resources, and tools.

 

9:00AM – 10:00AM
Intersectionality In The Archive: Linking the Personal to the Professional
Chair and Speakers

  • Ariel Schudson, Archivist’s Alley
  • Erica Lopez, MIAP
  • Brendan Lucas, Outfest
  • Ina Archer, Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture
  • Jacqueline Stewart, University of Chicago / Gray Center for Arts & Inquiry/ South Side Home Movie Project

This inclusive discussion focuses on the need for greater intersectional structures in archiving and preservation. Featuring some of our finest archivists, we will examine a variety of topics from film exhibition and cataloging with an ever-shifting vocabulary to the trials and tribulations of being a student or non-conforming archivist in an environment that demands the “straight and narrow” (sometimes literally). This session is valuable on many levels. It is no secret that we need to change many of the structures that our profession was built on, as they are out of date and tired. Let us discuss the lived experiences of preservationists who work hard in a world that they love and see the multitude of ways in which involving these professionals can make all our institutions richer and our community stronger.

 

9:00AM – 10:00AM
War Stories from the Front Lines of Digital Cinema
Chair and Speakers

  • Rebecca Hall, Chicago Film Society / AMIA Projection & Technical Presentation Committee
  • Andy Uhrich, Indiana University Libraries Moving Image Archive
  • Doug McLaren, Cornell Cinema
  • Wade Hanniball, Universal Pictures

Have interesting material that you want more people to see? Making it available for projection in a theatrical setting is an exciting option, but it can be tricky. Files that look fine in an archive’s editing suite will stutter and stretch, no longer resembling the material they beautifully transferred. What to do?  This session will focus on sharing practical knowledge and best practices for preparing digital files for exhibition in a theatrical setting, including creating DCPs in-house and formatting other digital file formats correctly. Panelists will discuss challenges that arise from the wide variety of file formats and delivery options available, the difficulty archives may have testing the files and DCPs they create without access to a theater, and other inadvertent barriers to access. By shedding light on what exhibitors (end users) need from archives to present digital material theatrically, this panel hopes to encourage the exploration of theatrical settings as avenues for public exposure and access.

 

_______________________________________   

 

10:00AM – 6:00PM
The pAVilion

Don’t miss an opportunity to visit the new pAVilion! The pAVilion will bring together the Vendor Cafe with the AV Fair, skill shares, “ask an expert” spaces, and small group discussions.  Our goal is to create a hub for sharing information at the conference.  Check the schedule of activities – Friday will have a resume table, a professional headshot booth, roundtables, and more!

 

_______________________________________

 

11:00AM – 11:30AM
Permanencia Voluntaria: Mexico’s Underdog Archive of Popular Cinema
Chair and Speakers

  • Viviana Garcia Besne, Permanencia Voluntaria
  • Peter Conheim, Cinema Preservation Alliance
  • Sean Savage, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

On the fringes of Mexico’s rich cinematic history are the exploitation and monster movies best described as “popular cinema,” the most enduring of these are the films featuring the masked wrestler, El Santo. Despite their undeniable cultural impact such films are typically held in contempt by Mexico’s film establishment. Permanencia Voluntaria, in the small town of Tepoztlan, has set out to preserve and restore these neglected gems in unique partnerships with the Academy Film Archive, UCLA Film and Television Archive and director Nicolas Winding Refn. In the midst of these efforts, a massive earthquake struck the region in September 2017, sending the archive of original elements into complete disarray and exposing the collection to flooding. This presentation will detail the international disaster response, describe the restoration of the first two Santo films (both Cuba-Mexico co-productions released in 1961), and address the ongoing sustainability challenges of this regional archive.

 

11:00AM – 12:00PM
Media On Display: Exhibition in Galleries and Museums
Chair and Speakers

  • John Klacsmann, Anthology Film Archives
  • Kristin MacDonough, Art Institute of Chicago
  • Stephanie Snyder, Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, Reed College
  • Julian Antos, Chicago Film Society

Galleries and museums are important points of public access for moving image collections. However, museum and gallery settings pose unique challenges for exhibition of archival film, video, and digital media. The speakers on this panel will present case studies from their experiences preparing to present media in these settings from multiple perspectives — that of a presenting organization, a collections-holding organization, and a technician who has worked on museum installations. This will include some specific technical discussion of technology specific to these settings (film loopers, multiple simultaneous projections), challenges of extended playback and installations, and digital media film specification and preparation, as well as discussion of broader issues of medium specificity and thoughtful compromise.

 

11:00AM – 12:00PM
Community & Regional Archives: Coming Soon to a Region Near You: Community Archiving Workshops around the US
Chair and Speakers

  • Sandra Yates, Texas Medical Center Library
  • Amy Sloper, Wisconsin Center for Film & Theater Research
  • Jen Hart, Red Lake Nation College
  • Kelli Hix, Nashville Metro Archives / Independent Consultant
  • Moriah Ulinskas, Independent Consultant

The Community Archiving Workshop (CAW) originated when  AMIA members– gathered together for their annual meeting– developed the one-day workshop to help regional community groups learn to identify and preserve their legacy recordings. The work of CAW means that diverse communities are developing the capacity to safeguard  their audiovisual materials and make unique regional cultural recordings more available. This session will explore CAW activities outside of the AMIA annual conference for the past year. In 2018 there have been CAWs in Minnesota as part of the Association of Tribal Archives, LIbraries & Museums (ATALM) conference as well as Nashville. With a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services ( IMLS), there will be more CAWs, training workshops, and an online toolkit developed in the Midwest, Southeast, and West Coast regions over the next few years.

 

11:30AM – 12:00PM
FIAF and Latin America: Towards a Global Film Preservation Movement
Speaker

  • Rielle Navitski, University of Georgia

Upon its creation in 1938, the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) announced its global ambitions in its choice of name. Yet only American and European institutions participated in its founding, and under a third of current member archives are based in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. Seeking to deepen our historical understanding of moving-image archiving and the geopolitical factors that continue to shape it today, this presentation charts efforts to build an international film preservation movement in the post-WWII period. Focusing on Latin America, which witnessed the first widespread expansion of film archiving outside the US and Europe, the presentation draws on institutional documents recently made available by FIAF to outline the opportunities and challenges represented by Latin American film archives during FIAF’s early years and their implications for film preservation efforts eighty years after FIAF’s founding.

_______________________________________

12:00PM – 1:00PM
Meeting: Moving Image Related Materials & Documentation Committee

12:00PM – 1:00PM
Meeting: Publications Committee

12:00PM – 1:00PM
Meeting: Open Source Committee

_______________________________________

12:00PM – 2:00PM – pAVilion
Poster Presentations

Poster presentations highlight repositories, research projects or other initiatives in a format that includes a poster and a presenter to allow you to ask questions about the project.

  • In-House Digitization With the Lossless FFV1 Codec at the University of Notre Dame Archives
    Angela Fritz, University of Notre Dame
    Erik Dix, University of Notre Dame
  • Slow is Smooth, and Smooth is Fast: MPLP AV Assesment
    Ben Harry, BYU – Special Collections
  • Magneticomicon: A Visual Guide to Magnetic Tape Repairs
    Blanche Joslin, New York University
  • Revisiting Chemical Reconditioning of Acetate Films for Improved Digital Reformatting
    Diana Little, The MediaPreserve, A Division of Preservation Technologies, L.P.
  • The American Civil Liberties Union Digital Asset Management and Library
    Jeffrey Marino, WordCityStudio
  • One System to Rule Them All – A Story of Merging Two Inventory Management Systems
    Kathryn Claypool, Paramount Pictures
  • Collaboration & Replicability: Passing on the Knowledge of AV Station Creation
    Laura Haygood, University of Oklahoma
    Evelyn Cox, University of Oklahoma
  • Audiovisual Accessibility: Evaluating Workflows for Closed Captioning and Transcripts
    Molly Rose Steed, University of Utah
    Jeremy Myntti, University of Utah
  • Vinegar Syndrome: Coming out of the Closet
    Robin Zalben, Steven Spielberg Jewish Film Archive
  • ISAN:  Identifying Audiovisual Content in a Digitally Disrupted World
    Rose St. Pierre, ISAN Canada
  • Avalon Media System: Enhancing Open Source Software for AV Collections Access
    Ryan Steans, Northwestern University
    Jon Dunn, Indiana University

_______________________________________

1:00PM – 2:00PM
Meeting: Copyright Committee

1:00PM – 2:00PM
Meeting: Access Committee

1:00PM – 2:00PM
Meeting: Conference Committee

_______________________________________

 

2:00PM – 3:00PM
Community & Regional Archives: Think Nationally, Preserve Locally: Creating Sustainable Local Television Collections

Chair and Speakers

  • Becca Bender, Rhode Island Historical Society
  • Emily Vinson, University of Houston Libraries
  • Natasha Margulis, Arkansas State University
  • Ruta Abolins, UGA Libraries Walter J. Brown Media Archives & Peabody Awards Collection
  • Matthew Cowan, The Oregon Historical Society
  • Amy Moorman, Archives of Iowa Broadcasting, Wartburg College
  • Joy Banks, CLIR

Whether seeking funding from institutional partners or external grant funding agencies, numerous obstacles exist for creating accessible and sustainable local television collections.  Join us for a roundtable discussion of some of these issues including collaborative funding models, effective grant-writing and management, navigating rights agreements, justifying the value of local television collections, and much more. The goal of this panel is to generate discussion and  promote actionable strategies for the preservation of local TV. Through a moderated discussion, panelists will discuss successes, failures, inspirations, and future goals. This panel is part of the “No Islands in this Stream” curated stream program and is sponsored by the Local Television Task Force.

 

2:00PM – 3:00PM
Rare Experience: Projecting Original and Unique Materials
Chair and Speakers

  • Genevieve Havemeyer-King, New York Public Library
  • John Klacsmann, Antholgoy Film Archives
  • Julian Antos, Music Box Films, Chicago Film Society
  • Brian Belak, Chicago Film Archives
  • Candace Ming, South Side Home Movie Project

When you’ve got original and unique materials that beg to be seen, but are not slated for preservation, what is one to do? This panel will discuss the ethical issues, technical practices, and policies surrounding the exhibition of camera originals, irreplaceable prints, and other unique materials. In this discussion, we hope to aid archivists and exhibitors in providing access to collections that run the gamut from amateur, documentary, and home-movie collections, to experimental, large-format, IB Technicolor prints, and works created on other discontinued film stocks.

 

2:00PM – 3:00PM
Everything in Your Archive is Now Fake
Chair and Speakers

  • John Tariot, Film Video Digital
  • Gaurav Oberoi, Allen Institute for AI
  • Yvonne Ng, Witness

“It’s been a little bit of a fluke, historically, that we’re able to rely on videos as evidence that something really happened.” Ian Goodfellow, Google Brain. In early 2018 users of a simple new program, harnessing advances in AI and graphics processing, began creating alarming, inexpensively-produced and eerily-realistic pornography of celebrities- created by face-swapping their likenesses onto pornographic actors. This was the dawn of “deepfakes.” Today, with just a pool of pictures and a click of a mouse, it is easier than ever to concoct increasingly believable deepfake videos of anyone. Deepfakes sow doubt and undermine the credibility of all moving images. New deepfakes will include revenge-video and fake news of politicians, law enforcement, and the military, but also hybrid-reality experiences with actors and avatars both real and not, living or dead. This session will introduce deepfakes, show how they’re made, recent examples, and discuss both their impact and opportunity.

 

_______________________________________

 

3:30PM – 4:30PM
Community & Regional Archives: Building Community Around Regional A/V Collections
Chair and Speakers

  • Afsheen Nomai, Texas Archive of the Moving Image
  • Tara Nelson, Visual Studies Workshop
  • Felicia D. Render, Atlanta History Center
  • Anne Richardson, Oregon Cartoon Institute

This panel brings together regionally diverse institutions to discuss strategies for strengthening connections between regional archives and the communities they serve through curation, collection building, preservation, and education. Tara Nelson from the Visual Studies Workshop will discuss how their Community Curator program, which invites Rochester area community groups to curate film screenings using their collection, functions as a strategy for direct engagement between regional archives and the communities they serve. Anne Richardson from the Oregon Cartoon Institute will address the interplay between institutional archives and private collections and the value gained from nurturing a conversation between academic historians and self-taught regional story keepers. Felicia D. Render from the Atlanta History Center will discuss how the Atlanta Black Archives Alliance is developing community partnerships and programs to share the history of Black Atlanta and empower Black Atlantans to learn about, preserve, and tell their own histories.

 

3:30PM – 4:30PM
Collecting Born-Digital Material at the Source: Acquisition Strategies & Lessons Learned
Chair and Speakers

  • Erwin Verbruggen, Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision
  • Anne Gant, EYE Filmmuseum
  • Laura Davis, Library of Congress
  • Chew Tee Pao, Asian Film Archive

For born-digital content, audiovisual and otherwise, the ideal moment to begin archiving is at the moment of its inception. The panelists will discuss their institutions’ strategies for creating relationships with producers and finding the carrots and sticks that help get the right material in the right format into the archive at the right time. The panelists will present challenges of and solutions for getting born-digital content from makers and how to treat born-digital materials once they arrive. They will share resources for people currently setting up a work-flow of their own. The panellists will present a mix of showcases ranging from cinema-oriented film productions to broadcast content and audiovisual works for online platforms.

 

3:30PM – 4:30PM
Further Freaky Film Formats: Biocolor, Ikonograph & Horizontal VistaVision
Chair and Speakers

  • Snowden Becker, UCLA Dept. of Information Studies
  • Stefanie Zingl, Austrian Film Museum
  • Dino Everett, USC Hugh M. Hefner Moving Image Archive
  • Marsha Gordon, North Carolina State University

Join us for another #FFFF panel, where we explore the forgotten (and misbegotten) formats of yesteryear! This time, things get wacky in three widths, with presentations on the 17.5mm Ikonograph home film viewing system, the “extremely lifelike” 9.5mm additive Biocolor process pioneered in early-1930s Vienna, and the ultra-wide, 8-perf horizontal VistaVision format developed for the premiere of White Christmas in 1954. All three formats will be projected LIVE during the session. Come and get your weird on!

_______________________________________

 

4:45PM – 5:15PM
The American Masters Digital Archive: From Idea to Implementation
Chair and Speakers

  • Joe Skinner, WNET
  • Winter Shanck, WNET

In 2018, WNET successfully developed Phase II of the American Masters Digital Archive. This is the culmination of a 4-year effort towards digitizing, preserving and making accessible 1000+ hours of original interview footage from one of public media’s flagship National programs. Never-before-seen interviews from 32 years of American Masters will be made freely available, featuring artists like Ray Charles, Carol Burnett, Gloria Steinem and more.    As the first of its kind at WNET, there were many challenges to surmount. Topics to be discussed: identifying ownership/viability of media assets, building institutional support, appealing to federal agencies and partners, navigating digitization workflow and vendor relationships, identifying your target audience, and building a research website that uses emerging technologies like synchronized transcription, mobile scaling, and more – under a tight budget! We will discuss efforts towards a Phase III, and give a sneak peak of the website prior to its full public launch.

 

4:45PM – 5:45PM
Pop-Up Session:  Roundtable on the Future of the AMIA Preservation Committee
Chair and Speakers

  • Anne Marie Kelly, Shoah Foundation/Preservation Committee Co-chair
  • Greg Wilsbacher, University of South Carolina/Preservation Committee Co-chair

Since its inception, the Preservation Committee has been a foundational part of AMIA’s mission to preserve and use moving image media worldwide. The AMIA Preservation Committee roundtable featuring newly elected co-chairs seeks to relaunch the Committee’s activities by looking critically at the committee’s mission and seeking the widest possible input from the AMIA membership. This roundtable is intended as a next step in the Committee’s evolution, reintroducing the Committee to the AMIA membership at large, and giving the Committee the opportunity to actively engage with the problems of preservation with which media archivists grapple in pursuit of our collective goal to preserve our media heritage for future generations. Results of a committee sponsored member survey on preservation issues will form the core of their short presentations followed by an open discussion new goals and objectives. Results of the roundtable will inform the subsequent formal meeting of the Preservation Committee.

 

4:45PM – 5:45PM
Community & Regional Archives: What’s Use Got to Do, Got to Do With It?: Developing a Scholarly User base for Regional AV Archives
Chair and Speakers

  • Laura Treat, University of North Texas
  • Casey Davis Kaufman, American Archive of Public Broadcasting
  • Johan Oomen, Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision
  • Mary Miller, University of Georgia

To increase support for and use of regional moving image collections, archivists must develop programs that reflect the needs and behaviors of a multi-disciplinary scholarly community. Panelists will present proactive strategies for engaging this user group. Johan Oomen will discuss CLARIAH Media Suite, a research environment for digital humanities and social sciences that serves the needs of scholars using audiovisual media by providing access to collections and their contextual data, as well as the EUscreen network, which supports scholarly research in pan-European television history. Casey Davis Kaufman will discuss how the American Archive of Public Broadcasting is engaging scholars, including their Scholarly and Education Advisory committees, exhibit curation, student collaborations, and tailored access policies. Mary Miller will describe how the University of Georgia’s Brown Media Archives supports teaching learning, and scholarship centered on their media archives collections through their Special Collections Library Faculty Teaching Fellowship

 

5:15PM – 5:45PM
Born-Digital Camera-Original Video: Practices and Risks
Chair and Speakers

  • Taylor McBride, Smithsonian Institution
  • Crystal Sanchez, Smithsonian Institution

In the Spring of 2018, a survey was conducted of video production practices at the Smithsonian. The survey asked staff to describe their current production tools and practices and pressing archival needs. Survey results highlighted the need to develop a risk-assessment approach to analyze specific, common, born-digital, camera original video formats and make decisions on which formats to retain and support as an Institution. We believe that current file format sustainability factors and risk analysis/mitigation documentation in the field of video preservation falls short when it comes to born-digital formats, and this talk aims to begin bridging that gap. Our talk will open analysis of these formats to the field, encouraging others to participate in documentation of format specifics through shared and open documentation. Through this project, we hope to create a tool that allows us to be proactive in planning for archival and preservation actions for these files.

_______________________________________

5:30PM – 7:15PM – NW Film Center
Screening:  Santo Contra El Cerebro del Mal (1959/1961)
Speaker

  • Viviana A Garcia Besne, Permanencia Voluntaria Archivo Cinematografico

SANTO CONTRA EL CEREBRO DEL MAL (SANTO VS. THE EVIL BRAIN) is the second of two Mexico-Cuba co-productions released – but the first to be completed – after Castro came to power in Cuba, and the filmmakers were forced to flee the country prematurely (with the unprocessed 35mm negative being smuggled out inside a coffin). The aborted shooting schedule meant that sequences had to be “lifted” from each film to fill holes in the other, by necessity. Both of these two films, which represent the very first time that the famous El Santo character appeared on the big screen, have not been available in any acceptable quality prints since initial release. In 2017, the Permanencia Voluntaria archive’s Viviana Garcia Besné in Tepoztlán, Mexico, working in collaboration with Nicolas Winding Refn and the Academy Film Archive, set out to completely restore the films from their rapidly-deteriorating original camera negatives.

_______________________________________

5:45PM – 6:45PM
Meeting: Projection & Technical Presentation Committee

5:45PM – 6:45PM
Meeting: LGBT Committee

 

__________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________

 

 

 

Programming today includes a five session program stream: Open Source Toolkit: Usable Solutions for Audiovisual Archivists.  Sessions in this stream are indicated by Open Source in the title.

 

8:00AM – 9:00AM
AMIA Membership Meeting

  • Dennis Doros, President
  • Melissa Dollman, Board Member
  • Casey Davis Kaufman, Board Member
  • Andrea Leigh, Board Member
  • John Polito, Board Member
  • Yvonne Ng, Board Member
  • Teague Schneiter, Vice President
  • Lauren Sorensen, Secretary
  • Jayson Wall, Treasurer

Members and guests are welcome and encouraged to attend the Membership Meeting to hear the annual State of the Association report, updates, about current projects, and offer special recognition to AMIA members who have gone above and beyond in their service. The open forum provides an opportunity to raise questions not addressed elsewhere in the conference. At the end of the meeting, the 2018/2019 Board of Directors will take office as we thank departing Secretary Lauren Sorensen, and welcome Taylor McBride to the Board.

_______________________________________

 

9:00AM – 4:00PM
The pAVilion and Community AV Fair

Don’t miss an opportunity to visit the new pAVilion! The pAVilion will bring together the Vendor Cafe with the AV Fair, skill shares, “ask an expert” spaces, and small group discussions.  Our goal is to create a hub for sharing information at the conference.  Check the schedule of activities – Saturday will be open to the public and will feature the Community AV Fair!

_______________________________________

 

9:30AM – 10:30AM
AMIA/DLF Hack Day Results

Earlier in the week practitioners and managers of digital audiovisual collections joined with developers and engineers for an intense day of collaboration to develop and refine simple tools for digital audiovisual preservation and access.  Today we’ll review their work and hear hte results of some of these collaborations.  Our thanks to DLF for partnering with AMIA on Hack Day and funding the AMIA + DLF Cross-Pollinator Travel Award.

 

9:30AM – 10:30AM
Home Movie Day International Advocacy / A “No Table” Discussion
Chair and Speakers

  • Devin Orgeron, North Carolina State University
  • Dwight Swanson, Center for Home Movies
  • Karianne Fiorini, Independent Archivist/Curator
  • Stefanie Zingl, Austrian Film Museum and the Ludwig Boltzmann, Institute for History and Society

Come join us for an open, “no table” discussion of Home Movie Day’s worldwide engagement and  help us think of ways to bring HMD to new corners of the world.  This panel is part celebration (we’ve grown considerably since 2003!) and part brainstorming session (we would like to see more countries experimenting with HMD events in 2018-2019).  Our panelists will help guide the discussion, discuss their HMD successes (and failures), and show films as we collectively strategize.  Whether you’re an HMD veteran or have only just heard about it, we want to hear your ideas!

 

9:30AM – 10:30AM
Open Source:  Reduce the Noise: Synchronizing Newbies, Admins and Open Source Tools
Chair and Speakers

  • Michael Campos-Quinn, UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
  • Susan Barrett, Arizona State University Library

This panel discussion contrasts the viewpoints of a staff member and an administrator when evaluating open source software. Michael Campos-Quinn will present the subjective experience of a novice coder navigating recent open source digital preservation projects at the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA). We will explore the decisions that have led BAMPFA to a combination of open source, proprietary, and DIY software and give an overview of some key open source tools used at BAMPFA. Some practical details will include a rousing exhortation to get under the hood of your favorite tools (even/especially if you are not a seasoned programmer). What is a Pull Request and will it hurt? How do you know when you need to ask your archival community for help (and how do you do it)? What physical and staff resources can be repurposed when migrating systems? Susan Barrett will present a basic framework for selecting open source tools and how to prepare a proposal for administration. Software selection in archives and libraries is unique to each institution — some have formal proposal and project management processes, others not-so-much. Susan will share strategies to convince your administrator to commit time, people or financial resources to your new and exciting software project.

 

_______________________________________

 

10:00AM – 4:00PM – pAVilion
Community AV Archiving Fair presented by Community Archiving Workshop

Join us for an all-day Community AV Archiving Fair! Independent media makers, collecting institutions, and community groups in the Portland area will be invited to bring their challenges, their media objects, and their data for a day of collaborative problem solving and skill-sharing with the AMIA community. The fair is organized around a number of “stations,” each of which will be staffed by AMIA volunteers, and focus on a particular workflow, technique, or tool. Stations will include: Film Inspection, Analog Inventory Techniques, Digitization, Prioritizing & Preparing Media for Digitization, Post-digitization File Management & Storage, Disaster Preparedness & Recovery, and Digital Preservation. AMIA conference attendees are invited to sign up to assist at a station or to propose their own stations or join stations to expand their own knowledge-base.

 

_______________________________________
 

11:00AM – 11:30AM
The Bob Baker Marionette Theater: Archiving with Oral Histories
Chair and Speakers

  • Brianna Toth, Bob Baker Marionette Theater/UCLA MLIS MAS
  • Adam Foster, Bob Baker Marionette Theater/UCLA MLIS MAS
  • Kate Papageorge-Schneiderman, UCLA MLIS / The Walt Disney Company

The Bob Baker Marionette Theater is a high functioning volunteer run space with a rich history of supporting the underrepresented artistry of puppetry and the allied arts within the entertainment industry. As volunteers, we were tasked with creating an inventory of the theater’s vast and eclectic multimedia archive. However, with Bob Baker’s passing, much of the archive’s organizational structure has been lost. To understand the creative efforts of this community space we have had to rely on a collection of oral histories, television interviews, and experimental test footage. It was with these materials that we believe a historical context can be understood, and used to describe the paratextual records in the collection. For this reason, the project is a compelling model for how the preservation of moving image materials can give agency to community spaces. It also provides examples of ethical dilemmas archivists should recognize when reviewing such personal material.

 

11:00AM – 12:00PM
Open Source:  vrecord: An Open Source Case Study
Chair and Speakers

  • Annie Schweikert, NYU MIAP
  • Savannah Campbell, Whitney Museum of American Art
  • Libby Hopfauf, Moving Image Preservation of Puget Sound
  • Andrew Weaver, Washington State University

The open source process doesn’t end once a tool is sent out into the world. Many tools represent the ongoing work of multiple authors engaged in a collaborative process of maintenance and improvement. vrecord, free and open source software that captures a video signal and turns it into a digital file, is one such tool. With 13 developers and many more users who have contributed through feedback and testing, it is an example of cooperation and support across the AMIA community.

In this case study of open source development, four presenters will discuss their work with vrecord at different points on the contribution chain. Whether early-stage coding, later-stage refinement, testing, use, feedback, or (often) all of the above, there is space for everyone to contribute to open source tools. This panel will demystify the open source contribution process through the lens of vrecord, and address practical steps towards getting involved.

 

11:00AM – 12:00PM
It Takes a Village: Unlocking the Vault Through Collaboration
Chair and Speakers

  • Genevieve Havemeyer-King, New York Public Library
  • Andy Uhrich, Indiana University
  • Crystal Rangel, New York Public Library, Special Formats Processing
  • Stacey Ference, New York Public Library, Special Formats Processing
  • Alicia Hickman, Indiana University-School of Information

Mass digitization has begun around the world as organizations acknowledge the instability of physical media, and it is not uncommon for stakeholders at different institutions to compare and contrast others’ workflows when planning their own. Indiana University has been carrying out an ambitious large-scale film digitization project over the past year, and The New York Public Library is preparing for a similar endeavor. Both have sought out commentary and advice from other organizations in order to address the needs of their own. One workflow does not fit all, and this session will explore the importance of knowledge sharing, transparency, and adaptability in what has become a global effort to preserve and make accessible historic film collections.

 

11:30AM – 12:00PM
Ten Years of Success: The Nitrate Committee’s Flickr Page
Speaker

  • Rachel Del Gaudio, Library of Congress

In 2008 the Nitrate Film Interest Group (now Nitrate Committee) created a Flickr page dedicated to identifying unknown films. Providing anonymity for archives and collectors alike, the page accepts images and videos of anything that needs to be identified. With a 40% success rate from the over 800 different unknown films that have been submitted, the page is proof that crowdsourcing works. This report will be given by Nitrate Committee co-chair Rachel Del Gaudio, who has run the Flickr page since the beginning. She will cover the history and successes of the Flickr page as well as the pitfalls it has experienced in its ten years. A great example of how an idea expressed in a committee meeting can lead to an actual continuing project, this report will be helpful for anyone in the field from students to heads of archives.

 

_______________________________________

12:00PM – 1:00PM
Meeting: Preservation Committee

_______________________________________

12:00PM – 2:00PM – pAVilion
Poster Presentations

Poster presentations highlight repositories, research projects or other initiatives in a format that includes a poster and a presenter to allow you to ask questions about the project.

  • Sharing Knowledge: Creating Original Research from AV Collections
    Angela Saward, Wellcome Collection
  • SaveFile: Towards a Games Archive at New York University
    Annie Schweikert, New York University
    Sigridur Regina Sigurthorsdottir, New York University
  • Saving Celluloid: Strategic Planning for Unmanaged Film Collections in Small Libraries, Archives and Museums (LAMs)
    Ashley Franks-McGill, John F. Kennedy University
  • Virtual Vault – An Open-Source System to Deliver Audiovisual Materia
    Brent Phillips, Rockefeller Archive Center
  • Anchors and Abstracts: Sustaining Television News Archives
    Clifford Anderson, Vanderbilt University Libraries
    Bernie Reilly, Center for Research Libraries
  • Who’s That Driver: Organizing Digital Moving Images After the Fact
    David Santiago, Revs Institute
    Jessica Bright, Revs Institute
  • Every Dogboy Has His Day: Cult Film Preservation and ‘Freaked’
    Erica Hill, Simmons College
  • Conceptualizing and Curating the Digital Documentary
    Heather Lynn Barnes, UNC Chapel Hill
  • Oral History in Greater St Louis, Missouri
    Josephine Sporleder, State Historical Society of Missouri (SHSMO)
  • LaserDiscs in Libraries: Challenges for Their Preservation
    Michael Grant, NYU Libraries
  • The Sheikh Taimoor Collection: Opening the Can on Pakistan’s Film History
    Rosie Burgess, George Eastman Museum

 

_______________________________________

1:00PM – 2:00PM
Meeting: Regional Audiovisual Archives Committee (RAVA)

1:00PM – 2:00PM
Meeting: Education – Student Chapter

 _______________________________________

2:00PM – 3:00PM
Putting the Pieces Together: Creating a National Education Television Catalog
Chair and Speakers

  • Rachel Curtis, Library of Congress
  • Sadie Roosa, WGBH

National Educational Television (NET), the precursor to PBS, produced and distributed public affairs, cultural, educational, and science programs nationally to educational television stations from 1954-1972. Aggregating this collection presented a series of challenges from reconciling various inventories and textual resources to exchanging information between institutions. Strategies included the use of PBCore as an intermediary for exchange of information as well as to provide useful context for each title, and exploring the feasibility of a linked data approach to express complex relationships. After discussing these strategies, panelists will highlight the benefits of the AAPB NET project for scholarly research and preservation planning.

 

2:00PM – 3:00PM
Open Source:  Indexing Multilingual Content with the Oral History Metadata Synchronizer (OHMS)
Chair and Speakers

  • Teague Schneiter, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
  • Brendan Coates, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

Creating accessible, long-form, multilingual video objects is hard; it’s not enough for the entire video to be viewable when, in many cases, only a small portion is relevant to a researcher or fan’s interests. Contextualizing the subject matter of an hours-long video in a way that facilitates research and engagement is the goal of indexing, and the Oral History Metadata Synchronizer (OHMS), developed at the University of Kentucky Nunn Center for Oral History, is one way of overcoming this challenge. In late 2016, the OHMS application and viewer were updated with multilingual functionalities, creating the capability to synchronize both a transcript/translation, as well as to create a bilingual index, making all of these searchable and synchronized to the corresponding moment in the audio or video. In this instructional forum OHMS power users Teague Schneiter and Brendan Coates will demonstrate the multilingual functionalities of OHMS. Through demonstration of a bilingual use case, instructors will walk attendees through each step of the indexing process to prepare a sample Spanish-English index. Instructors will also solicit feedback on both the platform and intellectual framework of the OHMS tool and of indexing long-form, multilingual video more generally.

 

2:00PM – 3:00PM
Sharing (The Workload) Is Caring (for The Work): Ethical and Effective Strategies for Preserving Magnetic Media Collections of Community-Engaged Archives
Chair and Speakers

  • Rachel L Mattson, University of Minnesota Libraries
  • Jesse Hocking, University of Wisconsin
  • Amy Sloper, University of Wisconsin
  • Morgan Morel, Bay Area Video Coalition
  • Sophie Glidden-Lyon, La MaMa Archives

This panel explores the possibilities that collaborative, cross-institutional, post-custodial partnerships can offer community-engaged archives in their efforts to steward their audiovisual collections. Panelists will present a case study in which a small, community-run archives (The Archives of La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club) partnered with a digitization vendor (Bay Area Video Coalition) and a university-based archives (The Wisconsin Center for Film and Theatre Research) to digitize, preserve, and expand access to a collection of unique, half-inch open reel videos documenting 1970s-era experimental theater and performance. Funded by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, the project uses a post-custodial model to support effective, affordable digital preservation, discoverability, and access.

_______________________________________

2:00PM
Screening:  Detour (1945)

From the gutters of Poverty Row came a movie that, perhaps more than any other, epitomizes the dark fatalism at the heart of film noir. As he hitchhikes his way from New York to Los Angeles, a down-on-his-luck nightclub pianist (Tom Neal) finds himself with a dead body on his hands and nowhere to run—a waking nightmare that goes from bad to worse when he picks up the most vicious femme fatale in cinema history, Ann Savage’s snarling, monstrously conniving drifter Vera. Working with no-name stars on a bargain-basement budget, B auteur Edgar G. Ulmer turned threadbare production values and seedy, low-rent atmosphere into indelible pulp poetry. Long available only in substandard public domain prints, Detour haunts anew in its first major restoration.  Restored by the Academy Film Archive and The Film Foundation in collaboration with Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique, The Museum of Modern Art, and the Cinémathèque Française. Restoration funding provided by the George Lucas Family Foundation.  Film provided by Janus Films.

_______________________________________

3:30PM – 4:30PM
Building, Moving, and Managing Audiovisual Preservation Facilities
Chair and Speakers

  • Dinah Handel, Stanford University
  • Tre Berney, Cornell University
  • Michael Angeletti, Stanford University
  • Lorena Ramirez-Lopez, Consultant
  • Siobhan Hagan, DCPL/MARMIA

In this session, panelists will share their experiences planning and preparing for an audio-visual facilities move, expanding digitization labs, coordinating and sharing space with people and equipment outside of audio-visual preservation, and building audio-visual labs in temporary or mobile spaces. Attendees can expect concrete advice from those that have built and moved a/v preservation labs of all shapes and sizes, including hard lessons learned along the way and what could have been done differently in hindsight. The intention for this panel is for all session participants to: feel empowered in managing their physical lab space; walk away with new insights into facilities-related issues; and encourage conversation and strategizing around audio-visual preservation infrastructure.

 

3:30PM – 4:30PM
Open Source: Using Open Source Tools to Improve Digital Processing Workflows
Chair and Speakers

  • Laura Drake Davis, Library of Congress
  • Rachel Curtis, Library of Congress

In this session, the presenters discuss the role of open source tools in developing and managing digital processing workflows. Sharing strategies for working with content gathered from community-based collecting, institutional records, and traditional acquisition paths, the presenters will emphasize the universal applicability of project management strategies and workflow development, allowing attendees to apply these concepts to their diverse collection materials. Using case studies to demonstrate workflow development and incorporation of open source tools such as Open Refine, ffmpeg, MediaInfo, Python, and Trello, the presenters share their use of these open source tools in project planning and project management for small and large-scale projects. Ms. Curtis will discuss the Library’s role in the American Archive of Public Broadcasting. The discussion will focus on the challenges of managing a collaborative, community-based project and the open source tools leveraged for project planning, documentation, development of workflows, and the efficient processing of preservation files. Using the AAPB as a case study, the discussion will explore the added challenge of coordinating with multiple donors, file types, metadata standards, and integrating this project into  the Library’s wider goals. Ms. Davis will discuss efforts at the Library of Congress to develop efficient and automated processes and workflows for processing of born-digital moving image content incorporating open source tools. The discussion will include the value of project planning, the identification and use of open source tools to automate digital processing, and the importance of project documentation. The discussion will focus on case studies to illustrate the challenges and opportunities with small and large born-digital moving image collections.

 

3:30PM – 4:30PM
Strategies and Outcomes for Public Digitization Events: A Case Study
Chair and Speakers

  • Andrew Weaver, Washington State University
  • John Vallier, University of Washington Libraries
  • Libby Hopfauf, Moving Image Preservation of Puget Sound
  • Ari Lavigne, Moving Image Preservation of Puget Sound
  • Dylan Flesch, KEXP

In July of 2018 a diverse group of institutions including KEXP, University of Washington Libraries, Washington State University Libraries, Moving Image Preservation of Puget Sound (MIPoPS) and Seattle Public Libraries will pool resources and expertise to hold a public audiovisual digitization fair. This fair will invite members of the Seattle area community to bring a wide range of personal audiovisual materials and have them inspected and digitized, with the option of granting permission for broadcast via KEXP and/or deposit into the University of Washington Archives.   This presentation will use this event as a case study for holding public digitization days and for coordinating events of this nature across a large group of institutions with varying sizes, strengths and mandates. Concrete examples will be shown from every phase of the process (planning, execution and aftermath) with explanations of decisions made, the logic behind decisions and their success (or lack thereof).

_______________________________________

4:30PM
Screening:  The Juniper Tree

Set in medieval Iceland, The Juniper Tree follows Margit (Björk in a riveting performance) and her older sister Katla (Bryndis Petra Bragadottir) as they flee for safety after their mother is burned to death for witchcraft. Finding shelter and protection with Johan (Valdimar Orn Fygenring), and his resentful young son, Jonas (Geirlaug Sunna Pormar), the sisters help form an impromptu family unit that’s soon strained by Katla’s burgeoning sorcery. Photographed entirely on location in the stunning landscapes of Iceland in spectacular black-and-white by Randy Sellars, The Juniper Tree is a deeply atmospheric film, evocative of Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Day of Wrath and Ingmar Bergman’s The Virgin Spring, and filled with indelible waking dream sequences (courtesy of legendary experimental filmmaker Pat O’Neill). A potent allegory for misogyny and its attendant tragedies, The Juniper Tree is a major rediscovery for art house audiences. The Juniper Tree was restored in 2018 by the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research and The Film Foundation, with funding provided by the George Lucas Family Foundation.

_______________________________________

 4:45PM – 5:45PM
Open Source: Open Source Toolkit Lightning Talks

The Open Source stream wraps it up with a series of 5 to 7 minute Lightning Talks on open source projects, bright ideas, and calls for collaboration around work that could benefit audiovisual archivists and the communities and stakeholders they serve. Let’s close out the conference with some inspired ideas and conversation!

 

4:45PM – 5:45PM
Pop-Up Session: Overview of IASA-TC 06 Guidelines for the Preservation of Video Recordings
Speaker

  • George Blood, George Blood Audio/Video/Film/Data

Publications of the IASA TC are some of the most frequently sited documents in audiovisual preservation. This session introduces the newly published Guidelines for the Preservation of Video Recordings, IASA-TC 06 from the Technical Committee (TC) of the International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives (IASA).  The guideline covers: “what is video,” outlining the technical complexity of the underlying formats; detailed information on conventional carriers held by many archives; the selection of digital target formats; handling non-audiovisual signals such as captioning and timecodes; a high-level overview of a preservation facility, guiding archivists planning either an in-house operation or selecting contractors.  George Blood, one of the authors, presents an overview of the guideline, then leads a group discussion, collecting comments to take back to the TC for consideration.

 

_______________________________________

 

6:00PM – 7:00PM
Closing Night Reception

A chance to say goodbye to colleagues and grab a drink before heading out to enjoy your last night in Portland.

 

_______________________________________   

 

7:30PM – 9:00PM
Screening:  Three Short Films from the Dennis Nyback Film Archive in 16mm
Speaker

  • Dennis Nyback, Oregon Cartoon Institute

Three films from Seattle (Hobo at the End of the Line, educational, 1977), Portland (The Case of the Kitchen Killer, underground, 1976) and San Francisco (The Innocent Fair, documentary, 1961 about the San Francisco Worlds Fair of 1915)  from the Dennis Nyback Film Archive.  All in 16mm.

 

468 ad