The UNESCO World Day for Audiovisual Heritage takes place this Saturday, the 27th October with a variety of activities taking place across the globe designed to focus international attention on the importance of audiovisual material within human memory, culture and identity. In his downloadable message, the Director-General of UNESCO, Koïchiro Matsuura, has called for governments to provide the necessary resources to safeguard these assets for future generations marking a critical juncture in the global preservation of this material.
Several sites are carrying information about the World Day. The South East Asia Pacific Audio Visual Archive Association (SEAPAVAA) includes details of initiatives resulting from this in the Phillipines and Thailand. A global representation of other activities can be found on a UNESCO World Day micro-site of the Co-ordinating Council of Audiovisual Archives Associations (CCAAA) and includes our Survey of Moving Image Artefacts under the United Kingdom. Placing our survey within an international context highlights aspects of our work that address these issues and raises questions about the existence of other national mapping exercises and the use of the information generated from them.
1929 Bell & Howell projector set up for Kodacolor lenticular film, courtesy of Elsbury Images
Our Survey echoes many of the ideas behind the World Day; raising awareness, particularly a wider understanding of Screen Heritage within a national context, and making connections, providing an intial place of contact for all the individuals, societies, museums and universities that hold this material. Although the main objective of the survey is to provide a directory, the data will enable us to build a detailed picture of how well particular objects and areas are represented across the country. This not only tells us what there is but more importantly where the gaps might lie. At the moment one of the lowest response sections is for Sets and Costumes, closely followed by Sound and one of the highest for Magic Lanterns and Cinema & Projectors.
The World Day inevitably raises the question of what other national surveys related to screen heritage have been undertaken across the world. What areas have they covered, what kind of response did they get and how was this information utilised? Does anyone know of similar exercises that have been carried out?
