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Una Directora General, dos Secretarios Generales and, tres Presidentes...
- An Audiovisual Archives Seminar in Mexico City.
From left: Crespin Jewitt, President IASA, Albrecht Haefner, Gen. Secr. IASA,
Ivan Trujillo, President FIAF, Lidia Camacho Camacho, Dir. Gen. Radio Educación,
Peter Dusek, President FIAT/IFTA, Tedd Johansen, Gen. Secr. FIAT/IFTA.
Photo: Karl Erik Andersen.
Una Directora General, dos Secretarios Generales and, tres Presidentes! That
was the final panel of the very first joint FIAT/IFTA, FIAF and IASA Latin American
Seminar chaired by the Director General of our host organization Radio
Educación, Lidia Camacho Camacho. Or, if we start from the very beginning
- the seminar was opened by four! Presidents. This time also present was Sra.Sari
Bermúdez, President of the National Council for the Arts and Culture
of Mexico, CONACULTA.
A Historical Event 
Since this was really a historical event, with all the major international audiovisual
archive organizations at place, then it was also logical that it was taking place
in the auditorium of the impressive Anthropological
Historical Museum in Ciudad de Mexico/Mexico City. It was, of course, not
the first time a huge international event on these topics was launched in this
part of the world. You may recollect the FIAT/IFTA World Conference 1999 in Santiago
and the first FIAT/IFTA Latin American Seminar in 1998, also in Santiago. But
these examples were events by only one organization.
These world organizations, the International Federation of  Television
Archives - FIAT/IFTA, the International Film Archives Federation - FIAF and
the International Sound Archives Federation - IASA, have been cooperating for
years on different topics as well as on regional and international level. But
this time the event was covering the whole audiovisual archiving scene and well
reflected the fact that different media are more and more moving towards multimedia
solutions and new ways of publication parallel to the traditional one´s.
I really hope this event marks a turning point in the history of the audiovisual
archive organizations concerning future cooperation - and in the longer perspective
- a merger. Since the future tasks for us as professional audiovisual archivists
does not allow spending our resources on inventing the wheel at three different
places in parallel!
A strictly personal choice from a "Smorgasbord"!
Though both representing my own company, Sveriges Television SVT and FIAT/IFTA,
I have been asked by the Editors of the Newsletter to share my personal experiences
of this Seminar and that gives me the opportunity to pick and choose according
to my own interests. If you want a full cover of the Seminar, you have to check
out the speakers' contributions on the FIAT/IFTA events web page or wait for the
printed Seminar Book later this year. The Seminar programme was a real "smorgasbord"
for an audiovisual archivist. Though there were many speakers from all over the
world, no surprise the topics were inclined to Latin American experiences and
the main conference language was Spanish. That's the principal idea with these
regional events. But that it was especially interesting for me, coming from Europe.
New angles of known problems, reconsidering of prejudices, new knowledge and sometimes
a totally different view of being audiovisual archivist.
Fighting archivists
 Let
me start with the last, because it was probably what made the most profound
impression on me during the whole Seminar. The two young colleagues from Guatemala
and El Salvador, Carla Fión, Fondo Nacional para la Paz, and Claudia
Argueta, Universidad Centroamericana,
gave us a different view of the importance of audiovisual archiving. They made
it coming from nations for decades tormented by civil war and genocide.
 As
Ms Fión from Guatemala told us, after 36! years of civil war it is very
much only through the audiovisual archives you can study how all levels of the
society has been affected and changed. It makes is it extremely important in
preserving and protecting the historical heritage, and to do that before the
demands for material by daily production needs. Today collections that has been
preserved abroad during these years of war are being brought back to restore
the national audiovisual heritage.
This material, they state, gives an opportunity preserve experiences of the
history, but also to remember those who died, locate disappeared people and
work out compensation for the victims of the war. As well as programmes for
national peace process and reconciliation.
 But audiovisual
archives have also become the repositories of  testimonies
by the victims of the period, collected by such organisations as The Project
of Recovery of Historical Memory - REMHI- made by the Office of Human rights
of the Archbishopric of Guatemala. Problems connected to this are of course
 these
groups within the society that don´t wan´t to reveal the true history
of these years of military repression. The bishop responsible for this project,
was murdered only a few hours after an important report based on material from
the archive Therefore the material in the archives still are guarded by a high
level of security to protect the victims.
Working as audiovisual archivist, collecting and safeguarding the national patrimony,
puts your life at stake. That was truly a new insight!
"No Archive, no Identity"
The audiovisual history of the "New World" is definitely not new.
Our hosts, the Radio Educación, was on the air already 1924! And regional
and local radio was early also in Bolivia, our colleague Rubén Choque
Vaca could tell us. The Bolivians were also early in letting the indians and
other rural communities using video to document their culture and daily life.
In 1997 they founded a special archive for this material. Mr. Choque ended his
lecture with the motto of this archive: "No Archive, no Identity".
That was more or less also the message of Jorge Cabrera Bohorquez, representing
Unesco, in giving a thorough presentation of the "Memory
of the world" project and its present state.
Life experience will be media experience
Professor Hans Fredrik Dahl, Norway, even further underlined this
from the view of an academic scholar: "It is long since that academic researchers
in general and historians in particular have come to recognize the importance
of audiovisual sources, as a distinct category of material to be handed differently
from the more traditional paper sources. International conferences are nowadays
quite frequently summoned on the topic 'history and the new media' or 'history
and non-written sources'. ... When our lives are filled with audiovisual inputs
to such an extent as they are today, then certainly the impressions taken from
them will form a vital part of our remembering the past. Life experience will
be media experience - and this is novel to most peoples on the Earth."
"Digitization" was the Word
If there was a single "buzzword" on this Seminar it was "Digitization".
I  don´t
think it wasn´t mentioned in one single lecture. It was "sesame open!"
in how to deal with material in preservation to overall Media Asset Management
discussions. About the latter, it´s important to mention Annemieke de
Jong´s presentation of her book on the topic - now for the first time
also translated into Spanish. Order it from the FIAT/IFTA office!
Even for an old incurable "film freak" like David Francis, former
Library of Congress, the word digitization was included in his vocabulary. Even
though he persistently pleaded for film being restored and preserved as film
under all circumstances, it should be digitized for a more effective accessibility
in the future.
A Fine Blend
What is more appropriate than launching an audiovisual archiving event in
a culture so rich of images as the Mexican, both of yesterday and today. The
imagery of the great ancient indigenous cultures is steady present as is the
influence of the colonial heritage. Often you find both in a unique symbiosis
that is Mexican. Modern manifestations of this you find in architecture and
especially in the great murals of artists as Diego Rivera, Siqueiros and Orozco.
And logically the Seminar, with its mixture of topics and delegates, was closed
with a party at the Chapultepec Palace, the site of the ancient Mexican rulers,
the Spanish Viceroy and Mexican Emperors and Presidents of the federal Mexican
republic. The view of Ciudad de Mexico is grandiose from here. Viva Mexico!
/ Lasse Nilsson
Lasse Nilsson, SVT, Sweden
The Author is former Secretary General of FIAT/IFTA and today member of the
Television Studies Workgroup.
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EDITORS: Tedd Johansen, FIAT/IFTA c/o NRK NO-0340 Oslo, Norway
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