President's Report

Dear Colleagues!

Time is running and we are planning the next FIAT General Assembly, which will be held in Turkey for the first time from October 12th - 16th, 2002. Our conference will be located in the a wonderful hotel in Antalya which is near the tourist center of the Turkish Riviera. Near our conference center there will be many relicts of the Greek Classic Era. The title of our conference will fit excellently to this venue: "Is Multimedia the bridge between different levels of archives?" But already now I want to thank our host TRT, especially the General Secretary, Mr. Ayhan Karapars, the Head of Archives, Mr. Turgay Cakimci, and the Manager of International Relations, Ms. Alev Bilingen. These three colleagues with their team give us strong support in the preparation of this event. Similar to Vienna, we will have the rooms and conference venue in the same building, which is always a big advantage.

As I mentioned, time is running and you have to vote for a new President because my second period will end in October and you can believe me, I am glad that our Statutes do not allow a longer stay in this function. It was really a hard job to fight for FIAT, especially in the last one and a half years when most of our Supporting Members had to battle the world economic situation. Even if it's a little too early to formulate a definite conclusion of my presidency, one thing is very clear: the main strategy of my program has been realized more or less. On the one hand, FIAT continued with its world conferences, the confrontation of the digital revolution and the contact to the industry has been intensified, on the other hand - especially after the success of Moscow and Mexico - the concept of regional seminars, not only for the highly developed television archives, has been realized. So the first FIAT seminar in Tunisia between April 25th to 27th, 2002 is again an important step in this direction. I am sure that also many colleagues from Arab countries will join us for the first time in Tunisia and Antalya.

So I am hoping for an exciting presidential campaign with several attractive candidates similar to Florence in 1998!

I will initiate a reform of the FIAT Statutes to enable a better infrastructure for our organization because at the moment, we are too dependent on the economic situation of our Supporting Members and we can only plan in -year steps. If we could raise our budget situation, we would be able to enforce many other activities between the annual conferences. So I want to discuss the fee regulations of FIAF, our sister organization of film archives. They now have fees adjusted to the budget situation of every member. In fact, this would mean that the big organizations then support FIAT in future more than institutions which have a smaller staff and less money. It's something like a self-declaration - FIAF does not write to the financial directors to get the right figures.

I want to know your opinion to this proposal which can only be realized if we change our Statutes. Please give me your feedback, if possible until February 10th, so I can present these facts at our next Board Meeting in Antalya. Later reactions would also be helpful and in any case I want to publish these reactions on our home page. By the way: I think our home page should more than ever become a real platform for the dialog between the Board and our members!

Peter Dusek
FIAT/IFTA President