The President's Corner

And be ready for the next FIAT/IFTA AWARD. I know it is not an easy task to find programmes that you may recommend for the award but make an effort to search for a new way of using TV material. Norma Percy received this year's award on behalf of the team that made the programme The Death of Yugoslavia. We asked her to come to Paris to get the award and although she was hard at work in Jordan making a new documentary she took time off to fly to Paris.

The Award is important to all of us to remind us how to use the shots and the material, but we must not forget that within many TV stations transmitted programmes are reused in commercial products. The commercial approach to the reuse of archival material has seldom been a matter for FIAT/IFTA activities. In real life we all do some business using the archives. In some countries - like the US - the archives are an object, a source for buying and selling. Read the excellent book Citizen Turner and you get a very good picture of how some businessmen approach film and video archives. The danger and problem is that we might face a situation where the cultural heritage will be controlled by a few whose interest is profit at all costs. The positive aspect of commercialism is that archival material will be reused in new products to benefit those without access to archives.

I doubt very much that a restricted and limited access to programmes stored in archives all over the world will be a correct policy in the future. We have a moral obligation to give people an opportunity to buy some of the programmes for private use. And, of course, we will have to deal with business in one form or another because new products - CD ROM - DATAPRODUCTS - need old films and sounds to illustrate the past. FIAT/IFTA is a non profit making association whose aim is to assist its members in making a better archive - whether you use the information to make more money or not. Anyway, we all sell and buy a little in this field and I think we must admit that making money out of archives is not a crime - it is a matter of survival for some of FIAT/IFTA's members. The question is: Do we really have a right to deny access to products classified as TV programmes because we dislike profit making private companies?

Join us in Budapest in September 1997 where we will discuss these matters, and we welcome any member of FOCAL. (FOCAL: The Federation of Commercial Audio Visual Libraries Limited).

Tedd Johansen