Programming & Production Commission meeting and joint meeting with the Documentation Commission in Oslo

The Programming & Production Commission (P&PC) usually holds two meetings per year outside the annual FIAT/IFTA Conference. The spring meeting is primarily dedicated to the shortlisting of programmes for the FIAT/IFTA Television Archive Award. The venue this time was Oslo and our host Norsk Rikskringkasting - NRK. This is an attempt to highlight some of the things discussed that I find of special importance.

The FIAT/IFTA Awards

The P&PC had twice as difficult a task this time - shortlisting three programmes for the final voting for the Award in Budapest and selecting the first winner of the new "Innovation Award". The latter is focusing especially on the innovative use of archive material in new programming. Sometimes this P&PC spring meeting has resembled the Vatican meeting of locked-up cardinals appointing a new pope. We do not let out white smoke to tell the world we have arrived at a decision, but devote ourselves to thorough and tough discussions on all aspects of the qualities we are looking for in the programmes nominated. And we will not let ourselves out of the conference room until we have a decision.

Even though a pleasant problem, it was more difficult than ever this year, with nominations from all continents and at a number exceeding 30! Not to mention the high quality of all contributions.

For the first Innovation Award the P&PC unanimously arrived at the decision to select the nomination by the Albanian Television - "Kenga - The Song", by producer Pluton Vasi. Nominated by the Albanian Television.

The three shortlisted programmes are:

• "Revolution - Fortress New Zealand", director John Carlaw/producer Marcia Russel, Images Ink Ltd, New Zealand. Nominated by TVNZ. Part one of a four part series on the political, economic and social revolution in New Zealand covering the years from 1981 to the mid-1990s.
• "People's Century: Picture Power", director James A. Devinney/producer Peter Pagnamenta, WBGH, Boston/BBC, UK. Nominated by the NFTVA. One of the 26 parts of the series on the 20th century history. An examination of the social and political impact of television in the second half of the 20th century in the context of a series on ordinary people's lives.
• "Pēre Lachaise - Necropolis", director Pia Andell/producer Liisa Akimof, YLE, Finland. Nominated by YLE. "Pēre Lachaise is visually stylish and yet entertaining collage of pictures, stories and ways of death, fates marvellously linked together,..."

It was also underlined in the discussion that apart from putting forward outstanding use of archive material in programmes as such, marketing them and the Award within and outside your own organisation gives every archive an excellent opportunity to market themselves.

Find more information on the FIAT/IFTA Awards on our homepages

Guidelines for use of Archive Material

We are aiming at the publication of this document this fall. The format has not yet been decided, but a multilingual CD-ROM or a printed version with attached VHS was discussed. This document should reflect the present discussion on the subject.

To be added is a paragraph on manipulation of images, including a discussion on the integrity of programmes based on facts and the responsibilities of the archivist to document these sequences of manipulated images. (Recent examples in film and television are "Forrest Gump", where manipulation is expected, as compared to the fake helicopter raid in Norma Percy's "Death of Yugoslavia" - last year's winner of the FIAT/IFTA Award. The latter was not presented in the programme as a reconstruction.) This will also be one of the headings on the P&PC open meeting in Budapest. We expect a vivid and creative discussion that will contribute to the Guidelines. /Participation of Jerry Kuehl-Norma Percy?/

P&PC fall meeting venue

The Commission will hold the late fall meeting 1997 at the SWF premises in Baden-Baden on November 14th-15th. It will be hosted by SWF.

Joint Programming & Production and Documentation Commissions meeting

Maybe it was a historical event, this first joint Commissions meeting. Anyway, it was natural since both happened to have their scheduled meetings at the same place at the same time. It is also the natural outcome of the new organisational structure of FIAT/IFTA with the Commissions as a backbone and the commission chairs working as a co-ordinating group for projects or workgroups linked to a commission or covering the working fields of more than one commission.

A project of that kind - on Archive Management - was suggested by Lise-Lotte West of the DR at the EC meeting in Geneva. It should be seen as a continuation of the session in Paris on the topic. It was agreed in the joint meeting to ask LLW (llw@dr.dk) to produce a draft for the work of such a project - aiming for example at a survey on how the archives are organised today and planning for future development of archive organisations, in order to build up some kind of FIAT/IFTA bank of know-how also in the archive management area. If possible, there will be a first presentation at the P&PC open meeting and a call for participation in that project group.

Also discussed in the joint meeting was the idea of a FIAT/IFTA Latin American seminar. Since the P&PC London meeting last December we have worked on the idea of having one of the scheduled P&PC meetings overseas, since we now have such members of the commission. The idea then developed to take the opportunity of combining such a meeting with a seminar for our Latin American membership in Santiago, Chile (since our member Amira Arratia, /tvncom@tvn.cl/ works for the Television National de Chile). The Executive Council has OKay‚d the idea and our President Tedd Johansen (tedd.johansen@nrk.no), who recently visited Santiago on a Latin American tour for FIAT/IFTA, got an OK from the TNC that they were willing to host such a meeting in the spring of 1998. Such a seminar is in the interest and is also the responsibility of FIAT/IFTA as a whole. And again, our new organisational structure with the commissions being responsible for working out conference programmes and the commission chairs with general secretary as constituting the organising committee for the events, underlines this. It will be discussed further in Budapest.

Vittorio Sette (sette@rai.it) presented the latest news of the FIAT/IFTA-Prix Italia project. Prix Italia has suggested a co-operation between our organisations on a CD/VHS and booklet on the richness of television archive collections. It should be produced in time for the 1998 FIAT/IFTA Conference in Florence and the Prix Italia Anniversary the same year. The aim is of course to promote the respective organisations, the archives of FIAT/IFTA members and the use of archive material as such. Prix Italia/RAI will take all the practical and financial responsibilities, FIAT/IFTA contributes via the members with the archive clips and through a project group for the selecting of the material. The FIAT/IFTA participation was decided by the Executive Council in Geneva in March. A presentation of the project and a call for participation will be made at the Budapest conference.

Lasse Nilsson
Chairman, Programming & Production Commission
(lasse.nilsson@svt.se)