President's Corner

Dear fellow member, you may have noticed that FIAT/IFTA has been in business for about 20 years. I still recall my first contact with FIAT/IFTA. Television productions and film and video material to be stored in the archive were not an easy matter to handle, having been educated at library school. A French poet called Pierre Emmanuell had managed to persuade the director of TV production for Children, in Norway, to approach FIAT/IFTA in a positive way, saying that NRK must take part in international work to preserve cultural material.

In 1978 I went to Rome as an observer and I have been a member since that meeting. The most prominent persons within FIAT/IFTA at that time were Anne Hanford, David Francis, Sam Suratt, Dominique Saintville, Otto Sprenger, Paul FrÙh, Christian Castellani and Fernando Labrada. My situation was not a good one. Information about film and sound and tapes were given to me but not in the context of the work in an archive. How to make the programmes available for the producers in the future and how to store the material in the best possible way were important issues.

As you may understand, I did not contribute much to FIAT/IFTA during my first years of being a member. I profited from being a member because the more experienced members already mentioned did not hesitate to share their experience with me or any other member.

Some of you who have recently joined FIAT/IFTA may find yourselves in the same situation: What on earth am I going to do with the material? And why do I keep all the films? How do I approach the new technology and how do I persuade the latest boss with the formal responsibility for the collection when I do not know anything about the business?

Times have changed in some ways. We are now in a better position to assist you in your work, because the strong number of members is in your favour. We know the history of television. We have failed too many times in our struggle to survive and we have gained some knowledge in why we are doing this job and why we did not give up.

FIAT/IFTA has worked further on in this business, we have realised that we must support some members so that they can participate at FIAT's annual international conference. Funds have been made available to assist some of the members - I may use the expression "poor members" even if the wording is not completely appropriate. We must support those TV stations or archives which for the time being are in a so called difficult situation. Often this is just down to a matter of priority within the company. Anyway, the support may change the situation for some members. The policy of archival solidarity has been an unspoken guideline for FIAT/IFTA since the very start of the association.

Solidarity is a word of conflict for some and some do not know what it means after all. Anyway, exchange of information and supporting one of your fellow members is an act of solidarity. What does this mean in practice? you may ask. It means that FIAT/IFTA must support some members financially so that they get a chance to participate in the annual conference, to give them a chance to talk to members from different countries all over the world and to get free advice on how to set up their archive. If not, these members have to ask a private company to do the job at a very high cost. In some cases you have to do that - when you want to change the computer system or change the archive into a production unit to support the TV production.

At a conference you must not expect to get all your problems solved, no, but you get an impression of the complexity of the work and you get contacts for further work. The solidarity policy of FIAT/IFTA will go on and I hope we will be able to support members more in the future by contacting the members directly.

What about UNESCO and United Nations and the different agencies for foreign aid organised by countries all over the world? There is no contradiction in this matter. They are welcome to join us when they want to, but it is difficult to work out a quick programme for one of you with support from UNESCO. It is not easy to get one of the agencies for foreign aid to do the work. I know, because I worked for the Norwegian Agency for Foreign Aid (NORAD) for five years, being in charge of the library and lecturing about these issues for library students for some years. I also made a study tour to Kenya, Tanzania, Botswana and Zambia in 1975. Few mentioned TV programmes and film preservation at that time. In South America and Africa you will find that many TV stations have problems knowing how to deal with the new technology and knowing how to establish a modern film and video archive. We - the members of FIAT/IFTA - must support them in the future. A "poor member" may be a "rich member" in some years. I did not contribute much to FIAT/IFTA in the year 1979 or the year 1980, no, but I hope I can do some work in the year 1997. Good luck to all of you. Do not give up. See you in Budapest.

Tedd Johansen