The Budapest Agenda - A Small Scale Implementation

The theme of the Budapest Conference was "Television Archives: Between Cultural Heritage and Profit Centres". It could either be regarded as the two extremes in the working field of an audiovisual archive today, or the situation where two important aspects of the output of audiovisual archiving meet and support one another. The invitation below is of course an example of the later - important material can be accessible for academic research and programme projects. We are sure FIAT/IFTA can and should play a more active role in the future in these aspects.

The Sveriges Television Archives in Stockholm and the Department of Cinema Studies, Stockholm University - read Lasse Nilsson and Jan Olsson - hereby invite the audiovisual archives to participate in creating an open ended catalog/visual archive (CD/laser disk/DVD) devoted to one highly specific type of imagery, namely telephone calls with both speaking parties visible in the same image/frame (split screen), with or without a third field separating/connecting the speakers. Variations with even more parties or other inspired transformations are also welcome.

Initially we are looking for catalog descriptions, later we might ask for video tapes. We are, of course, willing to look at tapes if you would like to submit material right away.

Is this query too specific vis-ö-vis your catalogs? If so, we count on the archivists' competence in being able to deliver material even if the searce engines retrieve either too much or too little. Approach this as a challenge, and in the Budapest spirit of information sharing.

We have focused on telephone split screen shots because they display complex, almost uncanny dimensions of a technology that have shaped and changed the modern perception of time and space. Apart from that, Jan Olsson has collected such shots from early films.

The images below are from a French postcard and a Danish film from the early teens.

Jan Olsson
Professor of Cinema Studies
Stockholm University

Lasse Nilsson
SVT Broadcasting & Presentation
Chairman of the FIAT/IFTA Programmning & Production Commission