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Audiovisual Heritage Audiovisual Heritage VIC Branch Newsletter Report by VIC Branch Committee AUGUST 2018 24 AUGUST 2018 THIS ISSUE CONTAINS: • Notice of ASA VIC Branch meeting • A short story about magnetic memories; caverns of celluloid; and making meaning - Donna Lyon- Hensler, Victorian College of the Arts • Outreach: Engaging new ears - Kate Hodgetts, Arts Centre Melbourne • Saving the Image of Our History - Andrew Martin, DAMsmart • SBS Radio vinyl collection preserved by NFSA - Thorsten Kaeding, NFSA • NFSA Restores: The Cheaters - Nik McGrath, ASA VIC Committee Member • Audio-Visual Material in the Kodak Heritage Collection at Museums Victoria - Fiona Kinsey, Museums Victoria • New grad chat with Suzy Goss • ASA VIC AGM 2018 report - Suzy Goss, ASA VIC Communications Officer • Upcoming events • VIC Branch Information Cropped image: Film and Television Archive, Victorian College of the Arts / Photographer: Donna Lyon-Hensler / Source: Victorian College of the Arts NOTICE OF ASA VIC BRANCH MEETING SEPTEMBER 2018 QUARTERLY MEETING AND NEWCARDIGAN PRESENTATION Date Wednesday 5 September 2018 Time Drinks and nibbles from 5:30pm, followed by presentation from 6pm, and formal proceedings to follow from 6:30pm, meeting close at 7:10pm Cost $5 donation to cover food, drinks and room hire. If you are a student, retired, or on a low income, please still attend and contribute what you can. Venue Meeting Room 1, Fitzroy Library, 128 Moor Street, Fitzroy AGM Please join us for a presentation from Clare Presser from newCardigan. newCardigan is a social and professional group of people who work in galleries, libraries, archives and museums - and for those who like hanging around GLAM types. The presentation will be followed by our quarterly business meeting. We’ll be planning our events for the next 12 months, so please bring along suggestions! Previous minutes are available on our website: https://www.archivists.org.au/community/branches/victoria383. RSVP https://www.archivists.org.au/events/event/victorian-branch-seminar-newcardigan VIC Branch Meetings/Seminars First Wednesday of every month (except January, regional and special events). A short story about magnetic memories; caverns of celluloid; and making meaning Donna Lyon-Hensler, Lecturer-Master of Producing, VCA Film and TV Still from Virgin, Whore, Saint, directed by Niki Caro, 1990 / Source: Victorian College of the Arts (VCA) One day a woman began working at a University film school overseeing the production of more than 100 short films produced each year by artistically aspiring film students. The woman was a producer by trade, passionate about craft and stories. She asked the tough questions: Why should you tell this story? Who is it for? Why should we care? She was modern, fickle and wore glasses. Known to migrate from one thing to the next, she desired to be original, but the more she read, the more she realised how unoriginal she really was. Despite brief, but chronic interludes of existential crises, she powered on and took on more responsibility at the film school, facilitating the distribution of short films that had attracted success beyond academic doors. She liked this part of the job. She reasoned the whole point of making films was to connect with an audience. She noticed an increase in online distribution deals landing on her desk. The monetary value was low, but the prestige high. For the student film school digital native, streaming films was the norm and online platforms were a necessary virtual leveraging tool. It was clear that digital was disrupting. The films of the predecessors sat on the shelves in the archive in their original bulky format, unwatched and neglected. There were rows of 16mm and 35mm celluloid film, Digital Betacam, Betacam SP, Umatic and VHS magnetic tape. A staff member casually suggested the film school would be wise to set up its own Campus YouTube and something inside the woman clicked. It was at this moment that she decided to embark on a very large digital archive project, whereby the brilliance of her naiveté shone through. One afternoon, two archivists stopped by. She showed them the archive room and watched with curiosity as their eyes lit up and tongues began to salivate. With their noses in the air, they said, matter of fact: “this room smells like vinegar”. The woman had encountered her first problem. Later, she mused, that the archivists were a strange breed, but they had her thinking. She began to reflect ever so slightly on audiovisual heritage and cultural memory. Nostalgia had crept in. Continues on page 3 Continues from page 2 Cropped image: Film and Television Archive, Victorian College of the Arts, 18 May 2017 / Photographer: Nik McGrath She went back to her office and stared at the VHS tapes holding the first short films she had ever made. “Those were fun days,” she thought to herself. She asked a staff member to help her transfer the VHS tapes onto DVD. As she watched the films play out in real time, she witnessed the experimental re-telling of her past on screen. She had unknowingly played out a Jungian philosophical trope, using the moving image as a tool to grapple the inner workings of her unconscious mind. Suddenly the films in the archive took on new meaning. Granted, the findings from a report assessing the archive’s significance had just come in; nevertheless, she began to appreciate how the student films could contribute to conversations around our cultural, social and historical heritage. She realised that these early gems were not all angst-driven pieces like hers; rather the short film was a tool for students to explore identity and raise concerns about their place in society. Students entered into a political, religious or intercultural discourse, using the moving image to fuel these conversations. For every dark and esoteric film, there were funny and poignant films, silly films and artistically mature films. The short films were a component of the School’s history and captured the zeitgeist of the times. The cultural milieu of Melbourne, Australia and the participants involved in the film had deepened with the 50-year history of emergent filmmaking practice visible on the shelves. Some filmmakers, locations and creatives were now famous or notable in some respect. For those filmmakers who had gone on to achieve more widespread success, their student films foreshadowed the setting and story worlds of their later work (John Hill coat’s 1982 experimental western Frankie and Johnny (We’re Lovers) continued to play out in The Proposition (2005). Jamie Blanks’ student suspense thriller Silent Number (1993) was reminiscent of his Hollywood career with mystery/slasher films like Urban Legend (1998). The camp and stylised student musical, Titsiana Booberini (1996), by Robert Luketic scored him his first Hollywood movie and most surely influenced his colourful comedy franchise, Legally Blonde (2001). However, let us not forget the looming threat of film disintegration (via the dreaded “vinegar syndrome”) and the vulnerability of tape based magnetic media. The ticking time bomb motif was rife, driving the project and its stakeholders into action. For the woman, she philosophised that the film stories would continue to live on, taking new form and shape for present- day audiences. She imagined the digital archive as a living, breathing organism; an embodied site, continually transforming and finding further meaning. She wanted to breathe new life into a staid and dying collection - bodies of work that had gone cold - been left behind - waiting to disintegrate in the magnetic mortuary and cavern of celluloid. The project was becoming a metaphor for the unlocking of her hidden past, buried in amnesic repression. As she preserved, digitised and disseminated these past stories, more memories of her own would surface. Of course, she framed it within conversations of audio-visual heritage protection, pedagogical and research engagement, culture, building knowledge societies and access to information… because after all, she reasoned, everyone has a right to tell their story. What matters, she thought, is what we do with the information. She was tired of burying hers. Epilogue: The VCA digital archive project has been underway for five years. By the end of 2018, over 1,500 films will have been digitised and preserved. The films will be accessible via a digital platform designed for teaching, learning, research and public engagement. At the same time, a pipeline for the born digital works is in place, so that future generations can access past and present student film works. The films in the archive date back to 1966, and take into account the former work of Swinburne School of Film and Television, which transferred to VCA Film and Television in 1992, along with its holdings. Now, the archive sits within The University of Melbourne, Faculty of Fine Arts and Music. To get involved or find out more, visit VCA. ASA NSW Branch Newsletter – August 2016 3 Audio Cassettes, Germaine Greer Archive, 2017 / Photographer: Kate Hodgetts / Source: University of Melbourne Archives Kate Hodgetts, Assistant Registrar, Arts Centre Melbourne Outreach: Engaging new ears In 2016 I was employed to listen. The University of Melbourne Archives had recently digitised/reformatted a collection of cassettes, digital audio tapes and mini discs once belonging to writer, academic and provocateur Germaine Greer. As with many audio collections contained within larger archives very little was known about what was on these tapes and discs. The acquisition was the physical carrier, in some instances a title, and the hope that whatever information lay within was of some significance, that is if it still played. Due to the fragility of audio materials and the impending obsolescence of play back equipment, without digitisation or format migration these “at risk” collections will eventually become inaccessible. Luckily, in this case, the audio was intact and digitisation or format migration was completed.
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