Film heritage: collection and preservation, competitiveness of related industrial activities
PURPOSE: To offer a recommendation on film heritage and the competitiveness of related industrial activities.
LEGISLATIVE ACT: European Parliament and Council Recommendation on film heritage and the competitiveness of related industrial activities.
CONTENT: This Recommendations aims to foster a better exploitation of the industrial and cultural potential of Europe’s film heritage by encouraging research into how best to conserve and restore cinematographic works. In addition it seeks to guarantee a high level of collecting old cinematographic works, cataloguing them and classifying them. The actions recommended are an attempt to guarantee a competitive edge to the European film industry. Accordingly, the European Parliament and Council have taken note of the Commission’s intention to consider making it compulsory for beneficiaries of EU funding to deposit a copy of European films in at least one national archive, to support co-operation amongst designated bodies, to fund research projects involving the long-term preservation and resonation of films, to promote European standardisation on film cataloguing, to negotiate a standard contract between designated bodies and rights-holders outlining the conditions when a deposited work could be made accessible to the public and to monitor how effective the measures set out in this Recommendation are.
Based on the above the European Parliament and Council make the following recommendations to the Member States:
- To improve conservation, restoration and exploitation methods.
- To adopt by 17 November 2007 legislative, administrative or other appropriate measures, that guarantee cinematographic work are systematically collected, catalogued, preserved, restored and made accessible to educational, cultural, research or other non-commercial uses – in compliance with copyright and related rights.
- To designate a body to carry out the tasks outlined above.
- To specify, in agreement with right’s holders, the conditions under which deposited works may be made available to the public.
- To encourage the establishment of national film academies or similar bodies.
- To increase the use of digital and new technologies for the collection, cataloguing, preservation and restoration of cinematographic works.
- To undertake the systematic collection of works forming part of their audiovisual heritage. This can be done either through a mandatory legal or contractual deposit of at least one high quality copy of works with the designated bodies.
- To promote European standardisation and the inter-operability of databases and to encourage their accessibility to the public through, for example, the internet.
- To explore the possibility of establishing a network of databases storing culturally significant and historically interesting films and to invite archiving bodies to organise collected works into an EU collection.
- To adopt legislation guaranteeing the preservation of deposited cinematographic works. Methods should include, for example, the reproduction of films on new storage mediums and the preservation of equipment for showing cinematographic works on different mediums.
- To introduce measures which allow for the reproduction of deposited works for the purposes of restoration. Right’s holders must be able to benefit from the improved industrial potential of their works
- To promote the use of Europe’s film heritage as a way of strengthening the European dimension in education and for the promotion of cultural diversity.
- To foster and promote visual education, film studies and media literacy in education at all levels, professional training programmes and European training programmes.
- To promote close co-operation between producers, distributors, broadcasters and film institutes for educational purposes while respecting copyright and related rights.
- To inform the Commission every two years of action taken in response to the Recommendation.