MA in Audiovisual Archives: Preservation and Programming

National University of Theatre and Film I.L. Caragiale, Bucharest, Romania

MA in Audiovisual Archives: Preservation and Programming

Presentation

The Master’s programme Audiovisual Archives: Preservation and Programming is the first of its kind in Romania and Eastern Europe and is taught in English. For two years, the programme will provide its students with in-depth theoretical and practical training in these two central areas of audiovisual heritage preservation and valorization. A comprehensive restoration project requires documentation skills, a vast knowledge of the historical context and the aesthetic and technical codes of the period and space in which the film was made, as well as practical skills in identification, handling, cleaning, repairing, scanning, digital image and sound restoration and color correction. Similarly, putting together a film programme requires a broad film culture, curatorial vision, multi-register writing skills and the ability to moderate discussions with guests and audiences; an excellent knowledge of the materiality of the medium is also essential. This Master’s programme aims to form professionals who will be equally competent in all of these activities. 

Courses and perspectives 

Some of the lectures and seminars that will promote the understanding of audio-visual heritage as a dynamic subject in continuous dialogue with the present will be: “Histories and practices of audio-visual curation”, “Preservation practices in the Romanian audio-visual context” or “Digital film restoration”. Combining theoretical and technological education, the Audiovisual Archives: Preservation and Programming programme will train multi-skilled specialists, up to date with the most current technical, methodological and ethical issues in the field and able to work in cinemas, festivals, media libraries, video libraries, museums, foundations, associations or private companies owning or producing audiovisual collections around the world.

DISCIPLINES

1st Year

The Ethics and the Methodologies of Film Restoration

This course introduces the ethical principles that govern all interactions with audiovisual heritage, and especially the decision-making process surrounding the restoration and dissemination of the works. An overview of the technical steps involved in preparing and carrying out a restoration project will be provided, followed by a discussion on the types of ethical issues – each accompanied by a rich cultural history with ramifications in other arts and disciplines – that each separate step raises. The aim is to disseminate strategies, concepts, characteristics and responsibilities related to the use of audio-visual archives, including “orphan” films that are covered by specific legal regulations or open access uses of restored archived materials.

Audiovisual Curatorial Histories and Practices

This course is designed as an introduction to the history of audio-visual curation, after which students will gain an overview of the main curatorial styles and of the history of international film archives and film festivals. The particularities of each curatorial style will be highlighted.
In the first semester, the aim of the course will be to provide the necessary knowledge to organize a retrospective based on an archival collection. The main activities will include analyses based on case studies and meetings with both curators and people who hold various functions within (film) archives. In the second semester the aim will be to impart the necessary knowledge to create a film festival programme. The main activities will consist of analyzing how curators/programmers work in different types of festivals and of guiding the students in the creation of their own film programmes.

The History of Film Technology

The aim of this course is to familiarize the students with the history of film and television technologies, which often comes with a dense specialized language that must be understood and mastered by any future professional in the field. The discipline doesn’t only have a technical dimension, but also theoretical, cultural, aesthetic and historical ones, which in turn must be associated with the material realities of the technological infrastructure of the media under discussion. Therefore, the course aims to develop both a macro approach, at the level of the conditions that led to the emergence, evolution and maintenance or abandonment of various technical configurations of cinema, and a micro approach, demonstrating how devices influence finished artistic products.

Practice and Internship

Through the effective participation of the students in the process of documentation, cataloging and collection accessing, the present course guides the practical acquisition of the methods used to organize an archive or an audio-visual collection, as well as the understanding of historiographical and ethical principles and practical issues involved in its management. The course aims to provide a framework for the application of working methodologies in the organization of audio-visual archives on a specific research project, covering all stages of the archival processing of audio-visual metadata.

Second Semester

The second part of this practice-based course aims to put students in the concrete situation of receiving, inspecting, mechanically repairing and cataloging a collection of films, with a narrowing of the focus to a specific genre, namely amateur film. The course is not limited to reproducing the framework of an archive dealing with such a film heritage, which is quite particular in its technical and aesthetic characteristics, and to providing the historical and sociological landmarks necessary to situate it in the global landscape of film production. It will also initiate encounters between learners and guests who, in one form or another (as artists, specialized personnel working in audiovisual archiving institutions, researchers, curators, etc.), deal with the multiple dimensions of amateur film.

Academic Ethics and Integrity

The course addresses the most discussed theoretical issues in the area of academic ethics, together with their practical implications. Not only abstract arguments and positions are discussed and evaluated, but also concrete issues concerning the ethical infrastructure of academic organizations or moral decision-making tools that can be used by learners in their academic work and future professional life. At the end of the course, they will acquire the ability to evaluate problematic ethical situations in their specific field of activity, to apply structured thinking in the analysis of complex ethical situations and to solve them with tools appropriate to any one specific institutional environment.

The Analogue Image and the Digitization Process

This course aims to introduce the students to the structure and typologies of analogue image restoration (original negative, internegative, dup-negative, interpositive, standard copy, print). By comparing it with other existing distribution or archiving elements in order to assess its degradation stage, the specialized personnel decides which print is going to be restored/remastered/archived.

Next, attention is given to the mastering of basic concepts needed to develop a coherent strategy for identifying the original image and sound elements (photochemical, magnetic and optical), which can become comparative resources in the restoration of severely degraded prints. The ultimate goal is a good understanding of the workflow applied in scanning, colorization and archiving procedures for long term preservation media.

Preservation Practices in the Romanian Audiovisual Field

The general objective of the course is to familiarize the students with the organization and preservation practices of the entities responsible for the management of the audio-visual heritage in Romania, through direct contact with the main institutions and organizations holding audio-visual archives. Therefore, the course will be composed of visits to the places where these actors operate, of discussions and meetings with people specialized in the preservation and valorization of Romanian audio-visual heritage, in order to sketch possible collaborative projects between them and the students.

The Cinematographic Canon: Polemics and Renewals (Optional)

The course aims to promote critical knowledge of the “cinema canon” (of the established – but also highly questionable – value hierarchies in the art of film) by promoting tools for analyzing the processes that generate value hierarchies in culture and by showing how these hierarchies change over time. Through the viewing of established film works, their contextualisation and detailed analysis, the course will help cultivate the students’ ability to reflect critically on the question of artistic value (in cinema): how is it determined, by whom and according to what criteria? How do these criteria – and the hierarchies they produce – change over time? What broader political and cultural debates do these changes reflect?

Introduction to the History of Cinema (Optional)

The course is designed as an introduction in the history of world cinema, through which students will gain an overview of the filmic production pertaining to a wide range of geographical locations throughout history. By means of discussions on specific films and texts from the course bibliography, the specificities of selected film movements will be highlighted; however, the emphasis will also be placed on the influences and dialogue existing between different local cinematographies in order to reveal the variety of cinematic styles and practices manifested in universal cinema and to introduce specific tools for understanding and appreciating them.

Introduction to Film Sound (Optional)

The course aims to gradually familiarize students with the specific concepts of film and television sound and music. While the primary aim is to learn technical and aesthetic concepts, specialized language and workflow, the course also aims to introduce students to the techniques of capturing, editing, processing and mixing sound at the production and post-production stages through direct practice, in order to gain an in-depth understanding of these procedures when making decisions to preserve and restore archival sound elements.

Introduction to Cinematography (Optional)

The general objective of this discipline is to transmit to the students the introductory notions related to the elements of visual language, adapted to the specific requirements of restoration projects of archival films of different origins, periods and technical-aesthetic characteristics. They should develop familiarity with technical terms from the sphere of cinematography and understand the specificities and the numerous links existing between the various fundamental cinematographic movements and theories from the perspective of the cinematographer.

2nd Year

Audiovisual Curatorial Histories and Practices

Through lectures followed by debates on case studies, the course aims to highlight the variety of curatorial methods and practices entailed by different film styles, and to ensure the acquisition of a thorough curatorial culture – also referencing the broader curatorial traditions in the visual arts. In contrast with the first year of studies, this time the focus will be on different curatorial theories for various audio-visual disciplines, and also on intermediality. The students will be guided towards creating curatorial programmes that combine artistic products from different mediums, in curatorial constructions that shall be more complex than the previous ones.

Sound Recording and Digitisation

The Sound Recording and Digitization course first aims to introduce students to the technological fundamentals of sound recording in film production, in order to understand the development of film sound from a historical perspective. Students accumulate theoretical concepts and specialist language, workflow, technical and aesthetic considerations, and then familiarize themselves with recording techniques in view of the preservation and restoration of analog film sound elements and their transformation into non-perishable digital formats.

Film Remastering

The general objective of this course is to convey specific notions and skills related to the final stage of the restoration of photochemical 16mm or 35mm image elements, namely their remastering. After the elements have been scanned so that the newly created digital files capture the characteristics of the original image as faithfully as possible, and after the digital files have been automatically and manually stabilized and cleaned, the final stage of image remastering takes place. The students will follow the workflow of a specific remastering project. In addition to the particularities of the software used and the discussion of the technical and historical aspects involved in any attempt to digitally reproduce the original appearance of an analogue image, the ethical and theoretical challenges posed by the remastering process will also be detailed.

Digital Audio Restoration and Remastering

The essential objective of the course is to familiarize students with the main ways of carrying out the restoration and remastering of an (audio)visual product. In addition to a good understanding of the technical side of recording and playbacking and knowledge of advanced sound processing techniques for restoration, the aim is to develop the students’ ability to analyze, criticize and present their own ideas on the ethical and aesthetic decisions involved in restoring and remastering such a product. The course is based on a combination of lectures, viewing and analyzing case studies, guided discussions and practical exercises.

Digital Image Restoration

The general objective of this course is to convey specific notions and skills related to the digital restoration of photochemical 16mm or 35mm image elements. Emphasis is placed on the contribution of those digital tools commonly used in film archives. The students develop an analytical approach that allows for a correct evaluation of the steps and tools that can be involved in the process of preservation, restoration and archiving of analog image elements (such as negatives, internegatives, positives, etc.). They learn to structure a coherent conservation plan based on a correct assessment of the state of degradation of the photochemical base of the image, to evaluate the degree of intervention needed to preserve the historical details of the audiovisual work undergoing restoration and to carry out interventions to remove impurities, scratches, to stabilize and discreetly modify the appearance of the image where needed.

Sound Archaeology (Optional)

This course comes in the second year of study, when the students have already been given an overview of the specific professions in the field of preservation and restoration of audiovisual archives. It will offer an opportunity to deepen this knowledge by applying it to a specific part of the audiovisual heritage, namely silent films. Various issues central to the preservation and valorization of archives will be addressed, for example the question of the ethics of restoring and/or presenting a film, of the degree of creative license that can be taken with respect to the original exhibition mode (or to the first documented), of the type of decisions to be taken when there are gaps in knowledge about this original context, etc. The objectives of the course are the theoretical acquisition of some notions on the practices of exhibition and the reception of early films, both at national and international level, the understanding of the particularities of the so-called silent period in terms of the creation of specific soundscape for the screenings, obtaining an overview of possible solutions for the design of a curatorial programme of silent films and the mastering of some basic technical notions of the (re)creation of a soundtrack for a film.

Digital Media Arts (Optional)

This course aims to decode digital media arts by exploring its axiological sources and by analyzing case studies, key figures and key concepts of this always redefining and expanding discipline. Through theoretical and practical exploration of digital media arts, it will interrogate how they shape the author, the viewer and contemporary society, with a particular focus on exploring transdisciplinarity through the organic interweaving of cinema, video games, theater and web content. At the end of the course, students will be able to identify and classify a digital media art project and will be aware of the methodological steps required to develop a personal direction in the field of digital media arts.

Film Archives and Preserving Film and Audiovisual Heritage in the Balkans

The course aims to familiarize students with contemporary institutions, structures and practices dealing with the archiving and preservation of film and audiovisual heritage in the Balkan region. This course provides students with the knowledge and skills necessary to participate in the archiving, preservation and presentation of audiovisual media within different types of organizations working with film and audiovisual heritage in the Balkans. Through case studies of recent film heritage projects, programming initiatives and curatorial programmes for film festivals, students will be introduced to the specific challenges inherent in working with film and audiovisual heritage in the region, from funding to preservation, digitisation and accessing issues.

Practice and internship

The aim of this course is to apply the theoretical knowledge acquired in the courses on Restoration Ethics and Methodologies, Analog Film and Digitization, Digital Restoration of the Moving Image and Film Image Remastering to specific cases. This will be achieved by using the DIAMANT Film Restoration and DaVinci Resolve softwares in the restoration and digital remastering of short films from the National Theatre and Film University archives. Master students will be guided each step of the way, both through individual tutoring and through regular screenings and collective evaluation sessions.

Dissertation Research and Writing

This course is aimed at guiding Master’s students in the elaboration of their thesis according to the regulations of the National Theatre and Film University. The aim is to develop the students’ ability to write a thesis correctly, which includes the ability to master various research methodologies, the acquisition of strategies, concepts and characteristics related to the research field, the ability to be concise, precise and correct in working with the material resulting from the research and the knowledge of the rules of academic writing.