By Claude Mussou

From 8 to 11 April 2010, the Permanent Conference of Mediterranean Audiovisual Operators (COPEAM), has met in Paris under the patronage of Mr Nicolas Sarkozy, President of the French Republic. Co-organised by Institut National de l’Audiovisuel (Ina) and supported by France’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Culture and Communication, the 17th General Conference presented three flagship projects :

• The Channel for the Mediterranean: A multi-lingual and multi-cultural Mediterranean satellite television channel.
• MeD MeM: an Internet portal for the Mediterranean audiovisual heritage, supported by the Euromed heritage programme.
• The Mediterranean Audiovisual University:  a network of universities and schools training in audiovisual media and cinema within the Mediterranean region.

700 attendees from all European Mediterranean countries made the conference successful. INA CEO, Emmanuel Hoog, was unanimously re-elected as COPEAM President for the next 2 years. A call was launched to support the creation of the multi-cultural, multi-lingual Mediterranean Channel that will broadcast in all countries around the Mediterranean, addressing over 770 millions inhabitants. Many countries will contribute and the programmes will combine North and South perspectives.

By Sally Reynolds

The amount of interest in educational repositories is on the rise and practically every European country now offers some form of repository for teachers and others to use. One very active group of people who are exploring this topic are members of the EdReNe thematic network which was funded under the eContentPlus programme, like EUscreen. EdReNe brings together people responsible for European web-based repositories with content owners and other stakeholders within education and its members include practically all the large-scale repositories run by agencies like Becta (UK), Kennisnet (The Netherlands), EduLearn (Portugal) and Skolverket (Sweden) for European ministries of education. EdReNe recently held their 4th strategic seminar on repositories of learning resources in Barcelona where they launched a discussion about 4 key areas of their work which sparked off a number of interesting discussions provoked in part by the reports produced by EdReNe on these topics which are: identifying repository strategies which work, identifying the best ways to engage users and producers, standardisation and Rights Issues. More information, including these reports are available from the EdReNe website.

Johan Oomen will give a presentation about EUscreen, together with a number of other projects from the Netherlands Insitute for Sound and Vision on the International Conference, organised by the University of Rouen on January 15. The conference focuses on culture and identity issues in English-speaking, web-connected communities of learning. Slides of the presentation will be available soon.

PARIS, May 14th 2010

This international Television Studies Seminar, hosted by the Institut National de l’Audiovisuel (INA) at their central Paris location will present academic papers based on research conducted in FIAT/IFTA member archives and illustrated by extracts provided by those archives.

Paper proposals should include a brief abstract and details of arrangements made with the television archive at which the research will be conducted. Participating FIAT/IFTA member archives will provide research facilities and extracts on DVD free of charge. Full details of requirements and participating archives are on the Television Studies Commission page of the FIAT/IFTA website.

Proposals should be sent to the appropriate member of the Television Studies Commission by December 31st 2009. The Seminar languages will be English and French, with translation provided.

Proposals can cover any aspect of television history or practice, though the following topics are suggested:

• The transition from black and white to colour
• Cinema on television
• Transnational comparisons of genres or styles (which could use the resource of Video Active)
• Aspects of studying complete days of output, especially comparative studies of those recorded on October 27th 2008 and 2009 by certain FIAT member archives (details on the website)

One of the papers delivered at the Seminar will be chosen for presentation at the FIAT/IFTA Conference in Dublin in October 2010, with its author receiving free registration and full travel and accommodation expenses.

The DISH2009 Conference (Digital Strategies for Heritage) on December 9 and 10 in Rotterdam was organised by DEN (Dutch Digital Heritage). The program included plenary sessions, workshops and paper presentations. Approximately 600 professionals from various countries participated in the conference. Wietske van den Heuvel and Maarten Brinkerink held a presentation about EUscreen and Open Video in the session Open and Legal, which was chaired by Jill Cousins from the EDL Foundation.

Prof. Dr. Sonja de Leeuw presented EUscreen during a workshop at the EVA/MINERVA Conference on November 10 and 11 in Jerusalem. The conference is an annual event for professionals working in the cultural field in Israel and focuses on the application of advanced technologies and the exchange of knowledge and experiences with European colleagues. The workshop with EUscreen also involved contributions from the Forum for the Preservation of the Multimedia Heritage of Israel and the Israel Film Archive.  Other European projects that were part of the conference program were Europeana and AthenaWeb.