FIAT/IFTA Archive Achievement Awards 2024 - Shortlisted
Category: Media Preservation
Title: "Safeguarding the Afghan Audiovisual Heritage"
Nominee: INA
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In 2021, with the collapse of the Islamic Republic and the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan, the archives documenting previous decades were threatened. Yousuf Jan Nesar, camera operator under Massoud’s command, was forced to flee from Kabul with his family. With the support of INA - a long-term partner since 2002 - and of the French Embassy, he was also able to evacuate his audiovisual collections made of videos recorded since 1986. In July and August 2021, INA recovered the collection - made of 7 trunks of mini DV, betacam, VHS, Audio cassettes, Hi8, DVCam - to be kept in its premises in France.
In June 2023, to ensure the long-term preservation of and access (for research, education, cultural, audiovisual and news production) to the collection, Yousuf Jan Nesar and INA decided to launch a preservation project, including the storage, cataloguing, digitisation and documentation of the whole collection, based on the collaboration between several partners : Y. Jan Nesar, INA, the ALIPH Foundation and the mobilisation of all INA technical departments.
To do so, a specific and adapted organisation and technical process had to be designed and implemented to be able to manage the collection. Indeed, despite Yousuf Jan Nesar own knowledge of his collection, it arrives at INA with very few information: no precise volume, no explanation of its organization, no information on the carriers, no metadata. Furthermore, Y. Jan Nesar only speaking Persian and the collection content and few metadata being in Persian, the work organisation required to be adapted to collaborate with Y. Jan Nesar and to process the collection. As the collection is processed, it is also discovered, gradually accumulating technical and content / documentary knowledge.
10 окт 2024
