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The SAFE project confirms its commitment to preserving non-theatrical Italian film heritage by including Cinescatti – Lab 80 film archive as a fourth environmental monitoring case study. Following the monitoring activities in the other partner archives (Cineteca dello Stretto, MediaLab, and Fondazione Home Movies), the project has extended the periodical measurement of temperature and relative humidity to Cinescatti – Lab80 film deposit. Furthermore, a monitoring of the vinegar syndrome has been done on a collection sample to analyze the velocity and the decaying patterns of acetate based materials. The analysis...
On February 27th and 28th, 2025, the international conference “Moving Forward, Looking Back: Digital Transformation and Sustainable Archival Practices in Film Heritage” was held at the University of Tuscia, organized as a midterm outcome of the PRIN 2022 PNRR project ‘SAFE’ – The SustainAbility of Italian Film hEritage. Archival Infrastructures, Digital Preservation, Stewardship Strategies. The event brought together scholars, researchers and practitioners to address crucial issues related to audiovisual heritage digitization strategies, archival processes and sustainability. The conference hosted two keynote speakers, Giovanna Fossati (Utrecht University) and Reto Kromer (AV...
On February 27th and 28th, 2025, the University of Tuscia will host the conference “Moving Forward, Looking Back: Digital Transformation and Sustainable Archival Practices in Film Heritage, as part of the SAFE project – The SustainAbility of Italian Film Heritage. Archival Infrastructures, Digital Preservation, Stewardship Strategies PRIN PNRR 2022. This event aims to explore the current and future challenges of preserving non-fiction and non-theatrical film heritage, bringing together experts, scholars, archivists, and professionals to share and discuss effective solutions for safeguarding moving images. The conference will focus on topics such...
The SAFE research group continues its environmental monitoring project in collaboration with Tecno-El, expanding the activity to the third case study involved: the Home Movies Foundation. Following the actvitiies conducted at the Cineteca dello Stretto and the subsequent intervention at the MediaLab storage, the installation of data loggers at Home Movies represents another step in mapping the environmental conditions of non-theatrical archives across Italy. The project aims to monitor both macro and micro-environmental conditions at the storage spaces of four selected facilities, with the goal of identifying potential areas for...
“The MediaLab of the University of Udine becomes the second facility involved in the SAFE research group’s environemntal monitoring project, which is being carried out in collaboration with Tecno-El. In addition to environmental monitoring, on a selected sample of films the development of ‘vinegar syndrome’ will also be assessed, a degradation process affecting cellulose acetate film stock. The aim of this intervention is to monitor the environmental conservation conditions of each storage site, taking into account the structural specificities of each location during the reference period, in order to identify...
“Publication and dissemination of the CFP for SAFE midterm conference, scheduled at the University of Tuscia unit in Viterbo, entitled “‘Moving Forward, Looking Back’: Digital Transformation and Sustainable Archival Practices in Film Heritage”. The CFP was sent to the secretariats of the University Council for Film Studies and the Italian Association for Research on Film History, as well as to thematic groups and personal pages on social networks. The deadline to send your proposals has been postponed to January 12th, 2025: https://www.unitus.it/news/avvisi/call-for-papers-andare-avanti-guardare-indietro-disucom/” Download HERE the CFP.
Clément Lafite, scientific member of the SAFE project, co-hosted and chaired a training workshop organized by FIAF (International Federation of Film Archives) on the theme: Eco-friendly solutions for cleaning films? Current practices and future challenges, which is also investigated within the framework of the SAFE research. Two empirical field studies have been introduced: on the use of bio-technology in the field of film restoration (proposed by Valentina Rossetto, Cineteca Nazionale) and on the effects of essential oils to clean film materials (proposed by Caroline Figueroa Fuentes, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin)....
“The SAFE research group launched the monitoring project by installing a set of dataloggers in the film vault of the Cineteca dello Stretto. In collaboration with Tecno-El, SAFE aims at monitoring the macro and microenvironment of four film vaults of non-theatrical film archives located in different Italian regions to indentify to possible ways to improve the passive conservation systems (by taking into consideration the geographical specificities and particular collections needs of each organization). The final outcome of this project will be the publication of guidelines for microclimate monitoring for non-theatrical...
“The SAFE research group participated in the conference “”The Past is the Future”” (8-10 November, Ortigia), organized by the Cineteca dello Stretto, with a panel entitled “”For sustainable protection of film heritage: the SAFE – SustainAbility project of Italian Film hEritage””. The panel – structured into 4 speech – retraced the various phases of the research project, starting from the theoretical issues underlying the concept of sustainability applied to non-theatrical film archives. The various activities were then articulated, explaining in detail the environmental monitoring, the metadesign workshops and the structure...
The SAFE and Techno-El research group tested the installation of the data management software and the start of the data loggers at the University of Udine, to simulate a measurement and the subsequent saving of the recorded data for the start of the monitoring at the partner archives. The audiovisual archive of the Media Lab of the University of Udine, which houses collections of non-fiction and non-theatrical films, has been chosen as a monitoring point.
As part of the PRIN 2022 PNRR project ‘SAFE – The SustainAbility of Italian Film hEritage.Archival Infrastructures, Digital Preservation, Stewardship Strategies’, the two appointments of the third meta-design workshop (“”Stewardship Strategies. Dissemination & Protection’ and thus focused on curatorial strategies””) were held on 25 September and 14 October. These meetings are structured as round tables in which experts share practices and discuss current issues in the field of photochemical and digital preservation. The first part saw the interventions of Paolo Simoni (Fondazione Home Movies – Archivio Nazionale del Film di...
The second workshop dedicated to “Digital Preservation Digital Formats, Network and Data Curation” was held on 19th July with great success for internal, stakeholder and partner training and laid the concrete foundations for the development of the survey and data collection phases. It had a significant following of listeners, an audience selected and made up of numerous experts and specialists and attended by the majority of interested national archives. The first two speeches, by Walter Arrighetti (IMF User Group) and Reto Kromer (AV Preservation by reto.ch, Bern) have been focused...
The first workshop dedicated to “Archival Infrastructures Film Vaults and Sustainability, Monitoring and Preservation Metrics” was held on 1st and 5th July with great success for internal, stakeholder and partner training and laid the concrete foundations for the development of the survey and data collection phases. It had a significant following of listeners, an audience selected and made up of numerous experts and specialists and attended by the majority of interested national archives. The first part, held on July 1st, was lead by Valentina Rossetto (Cineteca Nazionale) and Lisa Vergelli...
Clément Lafite, scientific member of the SAFE project, gave a talk during the international training course FRAME Basics co-organized by INA (Institut National de l’Audiovisuel, Paris) and FIAT/IFTA (International Federation of Television Archives) on topics related to the SAFE projet: An Eco-friendly Audiovisual Archive? The Challenges Ahead of Us. The focus was on the environmental impact of conservation centers in term of energy consumptions to maintain acceptable preservation standards. Furthermore, the theme of waste management was discussed by proposing a review of existing practices in term of recycling and disposal...
During the 6th national conference of AIPH (Italian Association of Public History), a proposal for the digital valorization of amateur cinema along a Public History path was presented. The case study, presented by Chiara Petrucci, scientific member of the SAFE project, concerned HomeMovies100, a portal managed by Home Movies – National Family Film Archive, partner archive of the SAFE project, and was accompanied along the three axes of work of the research project, focusing in particular on the issue of the financial and cultural sustainability of projects for the collection...
SAFE’s research team met with the representatives of the Audiovisual Archive of the Democratic and Labour Movement (AAMOD). AAMOD has agreed to participate in the qualitative and quantitative survey, showing a particular interest in stewardship strategies. The experience gained by AAMOD in organizing Unarchive – Found Footage Fest, in many training activities, and in collaboration with the Zavattivi Prize will offer interesting ideas to share with other project partners. AAMOD also declared a particular propensity to create relationships with similar realities, fostering the idea of life in a network of...
Rossella Catanese and Chiara Petrucci, respectively U.R. and scientific member of SAFE project, published an article entitled “Rimediazione degli archivi di film: Digital Humanities e patrimonio audiovisivo” (Film archives remediation: Digital Humanities and audiovisual heritage) on “magazén. International Journal for Digital and Public Humanities”. The object of the article is a reflection on the curatorial practices of audiovisual archives when interacting with digital instruments. They, certainly, expanded the possibilities for access and preservation of audiovisual non-theatrical heritage but, on the other hand, they opened some questions about environmental, financial, cultural...
SAFE’s principal investigator met with the head of the Cineteca Sarda. The Cagliari institution will take part in the microclimatic monitoring, starting in autumn 2024, with its own new archiving spaces and thus become one of the ‘national hotspots’ of the non-theatrical and non-fiction collections promoted by SAFE The Cineteca Sarda has declared its willingness to participate in the SAFE’s survey, which will touch upon questions and issues related to the sustainability of photochemical and digital preservation and stewardship, i.e. the intersection between practical functions and political, cultural, organisational, etc....
The event, which was attended by Chiara Petrucci, member of the Safe research group, retraced the various phases of acquisition, management, digitization and valorisation of 16mm material carried out by Home Movies – National Family Film Archive, partner archive of the SAFE project. The workshop was in fact held in several sessions, focusing in particular on the issues of recovery and digitization of atypical 16mm material, cataloging of film archives and the training necessary for operators (Vivi Archives project), film projection (developed from digitized).
The research group met the head of the Cineteca dello Stretto (Ortigia) to introduce the SAFE project and propose to what extend the Cineteca could be involved in the study. Born in the past few years, the Cineteca dello Stretto became in a very short time an important stakeholder in Sicily and among the non-theatrical Italian film archives. The issue of sustainability is for them crucial since it must be tackled as a whole (identification of proper conservation spaces, set up digital preservation strategies, and launch dissemination strategies). The Cineteca...
The research group met the management team of the Archivio Cinema Friuli Venezia Giulia of the Cineteca del Friuli (Gemona), longstanding partner of the University of Udine. The SAFE project has been introduced, underlining the three research axis and how the archive could be involved as a case study. The Cineteca del Friuli showed interest in participating to the qualitative and quantitative survey, with a particular interest for the digital preservation topic since the staff considers it is the biggest challenge the archive currently has to face. Furthermore, the experience...
SAFE’s scientific group met with the representatives of the Archivio Storico Luce – Cinecittà. Of mutual interest was the monitoring of the Archive’s infrastructure, which will make available the monitoring conducted with Tecno.EL on the Archive’s nitrate vaults in the recent past. The Archivio Storico Luce, due to the size and the deep history of the institution, experiences a complex relation between the object and the content of the heritage, between corpus mysticum and corpus mechanicum. Most of the projects and collaborations with university research have mainly concerned the contents...
“The research group met with the management of the Home Movies Foundation – National Family Film Archive. The Home Movies Archive made itself available to actively participate in the project, both to clarify and better structure its own workshop practices and to adapt to the good practices that may emerge as results of the research. Three points were touched upon: the meta-design worskhops; microclimatic monitoring; and the quanti-qualitative survey. 1. Micro-climate monitoring. Since this first meeting, Home Movies has expressed an interest in participating in collections and vaults monitoring, and...
The december first meeting kicked off “SAFE – The SustainAbility of Italian Film hEritage: archival infrastructures, digital preservation, stewardship strategies” The meeting was geared towards the general presentation of the project. The members of the two units reviewed its structure, took on board the comments received during the review phase and planned the first actions. The three research axes, the body of partner institutions and the project objectives were confirmed (with Simone Venturini, Antonina Dattolo, Clément Lafite – University of Udine; Rossella Catanese, Federico Meschini, Chiara Petrucci – University of...