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ABSTRACT
This paper analyses the impact of neoliberal policies on the film heritage sector at the European level. I first describe the specific debate to which this paper contributes, a conversation that deals with the relationship between neoliberalism and digital technology. With the aim of expanding the horizon of the debate beyond technology, I adopt an analytical framework that draws on the contribution of critical cultural policy scholars who have provided convincing accounts of neoliberalism in the cultural sector. Neoliberalism has had an impact on film heritage approximately in the same ways that it has on the cultural sector as a whole. In fact, economic instrumentalism, New Public Management and corporatisation – the three main features of neoliberal cultural policy – have found their ways into the film heritage sector. In spite of this, neoliberalism does not yet seem to have created a paradigmatic change, as the key features of the field persist. In the conclusion some potential ways forward are suggested.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank David Hesmondhalgh, Simon Popple and Andreas Rauh for insightful comments provided on the drafts of this paper.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Dr Luca Antoniazzi is currently Post-doctoral Fellow at the Leeds Humanities Research institute. He has been awarded a PhD from the School of Media and Communication of the University of Leeds. Before and during his time at Leeds, Luca has worked in the field of film heritage, including internships at the Haghefilm Foundation (Amsterdam), the Royal Belgian Film Archive (Brussels), and work with the Pordenone Silent Film Festival (Pordenone) and the Film Restoration and Archiving Department at ARRI Film & TV (Munich).
Notes
* This paper is a reworked version of a chapter included in my PhD thesis (Antoniazzi Citation2017b).
1 Essentially from the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF), Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA), and International Association of Audiovisual and Sound Archives (IASA).
2 Horwath’s (Citation2005) position has been developed in Cherchi Usai et al. (Citation2008) and in an article that appeared in the Journal of Film Preservation (Horwath Citation2012).
3 de Klerk (Citation2017) has recently argued that FHIs are failing to fulfil their cultural function due to inappropriate curatorship, but he only alluded to neoliberalism in his book. The same allusion can be found in Lenk (Citation2014). Uricchio and de Klerk (Citation2017), in the introduction to de Klerk’s book, has acknowledged the impact of neoliberalism on FHIs but, presumably for reasons of space, he does not provide a clear analysis.
4 Hediger uses the expression ‘late-Gramscian techno-euphoria’. It seems curious to me to define as Gramscian something that ‘celebrate(s) individual liberty in terms of freedom of choice’ (Hediger Citation2008, 14).
5 This negative anthropology is one of the features that distinguishes neoliberalism from classic liberalism.
6 These writers specifically refer to the UK, but their reflections, at the most general level, can be applied to the whole European context.
7 The implementations can be found here: https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/film-heritage (Accessed: 13/10/2016).
8 According to the report, mass digitisation is urgent because the production of film scanners will soon be interrupted. This is however questioned by research participants who do not consider imminent the disappearance of film scanners from the market (this is also confirmed by Pennington Citation2014).
9 Gerhild Krebs, Founder and Director of the Saarländisches Filmarchiv. Interview with the author.
10 The Orphan Works Directive is a good but largely insufficient initiative.
11 FIAF Secretary General. Interview with the author.
12 Head Curator, EYE Film Institute. Interview with the author.
13 Eric Le Roy also shares Kula’s opinion. Interview with the author. He is former FIAF Director and Head of Access, Valorisation and Development of Collections at Centre national du cinéma et de l'image animée (CNC) in France.
14 Thomas Christensen, Head of Preservation & Restoration, Danish Film Institute and former Secretary General, Association des Cinémathèques Européennes (ACE). Interview with the author.
15 Translated by the author.
16 Professor of Information Law at the University of Amsterdam.
17 Available at: https://vimeo.com/55261865 [Accessed: 09/08/2017].
18 Head of Archival Film Collections, Swedish Film Institute. Interview with the author.
19 Senior Preservation Advisor, National Library of Norway and Chair of Technical Committee of International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives. Interview with the author.
20 Former Director of Media Archive of Central England. Interview with the author.
21 The consequence of the lack of teaching and research is the general lack of awareness of the value of FH even among media graduates. The establishment of the teaching of a subject in public schools and universities can be the result of strategic alliances of elites (as for the teaching of English language in the UK [Buckingham Citation2013, 12]).
22 They specifically talk about the UK but this can be easily extended to the whole European context, as they themselves recognise.