The Program

The Conference Committee is still working with presenters to finalize the program. Sessions will be added as they are finalized. Program is subject to change. Updated November 14th.

Use Sched to build your conference program here.
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Dowload the Archival Screening Night program here.

8:30 AM – 1:00 PM (Pacific) | Separate Registration Required
FFmpeg Art School
Genevieve Havemeyer-King, New York Public Library
Morgan Morel, Bay Area Video Coalition
Benjamin Turkus, New York Public Library
Nick Krabbenhoeft, New York Public Library

An exhilarating, interactive journey into the depths of digital media manipulation and computer programming: THIS is FFmpeg Art School. Billed as ôa complete, cross-platform solution to record, convert, and stream audio and video,ö FFmpeg has become an indispensable tool of media preservation. For many in our field, messing around with FFmpeg creatively has also led to a better understanding of digital media anatomy. But FFmpeg can be tricky stuff. During this workshop, attendees will learn the ins-and-outs of FFmpeg by using modifiable scripts to create original works of video art, which will either be pastiches of existing works, or completely unique. Practically-oriented û but focused on fun û beginner, intermediate, and advanced participants with a basic understanding of command line tools are all invited to attend. The workshop will conclude with a virtual show and tell in which attendees will be invited to share their work with the class.

11:00 AM – 1:00 PM (Pacific) | Separate Registration Required
Applying AI and NLP Tools to A/V Archival Material: Day One
James Pustejovsky, Brandeis University
Jon W. Dunn, Indiana University Libraries
Marc Verhagen, Brandeis University
Kyeongmin Rim, Brandeis University
Kelley Lynch, Brandeis University
Angus L’Herrou, Brandeis University
Maria Whitaker, Indiana University
Karen Cariani, GBH Archives
Shawn Averkamp, AVP

This workshop addresses recent efforts in artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP) to help archives, libraries, and museums both manage and enhance their A/V content. Specifically, we describe applications being developed within two multimedia AI platforms, AMP and CLAMS. AMP (Audiovisual Metadata Platform) is an open source software platform that leverages automated machine learning-based tools together with human expertise to build workflows to create and augment metadata for AV resources to improve discovery, rights determination, and use.The CLAMS platform (Computational Linguistic tools for Multimedia Services) is an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation-funded project to help create better metadata for audiovisual collections. We have been working with the American Archive and WGBH to create workflows for AI and NLP tools to help with search, navigation, and discovery over their A/V content.

11:00 AM – 1:00 PM (Pacific) | Separate Registration Required
Applying AI and NLP Tools to A/V Archival Material: Day Two
James Pustejovsky, Brandeis University
Jon W. Dunn, Indiana University Libraries
Marc Verhagen, Brandeis University
Kyeongmin Rim, Brandeis University
Kelley Lynch, Brandeis University
Angus L’Herrou, Brandeis University
Maria Whitaker, Indiana University
Karen Cariani, GBH Archives
Shawn Averkamp, AVP

Committee meeting numbers are posted on Sched and on the member listserv.

1:00 PM – 2:00 PM (Pacific)
Oral History Committee Meeting
Teague Schneiter, Oral History Committee Co-Chair
Casey Davis Kaufman, Oral History Committee Co-Chair
Massimo Petrozzi, Oral History Committee Co-Chair

Interested AMIA attendees are all welcome to join — the AMIA Oral History Committee Meeting! The OH Committee provides a forum for those interested in the intersection between moving image archives and oral history. The committee was founded in 2019 and has been meeting semi-regularly (on Zoom) since last yearÆs conference hosting presentations and discussions of practice. The committee meeting during the conference will be devoted to catching up with one another and helping each other prepare for an engaging AMIA 2020 Conference. We are also open to discussing plans for committee activities and possible conference programming for both the April & November 2021 conferences. Will also discuss agenda for a follow up meeting in early December meeting with four of our expert colleagues on different topics pertaining to OH platforms, tools, and methods useful in these times.

4:00 PM – 4:00 PM (Pacific)

Copyright Committee Meeting
Jenni Matz, Copyright Committee Co-Chair
Pat Aufderheide, Copyright Committee Co-Chair

8:30 AM – 9:45 AM (Pacific)
Conference Welcome & Keynote Conversation with Margaret Bodde

Join us as we officially open AMIA’s first virtual conference! As we open the conference we are excited to present the 2020 Silver Light Award to Mona Jimenez, followed by a Keynote Conversation with Margaret Bodde, Executive Director of The Film Foundation.

The Keynote is a conversation with Margaret Bodde, Executive Director of The Film Foundation since 1991, and Cecilia Cenciarelli, a director of the Il Cinema Ritrovato Festival in Bologna and in charge of research and special projects at the Cineteca di Bologna since 2000. The Film Foundation, celebrating its 30th anniversary, is dedicated to protecting and preserving motion picture history. By working in partnership with archives and studios, the foundation has helped to restore over 850 films, which are made accessible to the public through programming at festivals, museums, and educational institutions around the world. The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project has restored 42 films from 25 different countries representing the rich diversity of world cinema. The foundation’s free educational curriculum, The Story of Movies, teaches young people – over 10 million to date – about film language and history. In 2017, the African Film Heritage Project was launched to identify, preserve and disseminate 50 significant African films, working in partnership with the Pan-African Federation of Filmmakers (FEPACI) and UNESCO. Margaret Bodde has also produced many of Scorsese’s documentary films, including Rolling Thunder Revue (2019), The 50 Year Argument (2014), George Harrison: Living in the Material World (2011), Public Speaking (2010), No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (2005), and the PBS series The Blues (2003). Prior to joining Scorsese, Bodde worked in marketing and distribution at Miramax Films and as a preservation officer at the Library of Congress.

10:00 AM – 11:00 AM (Pacific)
Developing Knowledge and Economies of Scale through Statewide Preservation Projects
Karen Cariani, WGBH
Michael Kamins, New Mexico PBS
Debra Fraser, KMUW
Joy Banks, Council on Library and Information Resources
Alan Gevinson, Library of Congress

Organizations and communities around the world contain significant audiovisual collections documenting their political and cultural landscapes. Public media stations in New Mexico and Kansas, along with the collaboration of the American Archive of Public Broadcasting have developed new, innovative models for statewide preservation consortia projects, together securing nearly $1,000,000 in funding from the Council on Library and Information Resources to realize them. In this panel discussion, representatives from New Mexico PBS, KMUW Wichita, the Library of Congress, WGBH and CLIR will present on successful models for highly impactful statewide digitization projects. By taking a holistic approach to digitization, preservation, public access and subsequent use, and by harnessing the expertise of AV archivists, content producers, historians, and the communities their collections document, these projects will facilitate ƒ??knowledge of scale’ as well as economies of scale, raising the threshold for impact while saving in costs gained through increased participation and scope.

10:00 AM – 11:00 AM (Pacific)
Reports from the FIeld

Developing a Roadmap to Photochemical Film Materials
Ben Harry, Brigham Young University

The photochemical process of motion picture production resulted in a wide variety of by-product material and intermediary elements. With these processes and methods of production ever-receding further from the current moving image landscape, it is important to document the motion picture processes and their resultant products. It is also important to evaluate the potential value of these materials in an archival world of limited resources: time, money, space. My presentation would cover my project as a work-in-progress. This project?s goal is to produce a glossary that would unify inconsistent vernacular vocabulary, describe how the element relates to the photochemical process, and describe the necessary archival considerations for evaluation. Come see what I have so far and let?s discuss how such a glossary would be of most service to our community: an AMIA webpage, a published pamphlet, etc.

FIAF Technical Commission Update on Ongoing Projects
Anne Gant, Eye Filmmuseum and head of the FIAF TC

A short update on the current projects of the FIAF Technical Commission, including the Digital Statement (scanners, scanning, digital restoration, sound restoration and digital preservation), and the Minimum Viable Archiving project, which proposes the assembly of a “toolkit” of information and prototypes for smaller archives/new archives. A chance to connect FIAF TC and AMIA.

Nitrato Argentino (Argentine Nitrate), An Early and Southern Cinema History
Carolina Cappa, Independent

Nitrato argentino, una historia del cine de los primeros tiempos (= Argentine nitrate, an early cinema history) is a preservation project held since 2016 on the Argentinian nitrate film collection at the Museo del Cine ?Pablo Ducrós Hicken?. It is a book, an open access website, a catalogue and a series of exhibitions usually performed with live music. It is a project that brings both archival and academic approaches as well as curatorial strategies in order to retrieve new encounters between Argentinian early cinema and the general public.

10:00 AM – 11:00 AM (Pacific)
Poster Session: Short individual poster presentations with Q&A

Poster: Oral History Metadata: Lessons from a Wildfire Oral History
Drew Edwards, University of Tennessee Libraries

Transcription work can take six or more hours for each single hour of recording. By planning what metadata should be created, access points for an oral history can still be maintained even when there is neither time or budget for transcriptions. Dividing the history into chapters that are five to ten minutes, provides much more manageable segments for researchers; also useful is timestamping the questions asked of the narrator, though this is much more dependent upon the interviewer. Another goal was to capture locations discussed in each history. GeoNames proved a useful controlled vocabulary for this. Being crowdsourced, users are able to input any location they wish with appropriate coordinates and other details. This provides a level of granularity that is not present in other resources; specific roads and buildings can be noted that highlight the route of narrators and crucial locations post fire like relief centers.

Poster: Researching the Evolution of Native American Representation in Public Broadcasting
Sally Smith, Student

Native Narratives: The Representation of Native Americans in Public Broadcasting, a forthcoming American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB) online exhibit, explores how Native American peoples and cultures have been represented both in non-Native-produced and Native-created public broadcasting programs in the AAPB collection. This poster, ?Researching the Evolution of Native American Representation in Public Broadcasting,? summarizes the research behind the exhibit such as the origins and continued pervasiveness of Native American stereotypes; public news coverage of the United States policies of termination, tribal restoration and urban relocation; the history of Native owned-and- operated public broadcasting companies; and the types of media made by and for Native Americans.

Poster: Assessment and Deselection Strategy: ?Farmers of the Sea? Case Study
Valeria Dávila Gronros, Oregon State University Libraries and Press

In mid-2019, the Oregon State University Valley Library began preparations to move the collections stored at an old off-site storage facility, set for demolition, to a new facility. The audiovisual collections were first temporarily moved to the library for reassessment, as identifying the materials appropriate for retention and for deselection would improve access to the collection. In this context, I?m reassessing the production elements of “Farmers of the Sea” (Jim Larison, 1984), a 16mm film documenting aquaculture practices in the US and abroad. By focusing on the approach, challenges, and preliminary findings of the project, this poster will inform and ignite conversation on audiovisual reassessment and deselection with other professionals going through similar processes at their institutions, especially at academic archives, and the larger community.

Poster: DPOE-N: Relaunching the Digital Preservation Outreach & Education Network
Hilary Wang, Pratt Institute School of Information
Erin Barsan, Pratt Institute

DPOE-N: Relaunching the Digital Preservation Outreach & Education Network,? will present the work underway at Pratt Institute and New York University?s Moving Image Archiving and Preservation program on the Digital Preservation Outreach and Education Network (DPOE-N): a network of training resources available to cultural heritage professionals in the United States and US territories with a significant focus on outreach. Pratt and NYU took over DPOE from the Library of Congress in 2018, thanks to a generous grant from the Mellon Foundation in 2020, they have resumed operations on this important initiative. This poster will highlight the initiative of DPOE-N to provide funding and support to cultural heritage professionals and institutions for digital preservation training, as well as emergency hardware support in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

11:15 AM – 12:15 AM (Pacific)
Visit the Pavilion!

The Pavilion has gone virtual – but it’s still a great hub of information! Visit the booths, chat with exhibitors, download information, and see videos from our partners and sponsors. In this session, you’ll see some of the videos and Tech Talks featured in the individual booths – and take this time to go to the Pavilion and visit some of the booths! If you see one of our partners and sponsors online – just click their name and say hi!

11:15 AM – 12:15 AM (Pacific)
Roundtable: Developing a Mentorship Program within AMIA!
Ashley Franks-McGill

Do you care deeply about mentorship? Mentorship relationships have been organically and informally created across the AMIA and the broader field since inception, however it was only this year that AMIA committed to developing a pilot mentorship program, specifically to support the career trajectories of the Diversity and Inclusion Fellows. AMIA now has a Mentorship Handbook, and a great interest in expanding the program! As we seek to expand the mentorship program, with the goal of enriching the lives and careers of mentorship participants (both mentees and mentors) by building communication, connection, cultural competency and joy in our professional community, we want to hear from you! This Roundtable also gives us the chance to begin a dialogue on how we collectively define the nature of the leadership needed to support future generations of AMIA leaders, and to solicit volunteers for a new Task Force.

Please note that Roundtables are small group discussions, limited to 25 participants, and are on a first come/first served basis. Once the room limit is reached it will be closed.

11:15 AM – 12:15 PM (Pacific)
Content as Data Stream: Hip Hop and Human-Computer Interaction with Citizen DJ
Andrea Leigh, Library of Congress
Brian Foo, American Museum of Natural History
Jaime Mears, Library of Congress

Citizen DJ is an experimental web browser application for creating hip hop music with Library of Congress free?to-use sound and moving image collections. By embedding these historic materials in hip hop music, users are encouraged to generatively and critically engage with A/V archives. Brian Foo, data artist, former b-boy, and a 2020 Library of Congress Innovator in Residence will discuss the philosophy and development of Citizen DJ. The open source tool uses machine learning to automatically generate sonically diverse samples from hundreds of hours of material. Jaime Mears, a Senior Innovation Specialist at LC Labs, will discuss the slow work of collection identification and rights clearance for explicit commercial use, as well as some of the broader implications for LC Labs machine learning experiments. The session will also include a brief tutorial and beat-making session with attendees.

11:15 AM – 12:15 PM (Pacific)
Contesting Archival Authority: Community Video Archives in Argentina
Mariela Cantú, Arca Video Argentino

Community video archives have proven a fertile ground to challenge authority within the field of audiovisual preservation, taking over the preservation of a precious legacy of invaluable tapes that have registered key moments of our history, transforming social events, and fundamental cultural experiences. This paper will analyze a set of Argentinian video archives that have been created and managed by their own protagonists, all of which have had a great influence on Argentina?s social and political development. In addition to dealing with topics that are not usually retrieved by official memory institutions, these archives offer great potential when considering participatory and heterarchical archival practices, as well as allowing for reflections elaborated from (and not only about) our own region.

Archiving Activism: Audiovisual Materials in the Abbie Hoffman Papers
Anne Loos, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History

This presentation discusses audiovisual materials in the Abbie Hoffman Papers to draw connections between Hoffman?s media-conscious approach to activism and protest, late 1960s video and television history, and pioneering television archivist Fay Schreibman McGrew.

12:20 PM – 12:55 PM (Pacific)
Tour: Packard Campus of the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center
Heather Linville, Library of Congress
Kelly Chisholm, Library of Congress
Jami Judge Almeida, Library of Congress
David Gibson, Library of Congress
Mike Mashon, Library of Congress

Located at the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Culpeper, Virginia, the Packard Campus of the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center is where the Library of Congress provides underground storage for its moving image and audio collections, together with facilities for the acquisition, cataloging and preservation of all audio-visual formats. In this virtual tour, learn about the acquisition and processing of copyright deposit and gift collections, then take a virtual tour of film lab operations. NAVCC staff will be available to take your questions.

1:00 PM – 2:00 PM (Pacific)
Use it or Lose It: Local Television Collections In Action
Laura Treat, UC Santa Barbara
Jim Duran, Vanderbilt Television News Archive
Becca Bender, Rhode Island Historical Society
Ruta Abolins, Brown Media Archives, University of Georgia
Elizabeth Hansen, Texas Archive of the Moving Image
Karin Carlson-Snider, Northeast Historic Film

In this lightning talk, local television archivists from across the United States will advocate for new and expanded uses of local television collections by user groups ranging from local historians and podcasters to K-12 educators, computer scientists, and sports enthusiasts. Part show-and-tell and part call-to-action, this session will address a major challenge to local television preservation wherein the ability to attract internal support and funding is predicated on proof of ƒ??use’ and the ability to engage desired users is predicated on obtaining support and funding for digitization and access. Each speaker will share an example of how their local TV collections have been used and engage the audience with questions about engagement and outreach. The session will further the News/Documentary/Television Committee’s goals of promoting and documenting local television use by making publicly available on the committee’s webpage, the panelist examples and those generated by audience engagement throughout the conference.

1:00 PM – 2:00 PM (Pacific)
Roundtable: Out of Range: Inherent Bias in Preserving Skin Tones
Facilitator: Candace Ming, National Museum of African American History and Culture

Broadcast range values are based on film color cards, but as leader ladies have shown us both film and video color and lighting values don?t account for darker skin tones. This roundtable is an open discussion of preservation practices in film and video in accurately capturing skin tone values.

Please note that Roundtables are small group discussions, limited to 25 participants, and are on a first come/first served basis. Once the room limit is reached it will be closed.

1:00 PM (Pacific) – 1:05 PM
Tech Talk: Digital Preservation in 2030
Linda Tadic, Digital Bedrock

What could be some of the digital preservation issues faced by archives in the next decade? Linda Tadic outlines future trends, problems, and solutions those entrusted with preserving digital content will face during the next ten years.

1:05 PM – 2:00 PM (Pacific)
Content as Data Stream: The First Heritage Video Stored on DNA –
A Case Study About the Future of Digital Storage
Jan Müller , National Film and Sound Archive of Australia
Yasmin Meichtry , Olympic Foundation for Culture and Heritage

It is projected that by 2025, humanity will have outgrown our capacity to store the large volumes of data we create. In just 5 years, storing data sing spinning or solid-state disk drives will no longer be sustainable,
economically viable or environmentally responsible. DNA storage has the potential to vastly exceed capacity for writing disk and tape, but with dramatically smaller physical space, energy requirements and greatly increased stability. This is the first time two renowned international institutions, the International Olympic Committee and the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia, have used DNA to store video data and it is a world-first for Archives. In this presentation, Yasmin Meichtry, Associate Director of the Olympic Foundation for Culture and Heritage and Jan Müller, CEO of the NFSA will demonstrate the potential of DNA as an archival storage mechanism. The presentation follows the joint pilot of how to store a video on DNA. The chosen video represents a significant moment in both Australian and Olympic history: Cathy Freeman?s gold winning run at the Sydney 2000 Olympics. A meaningful and appropriate part of both the IOC?s and NFSA?s archives – defining the culture and values of Australia and the Olympics. Step by step, in this talk the IOC and NFSA will present the nature and background of the partnership, the process of synthesising and preserving on DNA (in collaboration with a technology partner and university) and eventually: show how a digitally preserved video on DNA looks like.

2:15 PM – 3:15 PM (Pacific)
Increasing Equity In Audiovisual Archiving Through Fellowship Programs
Jacqueline Stewart, University of Chicago/National Film Preservation Board/Southside Home Movie Project
Teague Schneiter, AMIA/Academy Foundation
Candace Ming, ADIFP Task Force Chair
Rebecca Fraimow, WGBH
Jim Elmborg, University of Alabama
Morgan Oscar Morel, BAVC

In 2019 NFPB Diversity Task Force in collaboration with AMIA evaluated the state of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the field of audiovisual archiving. This evaluation has made clear that the profession must take major steps to become more equitable, inclusive and representative of the communities it serves and the histories it shepherds. As of 2020 there are several programs addressing these concerns, including: WGBH?s Public Broadcasting Preservation Fellowship (PBPF), The AMIA Diversity and Inclusion Fellowship Program (ADIFP), and BAVC?s Community-based Preservation Education and Training program (CPET). A panel made up of representatives from each program will discuss the achievements, hurdles, and strategies of their respective programs. In order to engage the audience with these programs and the work of improving equity within our field the panel will also include ample time for Q&A in order to address questions and comments from the audience.

2:15 PM – 3:15 PM (Pacific)
Unlocking the Archive Through 108(h)
Hope O’Keefe, Library of Congress
Dr. Elizabeth Townsend Gard, Tulane University Law School
Mike Mashon, Library of Congress
Jenni Matz, Television Academy Foundation

Copyright law contains a hidden tool that film archives don?t currently use: 17 U.S.C. 108(h), which allows libraries and archives substantial rights to provide access to ?commercial orphan? works in their last 20 years of copyright. The panelists will discuss the law and how it potentially applies to film archives, including a project at the Library of Congress National Audio Visual Conservation Center to research 108(h)?s potential application to films in its collections.

2:15 PM – 2:45 PM (Pacific)
Content as Data Stream: DeepFake Detection in the Age of Misinformation
David Güera, Purdue University
Emily Bartusiak, Purdue University

The prevalence of inauthentic multimedia continues to rise. As machine learning tools and editing software improve and become easier to use, they enable almost anyone with a computer to alter images, videos, and audio. Some tools assist users in swapping one person?s face for another in an image or video. Others allow users to alter an existing audio track or create a new audio track of a person speaking. The tools produce believable imagery and audio that deceive users into believing they are real. Such digitally manipulated content is referred to as DeepFakes. Although DeepFakes may be used for entertainment and comedy, they can also be used for nefarious purposes. To prevent dissemination of misleading information, we developed a set of methods to detect DeepFakes. We use artificial intelligence to analyze multiple media modalities ? pixels, audio signals, and metadata ? to determine the authenticity of the content.

4:30 PM – 5:30 PM (Pacific)
AMIA 2020 Virtual Student Mixer

Share a virtual drink with current students, prospective students, and recent grads and chat about the conference, classes, the job market, and any other questions you have! Join us on the AMIA Student Discord (in the Lounge voice/video channel)

5:30 PM – 7:00 PM (Pacific)
Trivia Throwdown: Virtual Style

Test your skills, win prizes, and dethrone the reigning AMIA Trivia Champs! Do you know the name of the only presidential candidate to win electoral votes after he died? Or what the name of the smallest country in the Americas is? If not, maybe one of your teammates does. Sign up to play as a team or on your own – or show up and we’ll assign one for you. Colleen Simpson returns as Trivia Master – don’t miss it!

8:00 AM (Pacific)
Morning Mindfulness with Taylor
Taylor McBride, AMIA Board

Join Taylor McBride, AMIA Board member and Yoga Alliance E-RYT200 Certified Yoga Teacher, for a gentle yoga and and meditation practice to help you relax and ground before a day of stimulating conference sessions. This 30-minute practice will include gentle movement and breathing and relaxation techniques with a focus on releasing tension in the neck, shoulders, and eyes as we are all feeling the zoom tension – and you can do it all from your chair! No prior experience required.

9:00 AM – 9:45 AM (Pacific)
Welcome to Wednesday and a Keynote Conversation with Allison Anders

Wednesday opens with the presentation of the 2020 Ray Edmondson Advocacy Award to Dwight Swanson. Immediately following is a Keynote Conversation with Allison Anders.

Allison Anders is a trailblazing, award-winning screenwriter and film and TV director whose work includes Gas Food Lodging, Mi Vida Loca, Grace Of My Heart and Things Behind The Sun. She’s directed countless episodes of TV which include Sex And The City, Orange Is The New Black, Southland, Murder In The First, Mayans, Riverdale, and The Affair. She was nominated for an Emmy for Best Director for the TV movie Ring Of Fire. She’s a MacArthur Fellow, a Peabody Award Winner and a Distinguished Professor of Film And Media at UC Santa Barbara. Anders will be in conversation with Maya Montañez Smukler who heads the UCLA Film & Television Archive Research and Study Center. Since 2015, she has conducted interviews for the Visual History Program at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science. Her recent book, Liberating Hollywood: Women Directors & the Feminist Reform of 1970s American Cinema, available from Rutgers University Press, was the 2018 recipient of the Theatre Library Association’s Richard Wall Memorial Award. Maya’s first real job was as assistant to director Allison Anders on the film Grace of My Heart.

10:00 AM – 11:00 AM (Pacific)
Rising from the Ashes: Wildfire Recovery through Public Memory
Casey Davis Kaufman, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Ken Wise, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Laura Romans, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Steve Norman, USDA Forest Service, Southern Research Station

On November 23, 2016, an uncontained wilderness fire on the summit of Chimney Tops in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, aided by winds approaching ninety miles-per-hour, jumped the park boundary and descended upon the tourist town of Gatlinburg, wreaking a level of death and destruction that was later identified as the largest natural disaster ever in the state of Tennessee. In August 2019, the University of Tennessee Libraries in partnership with the City of Gatlinburg launched ?Rising from the Ashes,? an oral history project to record the personal stories of individuals whose lives were impacted by the fire. As communities are increasingly faced with disasters fueled by the climate crisis, audiovisual archivists can serve as early responders to these events. The panelists seek to share approaches, methodologies, and lessons learned from the ?Rising from the Ashes? project, and the presentation will include recommendations for establishing similar projects.

10:00 AM – 11:00 AM (Pacific)
Latino Empowerment through Public Broadcasting: Linking Activists, Archivists, and Scholars
Alan Gevinson, Library of Congress
Dolores Inés Casillas , University of California, Santa Barbara
Jesús Salvador Treviño , Latinopia.com
Charles Ramírez Berg , University of Texas at Austin
Gabriela Rivera-Marin, University of Florida

The Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 declared a need for “an expression of diversity” as the new public broadcasting system was developing. The Act additionally included a directive “to establish and maintain a library and archives.” This session will focus on a convergence of these foundational concerns, with presentations on ways that activists have used public broadcasting to give voice to Latino communities, and how the American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB), assisted by scholars, is preserving Latino-created programming and making it available to the public. Speakers will provide scholarly and insider perspectives on efforts of farmworker, Chicano, and Puerto Rican activists to establish bilingual community radio stations in rural locales and create television programming in urban centers; discuss the significance of bilingual archives and how this specific era influenced how Latino and Spanish-language listeners turn to radio today; and demonstrate the AAPB online exhibit “Latino Empowerment through Public Broadcasting.”

10:00 AM – 11:00 AM (Pacific)
Poster Session

Poster: Exploring the use of archival images in community oral histories
Heather Walker, University of Toronto, Graduate Student

Oral histories are a powerful archival record, allowing us to vividly imagine the stories and memories of the speaker. As a volunteer with a local oral history group in Toronto, I searched for archival photographs and moving images to compliment the themes found in their stories. By adding these visual elements to the audio recordings, I created short videos that aim to represent the geographic and temporal feel of the recorded interviews, and engage our online community audience in new ways.

10:00 AM – 11:00 AM (Pacific)
Poster: Enhancing Access to “In Black America” on Wikipedia
Declan McBride, GBH

This presentation will focus on increasing access to KUT?s ?In Black America? radio series, a nationally syndicated program hosted by John L. Hanson Jr. The program profiles civil rights leaders, artists and journalists, in order to call attention to the experiences of people of color. In spite of airing for 50 years, the collection lacks sufficient metadata, which I am creating in accordance with PBCore, along with creating external links to the archived programs on the Wikipedia pages of guests, in addition to hosting a Wikipedia Edit-a-thon to engage public volunteers. Many Wikipedia pages for Black, indigenous and other people of color are often not as robust compared to those of white people, particularly lacking adequate linked archival sources. This project increases the ease of access to the database of the American Archive of Public Broadcasting. by meeting users where they are, while also increasing the visibility of these figures.

Poster: Accessioning audiovisual materials at the University of Arizona Special Collections
Trent Purdy, University of Arizona Libraries, Special Collections
Lisa Duncan, University of Arizona Libraries, Special Collections

This poster presentation proposal covers the University of Arizona Libraries Special Collections newly implemented audiovisual accession workflow. Audiovisual materials in of themselves pose unique problems for archivist for access and preservation so new workflows were created that help determine processing and preservation priorities which align of the mission of Special Collections. Audiovisual specific accession forms are used to identify audiovisual specific needs and oral history materials and indigenous materials that may need further assessment for privacy and culturally sensitive materials. The development of these accession workflows lead to the development of additional policy and procedures related to oral history materials and continued development of relationships with the local Native American tribes to appropriately preserve and provide access to prioritized Native American materials in accordance with the Protocols for Native American Materials adopted by Special Collections.

Poster: Library of Congress Recommended Format Statement 2.0: Purpose, Process, Impact
Laura Drake Davis, Library of Congress

A resource for digital collections of all sizes, the 2020-2021 Recommended Formats Statement (RFS 2.0) is the product of a new, transparent process to assess analog and digital formats suitable for preservation. This poster will include: a brief introduction to the Recommended Format Statement; how RFS 2.0 can be utilized in moving image archives of all sizes the process for developing the Recommended Format Statement for analog and digital moving image formats; the need for the Recommended Format Statement to include commercial, open source, and industry formats; how these formats map to the Levels of Preservation and the Library of Congress Sustainability of Digital Formats website; and how subject matter experts at the Library of Congress collaborated on the evaluation of formats.

11:00 AM – 12:00 PM (Pacific)
Nitrate Committee Meeting
Rachel Del Gaudio, Nitrate Committee Co-Chair
Reto Kromer, Nitrate Committee Co-Chair

Join the annual Nitrate Committee meeting to learn about new initiatives, ongoing projects or to suggest projects with the group. If you or your institution stores, ships or handles nitrate film then you will find this annual meeting beneficial. If you have any questions or topics you would like added to the agenda, email Rachel at rapa (at) loc.gov by noon on Tuesday November 17th.

11:00 AM – 12:00 PM (Pacific)
Open Source Committee
Dave Rice, Open Source Committee Co-Chair
Annie Schweikert, Open Source Committee Co-Chair

No RSVP needed. The Open Source Committee welcomes all those interested in the development and use of collaborative and open tools for moving image archiving work.

11:15 AM – 12:15 PM (Pacific)
Ibero-American Network for Digital Preservation of Audiovisual Archives: The Memory of the Future
Perla Rodríguez, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Pamela Vizner, AVP
Mirerza González, Universidad de Puerto Rico

The Ibero American Network for Digital Preservation of Sound and Audiovisual Archives (RIPDASA) launched in 2019 bringing together researchers and professionals in sound and audiovisual archives in Iberoamerica to share knowledge and experiences with the aim of fostering scientific research on the current state and future of our sound and audiovisual heritage. The ultimate purpose is to propose realistic solutions to mitigate the risk of loss of these valuable assets while considering the diversity of collections and cultural organizations in the area. The RIPDASA is coordinated by the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) with participants including professionals from 10 countries and the company AVP. The presentation will describe the unprecedented activities of the network, current findings and unique challenges, the impact of these activities, the presentation of the online tool ?Sound and Audiovisual Archives Observatory?and the results of the webinar programs.

11:15 AM – 12:15 AM (Pacific)
Roundtable: Reconciling Environmental Concerns and Archiving
Facilitator: Amit Patil

The task of archiving demands utilising (at least some) resources that contributes to overall environmental concerns and barely recognised. A discussion entailing how we archivists could reconcile with this dilemma.

Please note that Roundtables are small group discussions, limited to 25 participants, and are on a first come/first served basis. Once the room limit is reached it will be closed.

11:15 AM – 11:20 AM(Pacific)
Tech Talk: Seeing Cloud As A High Performance Archive, Not Just The Old Bit Bucket
Jason Paquin, CEO of CHESA

Jason Paquin, CEO of CHESA, Will Share the Three Critical Points of Archiving in the Cloud, and Cloud Services, That Result in Velocity. (1) Bandwidth – You Just Keep Getting More and More – And It’s Always Bigger. Hosted Cloud Services Give You More, On the Fly; (2) Compatibility to Maintain Adaptability – None to Minimal Downtime With Newer Codecs. Savings on CapEx; and, (3) Compute, or, Processing Power – Your Orchestration Automations Aren’t Taxed When You Scale Up. Cloud and Cloud Services Give You the Power You Need, Without Taxation.

11:20 AM – 12:15 PM (Pacific)
Content as Data Stream: Cloud Computing and Storage Workflows for Digital Media
Jim Duran, Vanderbilt Television News Archive
Steve Davis, Vanderbilt Television News Archive
Dana Currier, Vanderbilt Television News Archive
Nathan Jones, Vanderbilt Television News Archive

The Vanderbilt Television News Archive (VTNA) is innovating and iterating several of its core workflows by adopting cloud computing and storage for more reliable and streamlined digital media management. Using Amazon Web Services, Trint, and OrangeLogic, the VTNA has switched from several analog or manual tasks to partial or complete automation. This panel consists of practitioners who have learned these new tools and completely transformed their previous workflows. The panel will discuss how server-less functions, automated speech recognition, machine learning, and modern DAMS have made their work easier, but also present new challenges.

12:05 PM – 1:00 PM (Pacific)
Preservation Committee Meeting
Greg Wilsbacher, Preservation Committee Chair

The Preservation Committee continues to work toward its new mission. Help shape its future as we map future projects and outline the scope of our work.

12:20 PM – 12:55 PM (Pacific)
Tour: Academy Museum
Bill Kramer, Academy Museum

Take a tour of the new Academy Museum of Motion Pictures with museum director and president, Bill Kramer. Catch a sneak peak of the new museum, see floor plans and renderings, and hear about programming plans.

1:00 PM – 2:00 PM (Pacific)
Content as Data Stream: Accessible Cloud Archive
Shaun Lile, Senior Solutions Architect at Amazon Web Services

For years, archiving media has meant that your media sits on a shelf in a salt mine, waiting to be pulled sometime in the distant future.ÿ Today, archival using AWS gives prompt access to data for a variety of modern use cases, including transcoding, transcription and image recognition.ÿ Using AWS to archive your media gives you all the power of cloud computing to apply to your archived media now and in the future.

1:00 PM – 2:00 PM (Pacific)
When Archivists Need Fair Use: Stories from the Field
Jennifer Matz, Television Academy Foundation
Patricia Aufderheide, Center for Media and Social Impact
Peter Jaszi, American University Washington College of Law
Hope O’Keefe, Library of Congress
Rick Prelinger, UC Santa Cruz

A panel of copyright and fair use experts will lead a panel discussion on when fair use can help facilitate the work of archivists. Some areas where fair use/ copyright may come into play at your organization may include: donor agreements, approaches to access (especially for digital and online collections), copyright issues with preservation (which need to duplicate / reproduce the work), transcriptions (a derivative copy), promotion (creating derivative works such as brochures, exhibitions, etc) risk assessment, and the larger issue of orphan works in a collection. The speakers will present an overview of the topic, solicit questions in advance from participants, and answer questions. Panelists include Patricia Aufderheide (Center for Media and Social Impact) Peter Jaszi (American University Washington College of Law), Jennifer Matz (Television Academy Foundation Interviews), Hope O’Keeffe (Library of Congress), and Rick Prelinger (UC Santa Cruz/Internet Archive).

1:00 PM – 2:00 PM (Pacific)
Screening in a Pandemic: Engagement Case Studies form COVID19 America
Elizabeth Hansen, Texas Archive of the Moving iMsge
Libby Hopfauf, Moving Image Preservation of Puget Sound
Skip Elsheimer, A/V Geeks
Justin D. Williams, Southside Home Movie Project

The pandemic has changed the way people watch. Public screenings are a thing of the past, zoom calls are the new normal and suddenly TikTok is filled with boomers, Gen Xers and MIllennials. Archives are finding new ways to engage with audiences around content, some based in previous practice and some entirely new. What does an archival screening look like in 2020? These case studies will provide insight into ways to engage audiences (new and old) via digital platforms and look at the success and challenges of “screening” in a theater-less era.

2:15 PM – 3:15 PM (Pacific)
Reconstructing the First Brazilian Sound Feature: A No-Budget Project
Rafael de Luna Freire, LUPA-UFF (Audiovisual Preservation University Lab – Federal Fluminense University)

The first Brazilian sound feature, “Acabaram-se os otários” (No more suckers), produced and directed by Luiz de Barros in 1929, was an inventive and improvised initiative to compete with the Hollywood sound features. 90 years later, it was considered a lost film for many decades. Despite the economic and political crisis in Brazil, a group of professors and students decided to reconstruct the film with no budget, gathering all possible types of documents to end with a 19 minutes version of the original part-talkie feature. This reconstruction was thought of as a guerrilla project, based on extensive research, but very limited resources and poor and few preserved materials. We believe that this is a valuable study case of collaboration between scholars and archivists, especially in the context of very few surviving works from early sound Latin American cinema and diminishing public investments in the culture and heritage fields in Brazil.

2:15 PM – 3:15 PM (Pacific)
Roundtable: Prioritizing Labor Issues Within AV Archiving
Facilitators: Brianna Toth, Academy Film Archive; Brenda Flora, AMIA Advocacy Committee Cochair; Amber Bales, California College of the Arts Library Technician

Drawing from what we learned from Trisha Lendo’s session on unions for the 2019 AMIA Conference, SCA’s 2020 labor issues survey results, ACOB’s 2019 report, and the most recent CEA Task Force webinar on unions and labor we will try to distill more granular topics within the top 3 concerns expressed by our community: salaries, temp/short-term employment and diversity. My identifying specific issues within these topics, Brianna will write a report to the board advising on next steps to address these issues with the help of AMIA and it’s various committees and task forces and incorporate the results from the 2020 salary survey when that data becomes available.

Please note that Roundtables are small group discussions, limited to 25 participants, and are on a first come/first served basis. Once the room limit is reached it will be closed.

2:15 PM – 3:15 PM (Pacific)
Students in the Archive / Archives in the Classroom
Hugo Ljungbäck, UNC Chapel Hill
Hannah Garibaldi, University of California Santa Barbara
Dana Driskel, University of California Santa Barbara
Christian Balistreri, University of Rochester
Eszter Polonyi, The Pratt Institute (NY)

This panel will discuss various approaches to getting undergraduates interested in archives and the archival profession, whether through courses about archiving with hands-on training, through incorporating archival materials in found footage and film history classes, or through other extracurricular initiatives and activities that aim to bridge the gap between undergraduate film education and the role of archives and archivists. The panelists will discuss the specific pedagogical benefits and opportunities a student archive presents to teach undergraduates about the materiality of media and the preservation of cultural heritage, as well as the challenges and constraints of working within a university context.

2:15 PM – 2:30 PM (Pacific)
Tech Talk: We Will Rock You: Preserving the Rich History of Rock and Roll Footage
Kyle Evans, Tape Ark

Digital and cloud technology has radically altered the media, entertainment and broadcast industry, opening up new opportunities and with it many challenges. With rising competition and consumer viewing demands, growing archive and content libraries must be in a position to capitalize in real-time. Hear how Tape Ark, the world-leading specialists in on-masse tape to cloud migration, safely restored over 2,800 hours (350TB) of preservation-level video files for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?s, Library of Archives, that were once inaccessible, to the public cloud and, during the process, located an additional 109 preservation level videos that the Rock Hall did not know existed. By innovating every step of the tape to cloud ingest process to create a safe, secure and unique technology stack that scales and efficiently migrates, at speed legacy tape data like no other.

2:30 PM – 3:00 PM (Pacific)
Content as Data Stream: AI Techniques for Classification and Filtering over A/V Assets
Kyeongmin Rim, Brandeis University
Victoria Steger, Brandeis University
James Pustejovsky, Brandeis University
Kelley Lynch, Brandeis University

The process of making archival content available for access through online platforms can be time- and money-intensive. High quality often comes with a high cost, and open source tools that are well maintained and produce strong results are rare. This presentation will provide an introduction to one of a set of tools which hopes to solve that problem. We will cover our recent work on analyzing audio data, specifically detecting acoustic elements in the audio, and using it as a filter for speech recognition (speech-to-text) software. Its development and results on real and test data will be discussed, as well as its potential usage with the broader set of tools.

3:00 PM – 3:15 PM(Pacific)
Tech Talk: Physical v. Digital Assets in the Archival Space
Greg Maratea, Iron Mountain Entertainment Services
Hillary Howell, Iron Mountain Entertainment Services
Bethany Boarts, Iron Mountain Entertainment Services
Patricia Kenny, Iron Mountain Enterainment Services

3:30 PM – 4:30 PM (Pacific)
AMIA Education Committee
Jen O’Leary, Education Committee Co-chair
Ashley Franks-McGill, Education Committee Co-chair

3:30 PM – 4:30 PM (Pacific)
Independent Media Committee
Sarah Mainville,Independent Media Committee Chair

5:00 PM – 7:00 PM (Pacific)
Screening: Detour (1945, d. Edgar G. Ulmer)

From the gutters of Poverty Row came a movie that, perhaps more than any other, epitomizes the dark fatalism at the heart of film noir. As he hitchhikes his way from New York to Los Angeles, a down-on-his-luck nightclub pianist (Tom Neal) finds himself with a dead body on his hands and nowhere to run—a waking nightmare that goes from bad to worse when he picks up the most vicious femme fatale in cinema history, Ann Savage’s snarling, monstrously conniving drifter Vera. Working with no-name stars on a bargain-basement budget, B auteur Edgar G. Ulmer turned threadbare production values and seedy, low-rent atmosphere into indelible pulp poetry. Long available only in substandard public domain prints, Detour haunts anew in its first major restoration.

Restored by the Academy Film Archive and The Film Foundation in collaboration with Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique, The Museum of Modern Art, and the Cinémathèque Française. Restoration funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation.

7:00 PM (Pacific)
Karaoke!

It wouldn’t be an AMIA conference without aÿkaraokeÿnight! Come by to enjoy the soothing sounds of your colleagues singing the hits of yesteryear. The event is all-inclusive, and you don’t have to sing if you want to just enjoy the show! Read the instructions for participating here. Thanks to Morgan Morel and Stephanie Sapienza!

8:00 AM (Pacific)
Screening: A/V Geeks in the Morning

They say “16mm films aren’t just a popular film format — it’s a way of life!” A special AMIA edition of A/V Geeks popular lunchtime streaming show. Thank you, Skip Elsheimer, for starting our day with a some 16mm.

9:00 AM – 9:45 AM (Pacific)
Welcome & Keynote: Erica Titkemeyer

Starting Thursday with the presentation of the 2020 William S. O’Farrell Volunteer Award to Wendy Shay. Immediately following is a Keynote Conversation with Erica Titkemeyer.

Since 2014, Erica Titkemeyer has been the Project Director and AV Conservator for the Southern Folklife Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH). In this position they coordinate a $1.75 million grant-funded initiative to preserve audiovisual materials for UNC-CH and partner institutions across the state of North Carolina. From 2013-2014 they were a Library of Congress National Digital Stewardship Resident at the Smithsonian Institution Archives, working to produce best practices and recommendations for museums collecting digital media artworks. Erica is also a consultant for Myriad Consulting and Training, specializing in AV preservation, grant writing, copyright, digital preservation, and digital technologies and tools. Their keynote address will be “Practicing gratitude while wanting more from the AV preservation field.”

10:00 AM – 11:00 AM (Pacific)
Building Fellowship in times of Remote Engagement – Meet the Cohort!
Candace Ming, ADIFP Task Force Chair
Teague Schneiter, AMIA Board & Academy Foundation
Moriah Ulinskas, ADIFP Project Manager
Lorena Ramirez-Lopez, ADIFP Task Force
Lorena Escala-Vignolo, AMIA Fellow
Ferrin Evans, AMIA Fellow
Ari Green, AMIA Fellow
Grace Munoz, AMIA Fellow
Rai Terry, AMIA Fellow
Danielle Townsend, AMIA Fellow

The AMIA Diversity & Inclusion Fellowship Pilot (ADIFP) welcomed it’s inaugural cohort in June 2020. The Fellowship pivoted to remote engagement due to COVID-19. Through a series of webinars, mentorship and other informal learning and engagement opportunities six fellows were introduced to AMIA and to the broader ecosystem of audiovisual archiving and the communities involved in this work. This panel is an opportunity for the AMIA community to meet the cohort and hear their thoughts and experiences on the Fellowship.

10:00 AM – 11:00 AM (Pacific)
Quality Control Experiences and Effectiveness in the Large-Scale Film Digitization Project at Indiana University
Darrell Myers, Indiana University
Peter Schallauer, Joanneum Research

In 2017, Indiana University (IU) launched the film phase of the Media Digitization and Preservation Initiative (MDPI), which will result in over twenty-five thousand large and small gauge film reels digitally preserved by 2021. While partnering with a service provider has resulted in a very high throughput digitization workflow IU has additionally created an extensive automatic and manual quality control workflow to guarantee specifications for aural and visual quality are met. This presentation will be focusing on quality control needs and its implementation with IU’s practical experience in using the film scanning quality control software VidiCert to efficiently and cost effectively check thousands of files. Examples and long-term statistics of human verified, critical scanning issues, such as over/under exposure, dust/dirt, framing error, freeze frame and unsteadiness will be shared along with experiences made in the first 34 month of operations where more than 11000 hours have been sustainably QC’d.

More than Access: Audiovisual Collections and Transformative Digital Scholarship
Dave Rodriguez, Florida State University

While digitization projects have become the norm in audiovisual collections for ensuring the long-term preservation and access to collection materials, less critical attention has been paid to the types of transformative, digital scholarship and digital humanities-related work that these projects facilitate. With advancements in graphic and visual processing technology over the last ~20 years, scholars, filmmakers, and artists have been empowered to engage with digital audiovisual collections in exciting, unprecedented ways that extend beyond traditional notions of ?access.? This session will examine a few different case studies of such projects, including the presenter?s own ?Colors of Ozu,? in addition to information related to the various free and open-source tools leveraged by these initiatives to both perform the computational analysis of audiovisual collection materials and publish or exhibit the work in a digital space.

10:00 AM – 11:00 AM (Pacific)
Poster Session

Poster: Action In The Street: DIY Guide to Performing & Archiving
David I. Griess, HUMAN TRASH DUMP

Public performance art actions are often overlooked as a form of protest by the general population. These actions are often unsanctioned and spontaneous, and because of this, they are often not recorded, archived, or publicly accessible. Performance art itself is an inherently political form of art because the human body is the primary medium. Because of this, there are risks due to local or state laws, angry public members, and law enforcement that might attempt to cause bodily harm, fine, or imprison performance markers. Action In The Street: A Guide to Performing & Archiving Public Exchange introduces a DIY approach and resources for staging, preserving, and disseminating these types of works to a broader public audience and beyond a singular action in time. archive.org/details/actioninthestreet

Poster: Data-Driven Methods for Understanding the Development of Independent Media Archives
Lindsay Mattock, University of Iowa School of Library and Information Science

Mapping the Independent Media Community (MIMC) is a data-driven project that builds from the historical information from the Film and Video Makers Travel Sheet, a monthly resource published from 1973-1987 that was designed to connect independent artists to curators and programmers willing to support their work. MIMC aims to historicize the Media Arts Center Movement that established regional resource centers across the United States in order to understand how these networks influenced the creation of archives that preserved the work of independent media artists. This poster explores how digital humanities methodologies can illuminate the gaps in the historical understanding of independent media, the archival record, and the media collections that have defined the canon of independent cinema.

Poster: Afternoon of “El Satario”: Working on an Unidentified Print
Leonardo Gomes, Ryerson University

Found within the collection of The ArQuives, Toronto?s queer archives, the early pornographic film “El satario” is believed to have been produced in Argentina, between 1907 and 1912, as established by the Kinsey Institute, based on scant evidence, which is rarely contested. Thus, it has become largely considered to be the oldest extant pornographic film, although its date of production has never been confirmed. My work investigates what can be expanded from the initial finding of an unidentified print and the path that I followed in my attempt to understand the social, cultural, and technical contexts behind the film?s production, circulation, and reception. It is divided into four different sections, each dealing with a broad theme that contributes to unraveling the mysteries of ?El satario,? as well as providing both the reader and the researcher with a broader understanding of the film itself and of what revolves around it.

Poster: Brandon Films and the 16mm Distribution Sector’s Paper Remains
Tanya Goldman, New York University

Drawing primarily from company catalogs and rare promotional ephemera, this poster highlights the operations of prominent mid-twentieth century 16mm distribution company Brandon Film and the activities of its founder and president Tom Brandon. The materials demonstrate how film catalogs are historical archives unto themselves, as records of products and prosaic business practices as well as sourcebooks of cultural and use value. Using Brandon Films as a case study, the poster advocates for archivists and historians to develop strategies to recover and preserve industrial histories of the 16mm rental sector by making use of both moving image and paper-based assets.

11:15 AM – 12:15 PM (Pacific)
Invisibility: Chronic Illness, Disability, and the Subjectivity of the Archivist
Michael Marlatt, York University
Anna Krentz, Modern Literature & Culture Research Centre, Ryerson University

This panel pairs two media archivists with invisible illnesses, drawing from their own experiences to discuss the places and perspectives of the archivist with a disability. Michael Marlatt, a film preservationist with epilepsy, and Anna Krentz, an archivist with cystic fibrosis and a double lung transplant, advocate awareness, inclusivity, and recognition of the unique perspectives our own lived experiences bring to our work. At the heart of the discussion is an exploration of the ways personal perspectives can highlight mental and metaphorical aspects of the archivist-archive relationship, particularly relevant with the rise of the community archive based around identity. Engaging with current literature on the topic, we consider how our own identities might relate to the ways we conceptualize materials and encourage further dialogue about the subjective relationship between the archivist and the archive.

11:15 AM – 12:15 PM (Pacific)
AV Digitization Projects: Tools and Strategies for Enhancing Impact and Engagement
Mary Lynn Miller, Brown Media Archives, University of Georgia
Kathleen Carter, Brown Media Archives, University of Georgia
Thomas May, Brown Media Archives, University of Georgia
Sally Smith, UNC School of Information and Library Science
Miranda Villesvik, WGBH

4,000 assets created by 230 different television and radio stations over a seventy-year period, stored on twenty-five different media formats, digitized and made accessible through a three-institution partnership during a pandemic. What could possibly go wrong? Four participants in this collaborative effort will discuss their contributions to the project, including innovative tools, evolving procedures, and collaborative strategies. They will also speak to the policies and tactics that have allowed the project to remain on track during the pandemic. Key topics include obtaining permissions from rights holders; creating and correcting speech-to-text transcripts, managing a remote workforce; conducting research during Covid-19 and curating an online exhibit; and digital asset management and quality control. Session sponsored by the News/TV/Docs committee.

11:15 AM – 12:15 PM (Pacific)
Researching Preservation: A Panel and Open Forum on Preservation Issues
Greg Wilsbacher, Univ. of South Carolina
Claire Fox, NYU MIAP (2020)
Rachel Somers Miles, Netherlands Institute for Sound & Vision
Rafael de Luna, Federal Fluminense University

The Preservation Committee has partnered with the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision on the production of the most recent report produced by the Institute?s Audiovisual Research Alliance (AVRA), an evolution of the AV Think Tank. Our panel brings together Claire Fox, author of AVRA?s 2020 report Snapshot of a Field in Motion, AVRA Coordinator Rachel Somers Miles, as well as Rafael de Luna Freire a peer reviewer of the report, to discuss the role of the research report and of audiovisual research in our field. Fox will provide a brief overview of the report and Rachel will give a short introduction to the AVRA. This will be followed by an open conversation with the audience on the role and nature of audiovisual research. Attendees are encouraged to read the report in advance, which can be freely downloaded from Sound and Vision?s publication platform,

11:15 AM – 12:15 PM (Pacific)
Visit the Pavilion!

12:15 PM (Pacific)
News, Documentary, & Television Committee Meeting
Laura Treat, NDTV Co-Chair
Natasha Margulis, NDTV Co-Chair

12:20 PM – 12:55 PM (Pacific)
Tour: George Eastman Museum Nitrate Vault
Deborah Stoiber, George Eastman Museum

Take a virtual tour of the George Eastman Museum nitrate vaults! See the inspection area in action as well as the cold vault storage space and how the films are organized. You can watch the tour ahead of time at or during the presentation. Afterwards we will have time for questions as well as an update on how we are improving the vaults energy efficiency through a grant funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

1:00 PM – 2:00 PM (Pacific)
Introduction to the Regional Media Legacies Project
Robert Anen, NYU Tisch School of the Arts
Claire Fox, NYU Tisch School of the Arts

In the Fall of 2019, New York University’s Moving Image Archiving and Preservation (MIAP) program launched the Regional Media Legacies (RML) project, a grant-based initiative started with support from the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation. The project focuses on identifying and researching existing audiovisual collections available in memory institutions across the region of Long Island, Brooklyn, and Queens. Join us to learn more about the project and our current progress, see examples of the discoveries made along the way, and how we have adapted during the Coronavirus pandemic.

1:00 PM – 2:00 PM (Pacific)
Return of the DVRescuer
Libby Savage Hopfauf, Moving Image Preservation of Puget Sound/Seattle Municipal Archives
Dave Rice, RiceCapades
Andrew Weaver, University of Washington
Ashley Blewer

This panel will review the work of a project responsive to the status of DV, called DVRescue. DV videotape formats face an exceptional obsolescence risk. Falling in-between professional expertise in file-based digital preservation and analog videotape digitization, DV tape are best preserved by migrating the data from the tape into a file rather than handling them as a video digitization event. A collaboration from MIPoPS and RiceCapades, the DVRescue project is funded by the NEH in order to research DV preservation and to create new tools to facilitate the efficient transfer of data from tape to file. The presenters will show early models of their work, research conclusions, and methods to troubleshoot DV capture and preservation.

1:00 PM – 2:00 PM (Pacific)
Roundtable: BIPOC Roundtable 2
Facilitator: May Haduong, Academy Film Archive

Following up on last year’s BIPOC Roundtable this year we will be discussing issues around representation, race, diversity and ethical inclusion in archives and hiring. This roundtable will be providing a safe space to discuss these issues and personal situations as well as talking about the formation of an affinity group.

Please note that Roundtables are small group discussions, limited to 25 participants, and are on a first come/first served basis. Once the room limit is reached it will be closed.

2:15 PM – 3:15 PM (Pacific)
Time-Based Media Art/Work/Flow – Preserving the Whitney’s Historic Collection
David Neary, Whitney Museum of American Art
Christopher Bernu, Whitney Museum of American Art
Brian Block, Whitney Museum of American Art
Savannah Campbell, Whitney Museum of American Art
Nicholas Carbone, Whitney Museum of American Art

In 2018, the Whitney Museum of American Art launched the Media Preservation Initiative (MPI) to address the preservation needs of its more than 800 time-based media works. The Museum’s TBM holdings range from single-channel video to multi-channel installations and digital art and incorporate technologies that vary from the obsolete to the cutting-edge. In this series of short presentations, members of the MPI team will share notes on their experiences cataloguing and conserving the works, researching their histories, exhibitions, and technical details, and implementing the Museum’s new digital preservation pipeline.

2:15 PM – 3:15 PM (Pacific)
We Won’t Move! Describing and Digitizing CCTV, Chinatown’s Public Access Television
Kelly Haydon, New York University
Klavier Wang, New York University, Moving Image Archiving and Preservation
Ben Moskowitz, New York University, Barbara Goldsmith Conservation Lab

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Chinese Cable Television (CCTV) served New York City Manhattan?s Chinatown with Cantonese-language public access programming, a vibrant and detailed record of a diaspora that wrestled with labor inequality, gentrification, and ever-evolving cross-cultural identity. Acquired by NYU Special Collections, CCTV was inaccessible for over a decade, curtained by language barriers and its massive size. But a series of fortunate events led to a multi-year digitization and description project, augmented by the efforts of Hong Kong scholar and archivist-in-training, Klavier J. Wang, Ph.D. Introduced and moderated by NYU?s Audiovisual Archivist, Kelly Haydon, this panel discussion performs the timeline of CCTV?s preservation, discoverability, and access. Wang will cover its content, historical context, and description challenges, and Benjamin Moskowitz, NYU?s Media Lab Manager, will present on the unique trials of digitizing public access media. A fifteen-minute highlight reel, subtitled in English, will round out the session.

2:15 PM – 3:30 PM (Pacific)
Screening & Discussion: Sessão ABPA
Debora Butruce , President of ABPA (Brazilian Association of Audiovisual Preservation)
Lila Foster, Institutional Relations Director of ABPA

Brazilian Association of Audiovisual Preservation’s (ABPA) mission is to contribute to the development and technical, scientific and cultural improvement of professionals working in the field of preservation, promoting the work of archivists and researchers. In this sense, we promote the ABPA Session, a film program that gathers short films preserved in Brazilian archives. This action aims to give visibility to the work of audiovisual preservationists which helps to build the memory of Brazilian cinema, bringing to light films that are rarely seen and that have undergone recent processes of restoration or digitization. The sessions is also a starting point for discussions about the challenges faced by the field of audiovisual preservation in Brazil and the importance of dialogue with filmmakers and the wider audience. This program is composed by Dance Hall (Gafieira, Gerson Tavares, 1972), Home-Daycare (Creche-lar, Maria Luiza Aboim, 1978), Street Carnival – Porto Alegre (Carnaval de rua – Porto Alegre, Wilkens Filmes Ltda., c. 1950), Black Panther (Pantera negra, Jô Oliveira, 1968) and Eclipse (Antonio Moreno, 1984).

3:30 PM – 4:30 PM (Pacific)
Small Gauge & Amateur Film Committee Meeting
Patricia Ledesma Villon, Small Gauge Committee Co-Chair
Louisa Trott, Small Gauge Committee Co-Chair
Hugo Ljungbäck, Small Gauge Committee CoChair

Please join us for the Small Gauge and Amateur Film Committee meeting! The preliminary agenda is posted on Basecamp, and we invite committee members to fill out the survey we’ll be sending out to get your feedback and input on committee priorities and projects. We look forward to meeting you, hearing about your work, and planning future projects.

5:00 PM – 7:00 PM (Pacific)
Archival Screening Night
Brittan Dunham, ASN Cochair
Genevieve Havemeyer-King, ASN Cochair

Archival Screening Night is a showcase for AMIA members’ recent acquisitions, discoveries and preservation efforts. The program represents the magnificent spectrum of media formats, works, and collections protected and preserved by the AMIA community.

8:00 AM – 8:50 AM (Pacific)
All Levels Yoga with Teague (RYT 200 certified)

Open to both experienced yoga students and beginners curious about breath, alignment, and exploratory movement. In this slow-flowing, heat-building class will use isometrics and proper biomechanics as tools to help us feel more functionally strong, balanced and resilient. There will be a little meditation at the end. You will need: a yoga mat or something to make your floor not slippery, a yoga block (or a small stack of books). If you have injuries or physical restrictions, please contact me via by 11/18 via: teagueschneiter (at) gmail.com

If you can, donations ($5+) are encouraged to support key grassroots voter registration efforts in Georgia through Georgia Fund and to Indigenous Environmental Network (celebrating 30 years this year) who works to “build the capacity of Indigenous communities and tribal governments to develop mechanisms to protect our sacred sites, land, water, air, natural resources, health of both our people and all living things, and to build economically sustainable communities.”

9:00 AM – 9:45 AM (Pacific)
Closing Day Welcome & Keynote: Zackary Drucker

The final morning of the conference starts with the presentation of the Alan Stark Award to Alison Reppert Gerber, followed by a Keynote from Zackary Drucker.

Zackary Drucker is an independent artist, cultural producer, and trans woman who breaks down the way we think about gender, sexuality, and seeing. She has performed and exhibited her work internationally in museums, galleries, and film festivals including the Whitney Biennial 2014, MoMA PS1, Hammer Museum, Art Gallery of Ontario, MCA San Diego, and SF MoMA, among others. Drucker is an Emmy-nominated Producer for the docu-series This Is Me, as well as a Producer on Golden Globe and Emmy-winning Transparent. She is currently directing The Lady and the Dale, on the life of Liz Carmichael, one of the first public figures outed as transgender, whose promotion of a three-wheeled car was either revolutionary or a giant con. It will appear on HBO in early 2021.

10:00 AM – 11:00 AM (Pacific)
Issues in Handling Racist or Colonial Works in our Collections
Howard Besser, New York University
Jacqueline Stewart, University of Chicago
Ryan Lakin, New York University
May Hong Haduong, Academy Film Archive

How can archivists respond to the recent movement for cultural institutions to reassess racist and colonial works within their collections? This session will identify a number of paths forward, and will help attendees figure out what they should do. Speakers will first contextualize the problem within the history of cinema and of archives. They will then identify and explain the implications of a wide range of possible actions: from doing nothing, to withdrawing works, to encouraging remixing, to various forms of contextualization (annotating catalog records, adding an introduction to each work, altering discovery metadata, placing warning notices on works). Speakers will discuss issues and present many examples. Half the session will be devoted to formal presentation, and the other half will consist of discussion. The goal is to stimulate attendees to interact and respond, then go back to their collections and think about what they might do with their problematic works.

10:00 AM – 11:00 AM (Pacific)
Reports from the Field

Launching the American Masters Digital Archive During Quarantine
Joe Skinner, WNET Thirteen

From 2014-2020, WNET completed a multi-phase project called the American Masters Digital Archive. The collection makes accessible 1000+ hours of interview materials from past episodes of American Masters, including artists like Mel Brooks, Paul Robeson, Lena Horne, and others. We are thrilled to share the results of our public launch! Completing this project involved multiple federal grants and partnerships, and finished its final steps amidst a global pandemic. Topics to be discussed: making curatorial decisions for presenting an archive with multiple audiences in mind, managing a collection ahead of public launch, maintaining a team?s workflow for finalizing and vetting metadata and video materials, and most critically, navigating the emergent needs of building a collection during a global pandemic. We?ll talk about the strategies we put in place to build an entirely remote workflow in the epicenter of the COVID-19 shutdown.

Beyond Latin America: Expanding NYU APEX Collaborations
Juana Suarez, NYU MIAP

The NYU Audiovisual Preservation Program (APEX) is expanding its network of shared knowledge with institutions beyond the US and Latin America, seeking to generate specific actions and doable projects. We have surveyed 37 archival institutions in Latin American to be able to match with projects taking place at the Vulnerable Media Lab and York University (Canada), the Netherlands Institute of Sound and Image, and the Latin American Digital Preservation Network (RIPDASA). Currently, we are advancing work in four areas: funding resources; webinar/training in situ; Twin Cities Archival project (following the model of Twin Cities), and circulation of collections. We would like to provide a brief summary of NYU APEX cooperation philosophy; then we will offer a summary of our findings for this expansion project, the current status of the four projects we have started and specific coordinates to make this initiative extensive to interested international partners and AMIA members.

Sustain & Expand: the Future of the Memory Lab Network
Siobhan Hagan, DC Public Library

In spring 2017, the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) awarded DC Public Library (DCPL) a National Leadership Grant to build Memory Lab digital transfer and preservation programs in seven public libraries across the U.S. based on the DCPL Memory Lab model. Initially a two-year grant, IMLS extended funding for a total of five years for the project. While the precise timeline has changed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the ultimate goal remains the same: to sustain and expand preservation for all across the United States of America. Attendees with all levels of experience are encouraged to attend this presentation for updates from the Memory Lab Network Project Manager Siobhan C. Hagan. She will share resources and documentation the project has generated, plans for the future, and a call for feedback from attendees to assist in meeting the project?s specific needs.

10:00 AM – 11:00 AM (Pacific)
Poster Session

Poster: Preserving Guerilla TV: Providing Access to Top Value Television’s Archives
Michael Campos-Quinn, UC Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive

Top Value Television (TVTV) was a group of activist-artists working with early portable video equipment from 1972 to 1977. They began with ?guerrilla TV? coverage of the 1972 Democratic and Republican presidential conventions, and went on to produce McLuhan-inflected critiques of mass media. BAMPFA has digitized 450 half-inch open reel, camera-original tapes from TVTV?s political documentaries, THE WORLD?S LARGEST TV STUDIO and FOUR MORE YEARS (both 1972) and GERALD FORD?S AMERICA (1974), as well as TVTV?s paper collection. This poster discusses BAMPFA?s digitization project as a means to advocate for future preservation projects documenting alternative and underground American culture.

Poster: The Audio Video Known Issues Data (AVKID) Initiative
Dan Hockstein, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Morgan Morel, Bay Area Video Coalition

AVKID is a new initiative to gather a corpus of ?known issues? found with equipment commonly used in A/V preservation efforts. The focus is on safekeeping and subsiding the loss of knowledge that technicians and professionals might have, documented informally in forums, databases, and brains across the globe.

Poster: Curating and preserving digital documentaries: Towards a data management plan (DMP) for filmmakers
Heather Barnes, Wake Forest University

Filmmakers must navigate an increasingly complex landscape of digital tools and services, many of which are commercial and pose challenges for curation and preservation. Comparative workflows generated through interviews with digital documentary filmmakers identify how filmmakers understand and use digital platforms and tools. Outcomes of conducting this research include a proposed data management framework comprised of focused questions about digital storage, copyright, publishing, context, and file management. The framework supports archivists, filmmakers and curators in providing effective digital stewardship for these unique cultural objects.

11:15 AM – 12:15 PM (Pacific)
Activating Counter-Archives: Exploring Platforms for Effective (Re)Presentation
Monika Kin Gagnon, Concordia University
Patricio Davila, York University

This Incubator Session hopes to explore and discuss different approaches to activating archival moving image and time-based media using web-based platforms and digital publications. Based in the Canada-wide partnership project, Archive/Counter-Archive, we hope to generate discussions that explore various modalities of access, discoverability, and contextualization for time-based archival materials, also highlighting digital media?s potential to multiply connections between and across disparate collections.

11:15 AM – 12:15 PM (Pacific)
From a Distance: Video Capture Station Training for Remote Fellowships
Jackie Jay, Diablo Valley College
Evelyn Cox, University of Oklahoma
Hannah Hurdle, University of Arkansas at Little Rock
Benjamin Steck, Library of Virginia

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed how and where moving image archivists work. As more institutions consider sending analog videotape equipment home with their students and employees to digitize archival material, they can use existing models for remote training and troubleshooting such as those developed through the American Archive of Public Broadcasting?s Public Broadcasting Preservation Fellowship. In this session four former PBPF fellows and the PBPF Video Preservation Instructor discuss the challenges of setting up and troubleshooting a videotape capture station while working remotely and the communication tools they utilized and created in the process.

11:15 AM – 12:15 PM (Pacific)

Evaluating a Preservation Standard: A FADGI FFV1/MKV Working Group Report
Rachel Curtis, Library of Congress
Charles Hosale, Library of Congress

In September 2019, Federal Agencies Digital Guidelines Initiative (FADGI) community formed a subgroup to investigate and document the feasibility of adopting FFv1 and Matroska (MKV) as a preservation format option for digitized video in federal agencies. This project was prompted by the increasing adoption of FFv1/MKV as a preservation format in recent years by cultural heritage institutions. Large scale adopters included the New York Public Library (NYPL), Indiana University Bloomington, the Walter J. Brown Media Archive at the University of Georgia, and many more. This report will discuss the activities of the subgroup, including the evaluation process and the outcome of testing, areas where further development are warranted, and the current status of the project. FADGI is committed to transparency and welcomes all comments.

Hard Drive Failures and Learning Curves: Results from 12 Years of Born-Digital Film Ingest at Eye Filmmuseum
Anne Gant, Eye Filmmuseum
Martine Bouw, Eye Filmmuseum

Hard drive failures and learning curves: results from 12 years of born-digital film ingest at Eye Filmmuseum A quick overview of a 3.5-year intensive ingest project (which just finished in 2020) for born-digital and digitized film material, including information on drive failure rates and recovery scenarios, and a few lessons learned, and some surprises along the way.

12:20 PM – 1:20 PM (Pacific)
AMIA Membershp & Business Meeting

Members and guests are welcome and encouraged to attend the Membership Meeting to hear the annual State of the Association report, updates, about current projects, and offer special recognition to AMIA members who have gone above and beyond in their service. The open forum provides an opportunity to raise questions not addressed elsewhere in the conference. At the end of the meeting, the 2020/2021 Board of Directors will take office as we thank departing board members Teague Schneiter and Melissa Dollman.

1:30 PM – 3:30 PM (Pacific)
Screening: Coded Bias

(2020 Doc) Director Shalini Kantayya illuminates our mass misconceptions about AI and emphasizes the urgent need for legislative protection. Modern society sits at the intersection of two crucial questions: What does it mean when artificial intelligence (AI) increasingly governs our liberties? And what are the consequences for the people AI is biased against? When MIT Media Lab researcher Joy Buolamwini discovers that most facial-recognition software does not accurately identify darker-skinned faces and the faces of women, she delves into an investigation of widespread bias in algorithms. As it turns out, AI is not neutral, and women are leading the charge to ensure our civil rights are protected.

3:30 PM – 5:15 PM (Pacific)
Screening: Nationtime-Gary

(1972 Doc) In March 1972, an estimated 10,000 black politicians, activists and artists congregated at the National Black Political Convention in Gary, Indiana, with the express purpose of establishing a black political agenda. Attendees included Rev. Jesse Jackson, Dick Gregory, Coretta Scott King, Amiri Baraka, Richard Hatcher, Charles Diggs and H. Carl McCall. Also in attendance was prolific documentarian of black history, culture and politics William Greaves. His filmed account of this historic event, narrated by Sidney Poitier with poetry recited by Harry Belafonte, was at the time thought to be too radical for television broadcast and was drastically shortened for educational release. The feature-length negative was thought lost until IndieCollect recovered it from a Pittsburgh warehouse and created a new 4K restoration with funding from Jane Fonda and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, and in collaboration with Louise Greaves. (Courtesy Kino Lorber).

5:30 PM (Pacific)
Closing Night Dance Party

Whatever your time zone, come dance your cares away with other AMIA folks! Music will be an eclectic mix with some singalong faves. We may try framing our video on feet & lower legs during part of the party to get a little BREAK from the typical zoom framing . We encourage you dance like a wild person, even if that means turning your video off. There will also be an option to “pin” the video of an old friend (or new friend) so you can “dance with” someone (Billy Idol’s “Dancing with Myself” is NOT on the playlist; we are together in this). Conference appropriate dancing only, of course — aka in any AMIA space, ALWAYS abide by the Code of Conduct.

12:00 PM – 1:00 PM (Pacific)
Conference Committee Meeting
Dan Wagner, Conference Committee Program Chair
Tara Kelly, Conference Committee Co-Chair
Lindy Leong, Conference Committee Co-Chair

The AMIA Conference Committee is a Committee of the Board, responsible for developing the content of each year?s conference as well as for the planning of the annual event. In coordination with the steering committee, fellow committees, and the AMIA staff, this includes scheduling conference sessions, conference events, workshops, and vendor relations. The Conference Committee welcomes individuals who are interested in volunteering their time to participate in the conference planning process.

1:30 PM – 2:30 PM (Pacific)
Continuing Education Advisory (CEA) Task Force Meeting
Brianna Toth, CEA Task Force Committee CoChair
Andy Uhrich, CEA Task Force Committee CoChair
Casey Davis Kaufman, Task Force Member
Teague Scheneiter, Task Force Member

The CEA Task Force is charged with both short-term and longer-term goals. One of the reasons this group was formed was to recommend a strategic direction for AMIA?s online continuing education program. As part of this recommendation, the Task Force attempts to identify training/educational needs within the field, summarize existing core competencies analysis and definitions, identify strategic collaborators or partners, and consider the merits of individual certification. This recently took the form in the Quaranstream series that the task force has programmed in response to COVID-19. In the New Year we will be putting out an open call for new membership to work with us to on continuing online programming, assist with forming an International Chapter, transitioning to becoming a committee of AMIA?s Board, and assess the possibility of forming curricula and accreditation through AMIA.

8:30 AM – 1:00pm (Pacific)
Workshop: From a Distance: Hands-On Introduction to Videotape Capture Station Setup: Day One
Jackie Jay, Farallon Archival Consulting, LLC

This two-day workshop is a condensed version of the videotape capture station hands-on training developed for the AAPB Public Broadcasting Preservation Fellowship Immersion Week. Attendees will be able to explain the concepts of signal flow and sync and identify the various equipment needed to digitize analog video. This is a great introduction for students and moving image archivists that have not previously worked hands-on with analog video.

Typically taught as an in-person hands-on training this workshop has been adapted for remote teaching. Attendees do not need to have their own equipment at the time of the workshop, but if they do, they are welcome to set up their station along with the demonstration. This workshop is intended to develop digitization skills for those who plan to work on small digitization projects remotely and to foster a better understanding and appreciation for the work that digitization vendors do.

8:30 AM – 1:00pm (Pacific)
Workshop: From a Distance: Hands-On Introduction to Videotape Capture Station Setup: Day Two
Jackie Jay, Farallon Archival Consulting, LLC

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