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  • Welcome Back: Association of Moving Image Archivists Annual Conference
  • Melissa Dollman (bio)
Welcome Back: Association of Moving Image Archivists Annual Conference; November 16–19, 2011, Austin, Texas

The Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) annual conference, held November 16–19, 2011, lured hundreds of archivists, librarians, preservationists, students, professors, technicians, and vendors from around the world away from their desks and workstations to Austin, Texas. Even a brief foray around the capitol reaped a big helping of Austin hospitality, and if this was a return visit for an AMIA conference, as it was for me (2005 happens to have been my first conference), well then, it offered seconds.

After reviewing the conference program, my notepad, the AMIA Listserv, social networking sites, and a few friends’ memories, I am left with a distinct impression of the theme for the 2011 AMIA conference: access. I know, it is such a common refrain that the word is written into your archive’s or library’s mission statement, you had to take a class dedicated to it, or it is recognized as an integral component in your grant writing efforts. What we may not all readily recognize, until we step back and review, say, a conference program, is what we are doing about it. The AMIA conference brought together many events that converged under the access theme: cataloging workshops; dedicated panel discussions; activist archiving events; screenings in multiple genres and formats, including video, time-based formats, and new media (and discussions about their complex preservation needs). In addition to these more universally understood definitions of archival access, tweeting and blogging, the AMIA Listserv and forum, increased media attention to archival issues, more videotaping of conference sessions, and welcome improvements to an eagerly anticipated new AMIA website promise improved access to us, a community of archival professionals and fellow enthusiasts in a position to help.

As a group, we addressed access issues with a wide lens and from a variety of angles, even when preservation as a topic was front and center. Jumping off from the axiom “preservation without access is pointless,” there was a plethora of preservation-oriented discussions, approximately fifteen, this year.1 The following is only a sample; however, you can see the whole lineup on the AMIA conference website.2 The conference is not complete for some members without attending The Reel Thing Technical Symposium (XXVIII), scheduled during daylight hours (not that attendees would know) of the opening day of the conference. This year, it was held at Austin’s famous Alamo Drafthouse Cinema. Chaired for many years by Grover Crisp and Michael Friend of Sony Pictures Entertainment, the symposium presented examples of the latest technologies in audiovisual restoration and preservation techniques on the big screen. Topics included new sound restoration tools as presented by Robert Heiber (Chace by Deluxe) and Ken Weisman (Library of Congress) and a consideration of the aesthetics of sound restoration in The Sun Legend of the End of the Tokugawa Era (1957) by John Polito (Audio Mechanics). Russ Suniewick (Colorlab) tackled magenta-dye fade correction, as Ulrich Rüdel (Haghefilm) looked at dye tinting for color preservation masters via Das Rätsel von Bangalore (1918). Perhaps the most anticipated conversation was about the restoration of Nicholas Ray’s last work, We Can’t Go Home Again (1972–2011)—an experimental, multinarrative, multiformat film Ray finished over a number of years with his film students at the State University of New York, Binghamton—by Giovanna Fossati, Anne Gant (both from EYE Film Institute Netherlands), and Heather Linville (Academy Film Archive).

Over the next few days, several other preservation case studies followed, including “Zapruder to History—The Restoration of the JFK Films” by Iwonka Swenson (National Geographic Television) and Dan Sullivan (Image Trends Inc.), about the restoration of Abraham Zapruder’s famous 8mm footage of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and other small-gauge films that were shot at the same event; “Building a Preservation Solution for the BFI’s Master Film Collection,” during which Ron Martin and Sarah-Jane Lucas (both from the [End Page 193] British Film Institute) offered an analysis of the institute’s new government-funded, preservation-friendly storage facility...

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