AMIA Newsbriefs

25 New Titles Added to National Film Registry

A list of the 25 films being added to the National Film Registry, as announced Tuesday by the Library of Congress.

Read list here

Bret Wood Discusses Keaton’s The General on Blu-ray

Bringing a silent film starring Buster Keaton from 1927 to high definition and Blu-ray posed some challenges, and producer Bret Wood let us in on the process, while offering thoughts on digital noise reduction (DNR), the musical score, and clarifies which film negative was used in the process.

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The year's most rewarding DVD releases for cinephiles

Like most media industries, the DVD business remains in a slump, which is bad news for archival releases: Distributors are, for now, more likely to recycle old standbys. Still, plenty of terrific foreign and art-house titles made their DVD debuts, and the number of great films upgraded to Blu-ray seems to grow exponentially. Here are this year's most rewarding DVD releases for cineastes.

Read the list here

British Library and BBC sign archive access deal

The BBC and the British Library are to work together to make their assets more widely available.

Read the story here:  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8408818.stm

Groups announce settlement in missing Bush e-mails case

The selections include dates that are historically important, randomly chosen or flagged for unusually low e-mail activity. The Obama White House has created a new system for prospectively preserving electronic records that should prevent the problems that emerged during the Bush and Clinton years, the two groups said.

Read the story here:  http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2009/12/groups-announced-settlement-in.html?wprss=44

Paramount to Start Online Service to Sell Movie Clips

Paramount Pictures, looking for new ways to turn its old movies into cash, especially as DVD sales continue to decline, is creating an online video clip service that will allow users to search hundreds of feature films on a frame-by-frame basis.

The site, to be introduced on Tuesday, is powered by VideoSense, an automated indexing tool developed by the technology company Digitalsmiths. Using proprietary video interpretation systems, Digitalsmiths allows films to be quickly searched by specific actor, line of dialogue, location, genre or product, among other criteria.

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Homebrew Kodachrome factory

"This DIY Kodachrome machine (the "Filminator") was created to produce more film stock after the company discontinued productions. Michael, the creator, notes, 'Plastic and goop go in one end, and camera film comes out the other end. This is not a trivial undertaking.'"

Read the story here: http://www.boingboing.net/2009/12/08/homebrew-kodachrome.html

With its real-time search, Google is creating an archive of the present

Over the next few days Google search results will be complemented with up-to-the-minute tweets, social network updates and blogposts for certain topical searches as Google revamps its search engine and refreshes its results with real-time data.

This archive of the present is a very powerful thing. It provides the public, with a more direct voice and it will change journalism profoundly because it adds another possibility to research - verifying real-time results will become an important issue. This leaves us, of course, with new problems and questions: What can be found? What is hidden?

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Screen Search Fashion from Screen Archive South East

This online resource provides a thematic guide to aspects of 1920s and 1930s fashion and dress as depicted in film from Screen Archive South East’s (SASE) collections. The selected themes guide you through the collections, using stills and clips from the archive.  These enable you to discover more about the different types of clothing worn, and their historical and design contexts. This resource is the result of a year long, CETLD-funded project, carried out at the Royal College of Art and Screen Archive South East, at the University of Brighton.

Visit website here

State of the Archives Address by David S. Ferriero, Archivist of the United States

"I am excited about the work all of you do, and eager to learn firsthand what you need to get that work done. I know the challenges facing NARA are daunting, but I am convinced that your talents and skills are up to the tasks ahead. I am absolutely committed to carrying out my responsibilities in a professional, non-partisan, and collegial manner."

Read speech here