AMIA Newsbriefs

The 10 greatest "missing movies"

In our age of information glut, it may seem surprising that anything ever vanishes. Yet the number of films that either can't be seen at all or can't be found without considerable difficulty (and extra-legal Internet spelunking) remains impressive, even when you bracket the fact that the vast majority of films made in the silent era no longer exist, including perhaps 95 percent of those made before 1920. (Or odd national tragedies, such as the reported fact that most of Malaysian cinema has been destroyed.)

Read the Salon story here.

Deluxe and Technicolor Prepare for the Death of Film

 It's the end of an era: Deluxe Entertainment Services Group and Technicolor, two iconic names in the movie industry for almost a century, have signed subcontracting deals that, more than likely, herald the end of actual film being used for motion pictures. Read the Time story here.

Read The Hollywood Reporter's coverage here.

An ode to the movie theatre marquee

“Traditionally, the idea of a marquee was that the show starts on the sidewalk,” Melnick. “The moment a passerby sees a marquee, the entertainment and the excitement begins,” he says, adding that whether neon-emblazoned or well-adorned, they are designed to “essentially create and envelop you into the movie-going experience.”

Read the story here:  http://toronto.openfile.ca/toronto/file/2011/07/ode-movie-theatre-marquee

Most Complete Version of "Napoleon" to Have US Premiere

The San Francisco Silent Film Festival organizers have announced the upcoming premiere of Abel Gance’s Napoleon, restored by renowned film historian, Kevin Brownlow. This version includes 30 additional minutes and will employe the iconic triptych technique known as polyvision. And for the first time in 30 years, a live orchestra will accompany the film. This will be the closest version to Gance’s original theatrical release in 1927.

Read the entire San Francisco Sentinel article.  

 

NBC News Launches New Archive Site

NBC News is formally launching a new website, NBCUniversalArchives.com, that will allow customers to buy archive material from a number of divisions across NBCUniversal's businesses, including NBC News, NBC Sports, NBC Entertainment, Universal Studios, Universal Pictures, Telemundo, The Weather Channel, NBC Radio, NBC Photobank and others.

Read more here:  http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/471043-NBC_News_Launches_New_Archive_Site.php

The Practicality of Archive Data in the Cloud

When first contemplating the use of cloud services for archive data, I have to admit I was skeptical about the wisdom and practicality of this approach. It is true that cloud services can offer many advantages to an IT organization. However, the requirements for storing each type of data, which includes primary, backup, disaster recovery, and archive data, are very different. This means that before you choose the cloud for archive or any data for that matter, make sure the service you select is truly protecting your data the way it needs to be protected.

Read more here...

The Internet Archive Selects Kaltura Video Technology to Support HTML5

This deployment follows a related project undertaken by the Wikimedia Foundation to power video in Wikipedia using the same Kaltura open source tools. The project was first presented at the Open Video Conference in New York City, an event co-organized by Kaltura, where more than 1,100 attendees gathered to promote the open video movement.

Read the story here.

FDCP film archives now fully operational

Apart from Sineng Pambansa, another pet project of the Film Development Council of the Philippines (FDCP) is the National Film Archives of the Philippines (NFAP), now fully operational in the council’s old Ortigas office.

Read the article here...

Birthplace of British Cinema Receives Lottery Funds

Following on the heels of their landmark exhibition at the Grand Café the prior December, the Lumière Brothers gave birth to British Cinema when they presented their cinematograph program in February 1896 at the Royal Polytechnic Institute. Now known as the University of Westminster, the higher education institution has just received a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund in the amount of £100, 000 to fund the second restoration phase of the original theatre where Londoners viewed the brothers’ moving pictures.

Read more at the University of Westminster website. 

 

Digital library project will place 40 hours of Hub TV newscasts from 1959-2000 at your fingertips

Films and tapes deteriorate over time, so WGBH officials have begun ambitiously digitizing not only former newscasts from their
Channel 2, but historical news footage from other local TV stations.
The result will be the Boston TV News Digital Library, the first online repository of Boston television news from 1959 to 2000.
The idea is to build a video catalog of Boston histo ry, as captured in daily newscasts, that will be available over the Internet.
Read the story here: http://www.boston.com/ae/tv/articles/2011/07/09/wgbh_builds_boston_tv_news_archive/