Abstract / topic summary
In this presentation, I’d like to share the mass digitisation projects led by Cinemateca Portuguesa between 2020 and 2025. Although the timing, scale and overall features of the project were externally imposed by a state funding scheme, and were less than ideal from the perspective of both digitisation and digita, preservation best practices, the project had also a tremendous positive, durable impact in our photochemical conservation and preservation infrastructures. Film masters were mass inspected and better documented, film collections metadata were much improved, new skills were learned by film curators, and important investments were done in our film lab. Contrary to some expectations, this digitisation project contributed to prepare our analogue film conservation and duplication context to its ongoing challenges. I’d like to offer a self-critical reflection on this experience and learn about other ways that we can use to make photochemical film conservation more resilient, in spite of, or many because of, mass digitisation projects.
Speaker summary
Tiago Baptista
Tiago Baptista is the head of the conservation centre of Cinemateca Portuguesa-Museu do Cinema and Secretary-General of the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF). He received his PhD in Film and Screen Media from the University of London (Birkbeck College) in 2016 and has published articles and book chapters about Portuguese cinema and film preservation since 2008.
