A European Project Digitising Films From And About World War

Presse Release from the German Film Institut:

Frankfurt am Main
15.03.2012

EFG1914

A European Project Digitising Films From And About World War I
Kick-Off Meeting at the German Film Museum in Frankfurt am Main

With the advent of EFG1914, a major European co-operation project enters a new phase: Within the last three years (2008-2011),The European Film Gateway became a frequently used web portal for finding films and filmrelated material from the film archives and cinémathèques of Europe, making available more than 500,000 objects to date. Now, the follow-up project EFG1914 was kicked off. It will digitize up to 650 hours of film from and about World War I, and make the digitized film collections available on the Internet through the EFG Portal www.europeanfilmgateway.eu and the European digital library Europeana (www.europeana.eu).

During the kick-off meeting, more than 40 representatives from the 25 participating institutions came together in the German Film Museum in Frankfurt am Main. The Deutsches Filminstitut co-ordinates EFG1914, which is supported by the European Union. Many partners from the predecessor project continue their successful work in EFG1914. Among others, film archives from France, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Serbia, Italy, Belgium, Denmark and the Netherlands participate and make available moving images. With the Imperial War Museums in London, probably the largest institutional World War I-related film collection is part of the project.

During the 1910s, a considerable amount of film material was produced, covering the events of the Great War. Today, the largest part of this historical material is considered lost: About four fifths of the contemporary film production are estimated to not have survived until today. Many of the preserved films still rest only on analogue film. This enables the archives to effectively preserve the material. However, access to these films still remains a cumbersome and costly task. With the help of EFG1914, this task is nowmade easy and efficient by digitizing the film material. The films are expected to become available over the next two years, just in time for the 2014 centenary. At the same time, the project serves as a means of facilitating good practices of film digitization and digital preservation by pooling the individual archives‘ considerable experience in this field.

Find more information about EFG1914 and the complete list of participating institutions on the project website www.project.efg1914.eu.

List of partners :

• Deutsches Filminstitut – DIF e.V. (Frankfurt), coordinator
• Arhiva Nationala de Filme (Bucharest)
• Association des Cinémathèques Européennes (Frankfurt/Brussels)
• Athena Research and Innovation Center in Information Communication & Knowledge Technologies (Athens)
• Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée – Archives françaises du Film (Bois d´Arcy)
• Cinecittá Luce S.p.A (Rome)
• Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique (Brussels)
• Cineteca di Bologna (Bologna)
• CNR-Istituto di Scienza e Tecnologie dell´Informazione (Pisa)
• Det Danske Filminstitut (Copenhagen)
• Deutsche Kinemathek – Museum für Film und Fernsehen (Berlin)
• Estonian Film Archive (Tallinn)
• EYE Stichting Film Instituut Nederland (Amsterdam)
• Filmarchiv Austria (Vienna)
• Fondazione Cineteca Italiana (Milan)
• Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS (Erlangen)
• Imperial War Museum (London)
• Instituto de la Cinematografia y Artes Audiovisuales – Filmoteca Española (Madrid)
• Instituto Valenciano del Audiovisual y de la Cinematografia Ricardo Munoz Suay Valencia)
• Jugoslovenska Kinoteka (Belgrade)
• Magyar Nemzeti Filmarchivum (Budapest)
• Národní filmový archiv (Prague)
• Nasjonalbiblioteket (Oslo)
• Österreichisches Filmmuseum (Vienna)
• Reelport GmbH (Cologne)

EFG – The European Film Gateway
c/o Deutsches Filminstitut – DIF e.V.
Schaumainkai 41
D – 60596 Frankfurt

Tel +49 69 961 220 631
Fax +49 69 961 220 999
www.project.efg1914.eu