Digital Film Collection
The Austrian Film Museum has kept films and material in other media relating to film (paper documents, stills, posters, equipment) in its collection for decades. The drastic reduction in the use of physical film materials in film production and film distribution, and the shift to an almost exclusive use of digital files in production, post-production, distribution and exploitation of films, has led to an urgent demand for film heritage organisations to invest in the capability and competencies required to ensure digitally produced and distributed film materials (born-digital films) are preserved for posterity in a media appropriate form. This does not just apply to commercial filmmaking: Today, the majority of avant-garde and experimental filmmakers work digitally, and already for a decade we have been digitizing parts of our analog film collection in the course of various research and outreach activities.
Our strategy for the preservation and development of our digital film heritage is a hybrid approach. It entails both, the preservation of the original analog film element, which, as museum object in its own right, is a sustainable carrier of "dense" information; as well as the digitization of such original film elements, thus ensuring that otherwise inaccessible content can be made accessible to a broad public.
The comprehensive guidelines for our digital film collection can be found here:
Our strategy for the preservation and development of our digital film heritage is a hybrid approach. It entails both, the preservation of the original analog film element, which, as museum object in its own right, is a sustainable carrier of "dense" information; as well as the digitization of such original film elements, thus ensuring that otherwise inaccessible content can be made accessible to a broad public.
The comprehensive guidelines for our digital film collection can be found here:
