MEDIA ARCHAEOLOGY

Tedd Urnes in New
York searching for movies. Photo Lasse Nilsson

American historians made this study published in 1995.

The Mexican National Phonoteque is setting up a conference in
Mexico City, November 9- 13. Join us.

Ingmar Bergman used archival footage in his films: " A Passion "

and " Persona ".

"... political activity to-day is precipitated by the news, by television's immediate closeness to what is going on all over the world. In this respect art has missed the boat completely. Artists

are hardly the social visionaries they uesd to be. And they mustn't

imagine they are! Reality is running away from artists and their

political visions " - so far Ingmar Bergman.

Presentation of some facts about movies and archival footage reported in my paper for the conference in La Ciudad de Mexico, November 9 - 13, 2009 - hopefully not postponed again

due to an international flu!

Some reasons for making the collections of audiovisual archives accessible to film productions are

the following arguments:

-For economic reasons. It is less expensive making copies of film made during the Battle of Stalingrad than making a reconstruction of the battle.

-To make moviegoers aware of the time of the historical events dealt with in the film.

-To avoid making reconstructions of the events in a studio.

-Because the reality is better on television news than made in the film studio.

-Copyright is no problem when it comes to use German made news films from the Second World War.

-It is better to use real shot of the person dealt with in the film than actors.

To search after the reality used in movies is a time consuming business but very interesting

for those who are working with media archaeology.

See you in Mexico City in November.

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