FIAT/IFTA World Conference 2026

Audiovisual materials are experienced through screens and speakers and in the 21st century these can be found in every home, class room and pocket, providing an opportunity to massively expand access to the audiovisual collections. For the past three years, the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (NFSA) has been renewing its approach to collection sharing and contextualisation across key external channels including YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. In March 2026, NFSA released an entirely new website designed as an online audiovisual museum. It provides access to 5,500 items from the collection, with more to be added regularly, along with curatorial notes and longer form journalism exploring the stories behind the clips. Designed to be appealing to the broadest possible audiences, the website is a resource of Australian history, of the diversity and impact of audiovisual forms, and offers a fun way to relive pop culture memories. 


NFSA is Australia's national audiovisual collection. Collecting began in 1935 making it one of the longest established public collections in the world. Over the decades, collecting strategies have changed and adapted in response to technological and cultural shifts. Today, the collection includes almost 700,000 individual works that span all formats from celluloid to interactive digital, and from factual and news recordings to games, music, broadcast, sports, social media and advertising. With such a broad scope, the collection offers potential to all Australians for inspiration, learning, research and enjoyment.


This paper will show how NFSA developed its multi-channel content distribution strategy, from staffing structures to market research driven insights, rights management, audience development and platform build, and will provide a snapshot of user responses six months from the launch of the website.

In contemporary broadcast television, audiovisual archives have moved well beyond preservation and historical reference. When placed in the hands of editors and curators working within promotional content, they become powerful narrative tools capable of connecting audiences across generations through emotion, memory and cultural identity. This presentation offers a practice-based perspective on how archival footage can be reinterpreted through montage editing to create new narratives that resonate with contemporary audiences.


Drawing from case studies developed at TV Globo, Brazil's largest broadcast network, the presentation examines promotional campaigns that combined archival footage from multiple decades to generate emotional continuity between past and present. These include national campaigns such as the FIFA World Cup, the Olympic Games, Formula 1, the 70th anniversary of Brazilian telenovelas, and the 50th anniversary of Roberto Carlos' iconic year-end television special. Each of these events carries a strong intergenerational dimension, having been experienced by different audiences over time.


A central element of this process is the curatorial work that begins before the edit: navigating broadcast archives in search of emblematic gestures, movements and emotionally charged moments with the potential to resonate across time. Once identified, these fragments are joined through match cut montage, transforming disconnected historical scenes into a single, continuous flow in which past and present coexist.
The presentation argues that montage editing functions as a form of cultural mediation that activates archival memory and reinforces broadcast television as a living repository of collective experiences. Rooted in a Brazilian context, it contributes to broader global discussions in the field, showing how the creative reuse of archival footage can introduce younger generations to cultural moments they never witnessed firsthand and transforming the broadcast archive into a gateway for intergenerational discovery.

A significant portion of the collection managed by Empresa Brasil de Comunicação (EBC), a federal public broadcasting company, was produced before the company was established. The state-owned company was created by Law No. 11,652 of April 7, 2008, and all assets previously managed by the Roquette Pinto Educational Communication Association (Acerp) and Radiobrás were transferred to EBC. Although the transfer of assets was provided for by law, this was not sufficient to avoid questions regarding the ownership of this collection. In addition to the legal aspects, the lack of existing documentation on the audiovisual and radio works created challenges for management, particularly regarding licensing, access, and distribution.
The growing interest among audiovisual professionals, teachers, researchers, and students in the content produced over the course of 100 years of Brazilian public broadcasting history calls for solutions to existing challenges and strategic decision-making to enable access to and dissemination of this collection.
Accordingly, the purpose of this presentation is to share the experience of the Archive and Research Management Department (GARPE)—which oversees EBC’s collection—in addressing these challenges and the measures being taken to find solutions that ensure broader access, dissemination, and licensing, not only for students and professionals in the audiovisual industry but for society as a whole.

This presentation discusses the activation of audiovisual archives through pedagogical and creative practices developed in the Audiovisual Production Workshops at FGV CPDOC (Brazil), which completed ten years in 2024. The workshops are based on one of the largest collections of personal archives in Latin America and promote the production of short films using archival materials as both source and medium.
Since 2023, the workshops have been part of the project “New Perspectives on the Archive: Visuality, Circulation and Education in Women’s Archives” (FAPERJ/CNPq), focusing on women’s histories and the critical re-reading of archival collections. Through a practice-led approach, participants engage with archival documents not only as historical evidence but as material for reinterpretation, montage, and narrative construction.
The presentation examines selected films produced within this framework to explore how archival images are reactivated through editing processes that negotiate between institutional constraints, creative agency, and pedagogical goals. Particular attention is given to the tensions between technical, aesthetic, and ethical dimensions of archival reuse, including issues of visibility, silencing, metadata limitations, and representational bias.
By situating the classroom and the editing room as spaces of research, the paper argues that audiovisual practices can transform the archive from a site of preservation into a dynamic field of interpretation and circulation. In this context, montage becomes a critical operation that not only re-signifies images but also challenges dominant narratives, especially in relation to gender and the historical marginalization of women in archival systems.
The case study highlights how collaborative filmmaking processes can expand archival access, generate new forms of public engagement, and reposition audiovisual archives as active agents in the production of knowledge.

The rapid obsolescence of analog media and playback equipment represents a critical risk to the preservation of audiovisual archives. This paper presents a large-scale digitization project of Betacam tapes, starting with an initial scope of 50,000 media items, developed as a strategy to mitigate this risk and enhance the value of the collection.
To meet these demands, the FlyPack solution (by company Meta Martis) was adopted, enabling greater efficiency in the digitization workflow, optimized resource usage, and quality control within a high-volume environment. The proposal addresses the technical and operational challenges involved in the mass conversion of analog content to digital formats.
As a result, the project is expected to enrich the archive and expand opportunities for access, use, and reuse of the content. Digitization also paves the way for the application of artificial intelligence, enabling new forms of analysis, organization, and value creation, while fostering future opportunities within the audiovisual ecosystem.

PAVIC – Audiovisual, Iconography, and Content Researchers is a Nationwide, a nonprofit professional association in Brazil. We were established to raise awareness of and give proper recognition to the research professionals working in cultural, artistic, educational, and entertainment markets.

Founded in January 2022, PAVIC brings together 196 research professionals. As an association, one of our key missions is to promote and strengthen this professional field, as well as to drive improvement and efficiency in the production processes within the audiovisual and cultural sectors, which directly enhances the quality of the final products.

In the audiovisual field, research professionals preserve the memory of the entire production process for films, series, and soap operas. This includes details about the raw materials—such as images, sounds, or characters, which is especially vital when dealing with archival materials.

In ongoing collaboration with audiovisual archive institutions, researchers actively engage in processes of reuse, reinterpretation, and cultural mediation of media collections, helping to preserve and celebrate this important memory.