FIAT/IFTA World Conference 2026

The purpose of this panel is to open a discussion on the skills required by audiovisual archive leaders in Latin America.

The objective is to explore, together with leaders of institutional, official, non-official, community, activist, and self-managed archives, how the "profile" of an audiovisual archivist is constructed in our region and what specific skills we have had to develop in accordance with our divergent realities and the influence of the current political and social climate and governments.

The panel will propose a dialogue based on a series of guiding questions, in which we could involve people with long careers as well as new leaders who can provide feedback on how they have integrated into the dynamics of our field, how the profession has (or has not) become professionalized, how we relate to best practices in the Global North, and how we communicate and educate our audiences and communities of interest about audiovisual archives. The objective of the dialogue could be, in a complementary way, the creation of a poster to be shared collectively, where we can recognize ourselves and enhance those characteristics that define audiovisual archivists in our region.

Although local community experiences of the struggle leading up to democracy in South Africa are well documented, there is limited research on retrospective reflections regarding that time in the post-apartheid era. This study explores a body of audiovisual archives created by members of a local community in a 2024 art-creation event at the National Archives of South Africa. These depict experiences and memories of local people as they looked back on the struggle and are preserved in the archive’s collection.  The analysis of the audiovisual archives contextualises local community experiences as part of the attempt to construct their hitherto under-represented post-apartheid narrative for the purpose of historical continuity. It showcases the outcome of an active people-centred method to encourage and facilitate the creation of audiovisual archives in reclaiming cultural heritage as a tool of community engagement, resilience and resistance. This investigation reveals how community experience can generate audiovisual archives reconstruction of past experiences and memory and potentially lead to future healing.  

In the UK, Black homemovies have been historically under-collected and under-valued as a result of years of systemic and interpersonal racism. Distributed at the hands of those deciding what is of importance to collect, preserve and who they want to represent their country. Additionally, homemovies that are categorised to represent Black life in Britain are often through the gaze and context of the onlooker, leading to inaccurate, dangerous and racist storytelling and cataloguing. 


In response, ‘Undocumented’ sought to address these historical absences and inaccuracies. The first year of the project focused on building trust amongst the black community, introducing audiences to archives as a source of learning and inspiration but also making them aware of the gaps within them. This year was a vital foundation of uplifting the Black people as custodians of their own legacies and informing them that their homemovies are in desperate need of preservation. The second year focused on training 40 Black Screen Heritage Ambassadors, building confidence, skills, and trust in the archive sector, and supporting participants to digitise and preserve a selection of material. The 3rd year marks a significant step change: moving from training and initial collecting, into sustained ambassador activity and sector-facing leadership. 


In this presentation, we will discuss the results, learnings and challenges of this framework as a tool for other producers and researchers to utilise in response to gaps within archives and film history. Alongside this we will explain the conception of the programme, themes found in donated footage and key takeaways from participants regarding how this programme has developed them as Ambassadors of archive materials. We will also screen a trailer of the short-film ‘Custodians’ created by a programme participant Monalisa Chukwuma, which is a photographic and cinematic exploration of Black archival labour, community memory, and care. 

The presentation will be about how we gain the trust of the filmmakers and their subjects, about finding new collaborations and how this method is a gateway for us into communities that were hard to reach.


As the main example the presentation will be about Boy from the Dessa, a documentary series about Indonesian born musician Rudy Lentze, who came to the Netherlands as a baby. Rudy Lentze's personal history takes the viewer through major social and historical developments, including the colonial history of the Dutch East Indies, immigration, and the challenges of building a life from a complex migration background. Rudy's idiosyncrasy is rooted in the fascinating life story of a man born in Indonesia to an "Indo" father (with German roots) and a Sundanese mother, who was raised in the Netherlands. He grew up in a disrupted family caught between clashing cultures and nearly succumbed to it all — depression, anxiety, drug use, and alcohol. Still, like a classic (anti-)hero, Rudy managed to largely overcome his troubled youth and personal problems. Music was his salvation. 


This documentary is a collaboration between the filmmakers and the Archive. From the start we endorsed the making of this film, helping with finding and digitising the archive material, and in return we acquired the rich Lentze family archive, one of the few family archives of an Indonesian family. Including a lot of film- and videoreels, and audiotapes. This is part of an ongoing collaboration with filmmakers from Greater Groningen, mainly, but not exclusively through our themed website www.poparchiefgroningen.nl (the Groningen Poparchive). We help the artists, they add to our archive. With doing so we reach a different audience and we diversify our collection in an organic way. We have more than 30 'Rockumentaries' online, and with Boy from the Dessa as the latest feature, the archive is firmly rooted in that part of society. Regional stories, embedded in the national history.


The documentary series will be made available afterwards for all participants of the World Conference.

This presentation discusses ways in which Canada's public broadcaster is working to mobilize its vast archival legacy to support its reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples. From the digitization of archival radio shows that aired in Indigenous languages, to analyzing historical coverage for its portrayals of Indigenous stories, CBC/Radio-Canada is advancing along its reconciliation journey by surfacing the truths embedded in its audiovisual past, in collaboration with Indigenous researchers and communities.

Television historians inevitably have to contend with gaps when examining the audiovisual archives of broadcasters and preservation institutions, especially when searching for records from the medium’s early decades. However, this is a communication technology — and a domestic device — whose development has enabled audiences themselves to engage in practices of capturing and archiving content, a dynamic that has expanded significantly in the online environment.


Today, many TV fans make use of collective digital video-sharing platforms to upload recordings of old programs, originally captured on VHS tapes or DVDs. Some of these users have become known for this type of activity, at times receiving audiovisual materials from professionals who once worked behind the scenes in television. Not infrequently, clips made available by these fans are also used in contemporary productions focused on the careers of television personalities. Even the disputes between these viewer-archivists and active TV networks — dissatisfied with having recordings of their productions shared by third parties — ultimately attest to the recognition achieved by these fans, who are transformed into “professional-amateurs” as they demonstrate competencies related to the history of television in Brazil.


This paper discusses how the archives of viewer-archivists, as well as fandom practices attentive to past content made available by TV channels on their over-the-top platforms, have contributed to the preservation and narration of Brazilian television memory. Although fan archives are shaped by a curatorial dynamic guided by personal taste and affective investments, they constitute important sources for researchers due to their potential to house records that are no longer present in the broadcasters’ own archives. Moreover, fans dedicated to monitoring the streaming catalogs of TV networks shed light on the very archiving dynamics adopted by media conglomerates over time, revealing continuities, gaps, and reconfigurations in the criteria used for the preservation of television archives.

RTÉ Archives has, for many years, developed meaningful partnerships with cultural institutions, community organisations and memory networks across Ireland and the Diaspora. Central to this work is a commitment to meeting communities where they are, recognising that meaningful engagement with audiovisual heritage happens both in physical public spaces and online environments that people already use and trust. Through collaboration with museums, libraries, cultural centres and creative community initiatives, RTÉ Archives is able to open the collections of Ireland’s public service broadcaster in ways that cannot be achieved alone, supporting engagement and dialogue across all island of Ireland and diasporic contexts.
Aligned with FIAT/IFTA’s 2026 theme, “Audiovisual Memories as Spaces of Dialogue”, the presentation illustrates how cross‑institutional and community partnerships enable audiovisual archives to function as dynamic civic resources. Working across physical public spaces, online environments and specially designed, curated applications, these initiatives demonstrate how innovative uses of audiovisual archival collections can support inclusive dialogue and meaningful engagement with shared histories across different communities, sectors and generations.

The Importance of Archives in Non-Fiction True Crime Series
The true crime genre has become one of the most widely consumed formats in contemporary audiovisual culture. From classic documentaries to series on digital platforms, one of its essential characteristics is the use of archival materials: police recordings, news footage, trial tapes, photographs, home videos, or excerpts from television programs. These elements are not merely visual resources; they form the foundation that provides credibility, depth, and legitimacy to criminal storytelling. I will talk about 

1. Archives as a guarantee of authenticity
2. Archives as a narrative tool
3. Archives and collective memory
4. Archives as a space of power and ethics
5. Archives as an instrument of public truth
6. The role of the archivist in non-fiction true crime series

This piece explores how the Madeja Archive was created and how it has developed over time. Madeja isn’t just any archive, it’s a dynamic, evolving collection housed within the Fundación de Arte Contemporáneo (FAC) in Uruguay. It all began in the early 2000s, driven by a genuine sense of urgency among artists and curators. They noticed that fragile audiovisual works from the late ’70s onward, recorded on U-Matic, VHS, Betacam, MiniDV, Hi8, and even film, were slowly deteriorating and at risk of disappearing forever.
But Madeja was never intended to be a cold, neutral storage room. From its inception, it was political, personal, and even a bit defiant. The archive emerged from moments when artists and curators discovered their own work decaying on shelves or realized that no one in Uruguay was supporting the preservation of independent audiovisual art. There were no public policies, no safety nets. Madeja approached preservation not only as a technical solution, but as a form of care, a gesture of resistance against being lost or erased.
Time operates differently within Madeja. It isn’t a neat, linear timeline. Each piece in the collection carries at least three layers of time (each layer occurring decades apart): 1. the moment the artist created it, 2. the moment it joined the archive, and 3. the moment someone revisits it to reuse or reinterpret it. Madeja preserves everything: tapes, boxes, handwritten labels, curated playlists, notes from the era. It isn’t just about digital files, it’s about maintaining the complexity and context of each object and the web of relationships around it. The archive ends up resembling a tangled skein (a “madeja” in Spanish) where different eras, technologies, and emotions are intertwined.
This presentation situates Madeja at the heart of important discussions about memory, media archaeology, and the ecological politics of digital preservation. It examines what happens when data exists within fragile environments, or when issues of power and funding (or the lack thereof) determine what survives. By emphasizing collective authorship, marginalized voices, and activist modes of archiving, Madeja understands memory not as a finished narrative, but as something always evolving. It’s about creating room for future curators, artists, and educators to keep these works alive and relevant, regardless of how much time goes by.