Unesco National Action Day for Heritage Resilience

This action-day is symbolically organized on 14 May, as it was on this day in 1940 that The Netherlands lost a great part of their cultural property during the bombing of Rotterdam. On the same date in 1954, the Unesco Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict was signed, a convention that emphasizes the national responsibility in the protection of cultural property and heritage.

With the annual action-day for heritage resilience, Unesco honors this history and together with museums, institutions, and organizations within the Dutch heritage sector aims to raise awareness about the importance of protecting our national heritage.

Registration week of the acetate analogue film collection

Around the action-day Eye, with its expertise and commitment to the preservation of film, will host a registration week, organized by Leenke Ripmeester (Head of Curators) and Rixt Jonkman (head of Collections management). They will bring together Eye employees as well as a big group of volunteers to register and document Eye’s big collection of analogue acetate film. Anne Gant, who is Interim Sector Manager Collections at Eye, explained Eye’s decision for a designated week for the registration of acetate analogue film:

‘We normally register films on an ongoing basis, but we wanted to do a test case where a lot of people – curators, restorers, registrars, technicians and supporting experts – stop everything else and do a big campaign, to see how that works, and what we can accomplish with a different, more intense mode of registration. The Collections Management Department has already been busy moving pallets of films into position, so we are prepared to start on Monday with a big team effort.’

The importance of archiving

With the National Action Day for Heritage Resilience, Unesco wants to shed light on the vulnerability of national heritage and gives a call to action to make Dutch heritage more resilient to external threats. On their website, Unesco states the increasing risk of crises, like war-threats, climate change and cyber-attacks. Eye takes these risks into account in the registration and documentation of their analogue film collection. This process requires a lot of reading and following case studies for archives who have experienced disaster scenarios, such as flooding, cyberattack, fire, Gant says. She also emphasizes the importance of excellent record keeping:

‘Without clear knowledge of what is in a collection, it becomes much more difficult to protect, restore, find or declare objects missing or damaged. It's extremely important that a collection manager is able to know the location and current condition of everything. Also in case we need to evacuate a collection or part of a collection to avoid a dangerous situation, quick access to records is essential, so we can locate items quickly and efficiently.’

Hidden treasures

Since digital projection has become the norm, Eye has received a lot of analogue film copies from distributors. All new contributions to Eye’s film collection must be reviewed, registered and documented to preserve them for the future. With the registration week, where a lot of people work together to register Eye’s film collection, one of the exciting prospects is the possibility of finding hidden treasures.

Gant: ‘Sometimes incoming objects have not been labeled well, and we discover something totally different in the can. Sometimes we find a unique film, or even a film that has been considered lost. I am sure this week will reveal some surprises to us, but I really can't guess what we will find. At the end of the week we'll have to do a report!’