FIAT/IFTA World Conference 2024

During the footage research for the production of a documentary about sexism in the world of sport, it is highlighted how not only the audiovisual documents themselves but also the metadata that accompany them reflect the model of society and the framework of thought at the moment in which they were created. The challenge of the research was to find fragments that showed attitudes that attract attention today for their sexist tone but that at the time were considered normal and therefore were not described as such in the metadata. The research had to be done blindly, listening to interviews, anticipating the results and thinking about how they would have been described years ago, appealing to the memory of the oldest workers in the medium and navigating the ancient thesaurus, which is in itself a reflection of this thinking 40 years ago when women's sport was not at the same level as men's.  

Once the material has been located and the documentary made, the following question arises: Should we or should we not correct the metadata in our MAM system and update the description according to the current parameters? Our archive has the dual mission of preserving the audiovisual heritage while serving current broadcasting. To fulfill the first mission shouldn't we keep the material with the original metadata? Whereas, to fulfill the second mission, shouldn't we update them to facilitate research for the production of new material?

We will accompany the presentation of a small sample of the material found during the research to exemplify the need to revise the metadata to make these items accessible for future productions.