FIAT/IFTA World Conference 2024

What is the legacy of television archives in Eastern Europe today? How does this legacy position these institutions as part of national and European cultural heritage and collective memory?

The workshop aims to raise questions that are relevant for broadcast archives across Eastern Europe, a region that has been recurrently defined through its communist past and approached by those within and outside the region primarily through its differences to Western archives.

In this workshop, good practices and challenges related to the re-use of TVR’s archival material and the clearing of rights of archival material will be discussed in order to rethink what constitutes the public value of television in the region, how television archives can stay relevant and how they can play a role in futureproofing public broadcasting.

These discussions will be contrasted with broader questions on how TVR and TVR archives can re-assert their role in collective national and European memory without being reduced to their communist past. Do broadcast institutions from the former communist Eastern Europe, such as TVR, still carry with them the stigma of past political regime and if so, how and by whom is that stigma maintained? How can the (re-)use of television archives offer solutions to help surpass limiting beliefs and reductionist understandings, which to the present day still guide the dialogue with and about public television and television archives in the region?

Through hands-on exercises and activities, this workshop invites attendees to think along of the unique positioning of television archives from the region as part of European cultural heritage. Attendees will also be invited to (self-)reflect on the prejudices and stereotyping that are recurrently brought to the table when engaging with broadcast institutions and broadcast archives from Eastern Europe and recognize the urgency with which such practices need to be rendered visible and addressed.