Inauguration and Seminar

That's it! We have inaugurated the Center, a ceremony which went very smoothly, was moving at some points and overall a big source of pride.

Also, the 2nd Asian Seminar on Audiovisual Archives which we co-organized is over and went quite well. Staff and founders of the Center took an active part in the debates and the organization of this seminar. The last "table ronde" was about the filming of trials of historical importance with regard to genocide and crimes agains humanity. A historian by the name of Christian Delage explained the role of audiovisual material as evidence in such trials and the role of their being filmed. A prosecutor of the so-called Khmer Rouge trial was there, as well as a member of the adminitration of the tribunal who works for the media department.

The other debates were:

1. A case study of the Bophana Center project
2. Case studies of other countries in the region (Vietnam, China, Thailand, Laos...)
   
3. Funding, cooperation and partnerships for the rescue of audiovisual archive material
4. What policy should be used by television channels in deciding what to archive and what to discard.

The case of CCTV in China was very impressive: if I remember well, 6,000 sq. m. of storage space, 500 archivists, a thousand technicians, 75 terabytes of online digital storage and another 1,200 terabytes of digital storage on tapes (that's about 160,000 double-layer DVDs...)

All the best,

Joseph