London — According to UNESCO, 80% of audio-visual archives are endangered after 5 to 10 years, if they are not backed up. Most radio stations started in the 1960 and most TV stations in the 1970s. However, a great deal of what they have produced has been lost, either through lack of care or appropriate equipment or limited storage space. Balancing Act's associate editor Sylvain Béletre visited INA (Institut national de l' audiovisual) to understand the role it can play in saving this valuable audio-visual heritage.

As the world's largest digital archive, INA holds over 3.5 million hours of television and radio recordings, dating back to the earliest broadcasts, with a further 800,000 hours of legally deposited material added each year. Such a wealth of material is fascinating enough in itself, but Ina is more than just an archive facility. INA's executive team strongly believes in making Ina's collections available to the widest possible audience, whether on DVD, the Internet or, more recently, on connected TV.

Several producers and broadcaster across Africa have expressed concerns about the lack of skilled audio-visual archives' technicians and availability of archives in several parts of Africa. There are several ways in which Ina can help African governments, broadcasters and productions develop further and there are several examples of how we have helped African broadcasters in the past.

Q. When it comes to audio-visual skills, can professionals from Africa benefit from INA's expert network?

A. INA is at the cutting-edge of research in audiovisual and digital content, conducting both national and international projects. INA via CFI has provided several expertise and training projects on the African continent and used various media operators including INA to assist local broadcast players.

The Inathèque de France regularly organises debates, forums, seminars and workshops on the role of the media in society, in which audiovisual researchers and other professionals take part.

Training is a strong expertise of INA. INA SUP offers a range of initial education courses, from technical degrees to Master's level and including a number of Ina diplomas. INA SUP is open to foreign students. Since October 2007, Ina SUP has offered two specialised courses at Master's level, approved by the Ministry of Culture and Communications. In total, it offers 6 postgraduate diplomas.

INA EXPERT today brings together professionals, students and researchers working on sound and images. It is a unique training centre at the heart of a public audiovisual company.

Q. Regarding the preservation of African audio-visual archives, can INA be consulted to support local heritage?

A. Since 2004, INA has been involved in the preservation of African heritage in partnership with FIAT (International Federation of Television Archives), OIF (Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie), CIRTEF (International Council of Radio-Television of French Expression) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

CFI with INA has also been working to protect African audiovisual heritage. Ina plays an active role within a number of international professional bodies, to share and promulgate their concern, knowledge and conclusions on the subject of audiovisual heritage preservation. In Nairobi, the organisation has contributed to the project "Protecting and Promoting Archives" for public TV channels in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania as part of the Plan Images Archives - See more here

If African producers and broadcasters need audiovisual archives to build new programs, and if nothing is available locally, Ina MEDIAPRO , the leading source of audiovisual content with 500,000 hours of TV programmes, is a service that provides professionals in the audiovisual sector with remote access to INA's newsreels, sounds and images. Ina has been collecting programmes from Hertzean broadcasters and from the main cable and satellite channels. INA co-produces programmes with broadcasters from all over the world, which are presented in the most prestigious festivals.

INA STAT is a statistical tool developed by INA to monitor TV news. It provides a set of quantitative indicators on the content of the major news programmes broadcast by TV channels. By making historical comparisons, focusing on certain themes and analysing the key trends in media coverage, INA STAT continually enhances the knowledge of the national media's approach to news. This "theme-based barometer of television news" can then be published on a regular basis (in France, every quarter), as part of a national media review.

In addition, INA can support digital content storage and sales in local African centres. The organization can help use archives for the production, programming and education purposes regionally:

INA facilitates programs' exchange, for example through the creation of a catalogue of African digital content (via the OIF project). The archives will be valued beyond the African continent. In this perspective, Ina may propose archive owners to participate in its archives portal, giving them international exposure, the ability to develop the commercial exploitation of digital content, and reap commercial revenues - along the lines of what was done with Afghanistan and Cambodia.

A software called "Aimé" (in Fr. 'Archivage Interactif Multimédia Evolutif') was set up and allows radio and TV platforms to digitize their archives via an inexpensive but powerful system. Today, seventeen national radio-television use the "Aimé" system.

Two areas have been highlighted by Ina experts: Training on the system and the development of a tool for remote maintenance.

In 2013, INA has acquired a unique collection of footage shot between 2001 and 2009 by French-American documentarian Anne Aghion, during the production of her series of award- winning TV and feature films on post-genocide Rwanda. Ina will digitise and enhance the archive and provide global access to some 550 tapes, making up 350 hours of footage.

INA also gave a lot of audiovisual archives to various francophone African broadcasters over the African independences' anniversary. In 2007 for example Ina provided Algeria's EPTV with 1862 TV documents equivalent to 138 hours of programmes dating back from 1940 to 1962. Ina also gave the public Algerian radio 1300 sound documents. A similar project took place with Tunisia in 2010 and so on in other countries.

OIF organised a network of a dozen leaders of audiovisual archives in Francophone Africa through the FIAT. These professionals regularly attend seminars on audiovisual archives since 2004. Countries involved are Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d'Ivoire, Djibouti, Gabon, Guinea, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal. The network should be extended in a second phase to other countries such as Cameroon, Togo, Burundi, Congo Kinshasa, Chad. The project will also take into account the exchange program funds (for TV) which gathered in Nairobi at the initiative of URTNA, now called UAR (l'Union africaine de radiodiffusion).

Piloted by INA in the multilateral framework of COPEAM, Med-Mem is a heritage project focused on the Mediterranean region with the support provided by the Euromed Heritage IV programme, funded by the European Union. No fewer than 4000 audiovisual archive items will be available online free of charge, on a trilingual website, enabling a broad range of views of the heritage of the whole Mediterranean area. An enriched interface and a high degree of editorial content offers a multitude of entrance pathways. The archives of 14 Mediterranean television corporations are at your fingertips from 12 October 2012: Just click and you can watch the poet Mahmoud Darwich making his final appearance on television in 2008. Another click reveals footage of the building of the Suez Canal, and much more.

Q. Do you know of any audiovisual preservation and archive centers in Africa.

A. To our knowledge, there are dedicated centers in Burkina Faso, Gabon, Morocco, Madagascar, Mauritius and South Africa.

Q. Could you give us examples of TV programmes related to Africa that you have available for broadcasters or producers?

For the public, the following videos are available to view for free online. Rights can also be purchased by professional players.

In French:

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