Cataloguing the amateur film collection "Niederösterreich privat"

Project title Cataloguing the amateur film collection "Niederösterreich privat".
Duration 2022-2027
Description

The collection "Niederösterreich privat" is the result of a highly successful call for contributions of small-gauge films initiated by the province of Lower Austria together with the Filmarchiv Austria in 2013. A total of over 70,000 films from more than 2,700 contributors were archived and digitised.

The films in this collection bear witness to the extraordinary as well as everyday life and how it is perceived. The film documents provide insights into family gatherings, village life and regional worlds of experience and stimulate research questions about ecological, cultural, and social developments.

Building on a pilot project by "first" (Forschungsnetzwerk Interdisziplinäre Regionalstudien) 2018 and 2019, this project at the Institute of Rural History, St. Pölten, is dedicated to indexing the contents of the film material from the 1910s to the early 1990s. During this long period, filming as a documentary practice was able to establish itself first among privileged groups and later, after the “Super 8” format was introduced in 1965, among ever larger segments of the Austrian population.

The digital catalogue that is being created should make it possible to quickly obtain information about types of content within the extensive film collection and to be able to find targeted films on specific topics, places, and events. “Your films write history” was the motto of the call for contributions. This catalogue is intended to help bring this idea to life and form the basis for research activities and cultural projects on the motifs and modes of representation of such films. Another aim of the project is to deepen networking and exchange processes with national and international experts in the field of collecting and researching amateur films and home movies, among other activities by participating in the European Rural History Film Association.

Contact Brigitte Semanek
Links Katalogisierung der Amateurfilmsammlung „Niederösterreich privat“
Niederösterreich privat collection

Agricultural film production in 20th century Switzerland: Identification, indexing, preserving and digitizing

Project title Agricultural film production in 20th century Switzerland: Identification, indexing, preserving and digitizing.
Duration Ongoing
Description

The aim of the project is to identify, catalogue, preserve, digitise and publish the so called “agricultural films”. Agricultural films were produced by agricultural organisations, state agencies, educational institutions, cooperatives, manufacturers, film productions companies or individual filmmakers. Most of these films have survived as part of the archival materials of the institutions who either commissioned or produced them.

The identified films (so far circa 1700) are catalogued in the European Rural History Film Database (ERHFDB); the films themselves are preserved by specialised film archives (Kinemathek Lichtspiel Bern; Cinémathèque Suisse in Lausanne). We assemble information on the produced films as well as on films which were planned, but never realised. This information can be consulted in the Archives of Rural History.

A selection of the films (so far circa 150) has been digitised and can be consulted via the ERHF Online Portal.

Support The project is supported by Memoriav
Contact Andreas Wigger: andreas.wigger[at]agrararchiv.ch
Links Archives of Rural History (ARH), Bern

Cinema Rural: Mapping and description of audio-visual material about rural life in Flemish-Belgium

Project title Cinema Rural: Mapping and description of audio-visual material about rural life in Flemish-Belgium.
Duration Ongoing
Description

The development of cinema culture has long been regarded as an urban phenomenon. Recent research shows that the countryside and the agricultural sector played a much greater role in this than was initially thought. Then Government institutions and agricultural organizations saw film as an extremely powerful medium for communication with rural population.

The most important collections are those of the Boerenbond and the former Federal Ministry of Agriculture. These collections have been described and catalogued. Some films have been digitized. Altogether, these collections contain almost a thousand films on agriculture in Belgium.

Contact Sven Lefèvre
Links Centrum Agrarische Geschiedenis (CAG), Leuven

Indexing the amateur film collection "Niederösterreich privat"

Project title Indexing the amateur film collection "Niederösterreich privat"
Duration 2018-2019
Description

In 2013, the Federal Province of Lower Austria and the Filmarchiv Austria launched a call for contributions to a new collection of small-gauge films. In the following years, more than 63,000 film rolls were collected. They were digitized and archived by the Filmarchiv Austria. This project aims at developing an indexing system in order to make this vast amount of material accessible for future research projects. In our pilot study, a conceptual framework for content indexing will be developed and a limited part of the films will be catalogued accordingly. At the same time, small case studies explore potentials of the source material for historical research on rural areas: from serial images of banquets to representations of the Cold War era from a Lower Austrian perspective and agricultural techniques in moving pictures.

Contact Brigitte Semanek
Links Institut für Geschichte des ländlichen Raumes (IGLR)

Mémoires filmées d’agriculture en Auvergne Rhône Alpes (1970-2000)

Project title Mémoires filmées d’agriculture en Auvergne Rhône Alpes (1970-2000)
Duration 2018-2021
Description

A l’heure où la société s’interroge de manière croissante sur son rapport à l’environnement, aux usages concurrentiels des espaces ruraux et à l’alimentation, aux liens renouvelés entre villes et campagnes, où le modèle de production agricole initié depuis la fin de la seconde guerre mondiale est de plus en plus questionné, l’objectif du projet est d’observer et d’analyser, à travers des sources audiovisuelles, les modalités de la mise en place, de l’évolution et des impacts de la révolution agricole à l’échelle des territoires Rhône-alpins et auvergnats.

Pour ce faire, l’objectif est d’exploiter un gisement documentaire inédit et original, un fond d’environ 169 films à destination des agriculteurs, réalisés entre 1970 et 2010 par une association travaillant à l’échelon régional, « télé-Promotion rural ». Grâce à ce fond, il s’agit à la fois de mener un travail de recherche, inscrit dans une dynamique scientifique innovante, celle de l’usage scientifique des images animées, sur un sujet encore largement délaissé par les historiens, tout en s’attachant à la préservation et à la valorisation d’un patrimoine audiovisuel au devenir encore fragile, mais qui constitue un outil de réflexion et de communication en direction des agriculteurs, des institutions mémorielles, des habitants et territoires ruraux et des apprenants de l’enseignement agricole, dans le cadre d’une action culturelle innovante.

Contact Edouard Lynch
Links project website

Farmers on the Screen

Project title Farmers on the Screen
Duration 2022-2023
Description

After the successful heritage project 'Cinema Rural' CAG continues its path in cataloguing, describing and preserving the audiovisual heritage of rural and agriculture history. Funded by the Flemish Government, the project “Farmers on the screen” centers around the agricultural television program ‘Voor Boer en Tuinder’ (For Farmer and Horticulturalist). The program ran on the Belgian public broadcaster BRT from 1959 until 1989. More than 470 episodes were produced over time and aired on Sunday afternoon. The project started in 2022 and will be finished by the end of 2023.

For many, 'Voor Boer en Tuinder' is a television monument. Since 1959, the BRT program was a regular Sunday afternoon appointment and gave an insight into the ins and outs of Belgian agriculture and the countryside. The main purpose of the program was to inform farmers and horticulturists about new agricultural practices in the agricultural sector.

What began as a means of educating farmers and gardeners, however, quickly grew into an iconic program that also reached an extensive non-agricultural audience. As such, the program has a great historical legacy because it not only portrayed the modernization of agricultural and horticultural practices, but equally because it played an important role in the representation of the agricultural sphere in the public debate.

During the project CAG aims to provide all 470 episodes with qualitative descriptions, based on archival research and make these descriptions public accessible in the ERHFA-database. Furthermore, a selection of episodes will be digitized, followed by a thorough research on the involved copyrights. A selection of these digitized episodes will be made publicly available for educational and scientific purposes.

In order to engage with the public and to add to the quality of the descriptions, CAG will organize different working sessions together with different agricultural museums to engage with volunteers who have a background in agriculture. They will assess and discuss the episodes and their specialized findings will be added to the descriptions.

Behind the scenes, the project is a perfect opportunity to further enhance the digital infrastructure which holds and structures all the data on these agricultural moving images in Belgium. We engage with the aim of the Flemish government to make all collections interconnected and machine-readable. It serves as a pilot-project to implement the so-called 'OSLO-standard' (Open Standards for Linking Organizations) to digitally anchor the mutual relationship between the various collections and heritage types in Flanders in a sustainable way. In this way the project pursues an integral heritage approach, with an eye to greater interconnectivity of agricultural heritage, which ultimately also translates into better and greater digital availability for users.

In this way, CAG continues to work with its partners to highlight the fascinating and beautiful audiovisual heritage of agriculture and the countryside.

Contact Sven Lefèvre
Links Centre for Agrarian History (CAG)
Voor boer en tuinder