After sixty years, Budapest will once again host the Congress of the International Association of Film Archives (FIAF) between April 24 and 29 at the Uránia National Film Theater. Hundreds of film professionals from all over the world are expected to attend the event.

The event is hosted by the National Film Institute (NFI), and its central theme is the preservation, digitization and delivery of non-feature film collections to the public, the NFI informed on Thursday.

The aim of the congress is for the participants to get answers from the lectures of international experts on how non-feature film heritage can be made more effectively available to the general public and professional users.

In the program, a screening program is also connected to the lectures of the symposium. The film The Worker's Jacket, digitally restored by the NFI - Film Archive and Film Laboratory, which was discovered in 2017 at the EYE Film Museum in Amsterdam, will be presented for the first time at the FIAF Congress. The 39-minute silent film Gyula Hegedűs (1870-1931), made in 1914, is the only surviving film of one of the greatest actors of his time, which can be enjoyed by the audience of the conference with the live musical accompaniment of the Jazzical Quintet.

Among the symposia is the presentation of Torma Galina, a staff member of the NFI film archive, in which she describes in detail the work of identifying, reconstructing, digitizing and publishing Hungarian film newsreels that are more than 100 years old.

There is a lot of interest in this year's FIAF congress, 240 professionals from more than 100 film institutions are coming to Budapest from all over the world, including leading staff from European, American and Asian film archives. In addition, international universities and professional exhibitors also participate.

The International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) was founded in 1938 in Paris. Today, it has a total of 170 members from 79 countries. The organization formulates guidelines and recommendations regarding the preservation, renovation and delivery of the film to the public, in both theoretical and practical aspects.

Source: MTI/MH

Picture: Lili Chripkó