Governmental cultural institutions in Italy have been concerned with audiovisual archives and the conservation of their holdings for just a few years now. Until recently, as is known, the preservation of audiovisual material was essentially a matter for the National Film Library and the Experimental Centre of Cinematography based in Rome, which has been responsible for this field by law since 1949. More or less recent surveys carried out by ministerial institutions such as the Italian archives administration or bodies like the AAMOD Foundation (Archivio audiovisivo del movimento operaio e democratico) have brought to light a far more richly varied and complex situation characterized by a vast network of organizations for the gathering, preservation and production of film material. In addition to such well-known archives as the National Film Library, the Istituto Luce, the film libraries of Bologna and Friuli, the National Museum of Cinema in Turin and the AAMOD, there are indeed hundreds of structures concerned with cinema and film protection.

Efforts were made in Italy from the late 1970s to the 1990s through conferences, seminars and exhibitions to foster dialogue and the exchange of views between the bodies involved on common problems (restoration, description, access, use and reuse of film material), largely due to the commitment shown by the National Film Library, the AAMOD Foundation, the historical institutes of the Resistance movement, and coordinating bodies such as the CarL (Centro audiovisivi regione Lazio). Apart from unsystematic and episodic meetings, however, no success was registered in setting up a network of effective operative collaboration on common objectives and projects. It should be pointed out in this connection that film was not recognized in Italy as forming part of the cultural heritage until the end of 1999.

Scientific research and studies have only begun recently on the preservation of film material. It is of course true that international bodies of reference for all the issues involved in the handling of film have been in existence for over half a century, e.g. the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF). In actual fact, however, those responsible for the protection of audiovisual material in nearly all the film libraries and archives in Italy have drawn primarily upon their own experience and expertise developed on the job, and certainly not on structured disciplines or specific institutionally established professional profiles. The situation is thus very different with respect to other areas of cultural heritage, such as paper-based archival records, books and artworks.

As regards cataloguing and access to data on film material, for example, the advent in the mid-1990s of computerized catalogues and relational databases complete with information retrieval systems led to a situation where every audiovisual archives in Italy set up its own information system with its own descriptive model and method of cataloguing tailored to the requirements of managing the different types of materials and content held. Specific standards of description were therefore not applied. The cataloguing rules for film archives published by the FIAF in 1991 constitute the sole exception, but these are in any case derived from library science and have in fact, at least in Italy, never been wholly adopted (just taken into consideration to some extent in certain cases).

A minor miracle has been worked since 2003, above all through the interest and commitment of the ANAI (National Association of Italian Archivists) and its president Isabella Orefice. The ANAI has succeeded not only in drawing the attention of consolidated disciplines such as “traditional” archival science and library science to the field of film conservation but also in making film libraries and archives of audiovisual materials aware of the need to take into account the experience of archivists, documentalists and librarians with respect to the handling of the various types of materials in their care.

The ANAI organized an international conference on cinema in Turin in May 2003, at which film conservators, historians, historians of cinema, collectors, librarians, archivists and training experts exchanged views on a series of issues. The association then proposed, set up, and currently coordinates a national working group on descriptive standards for film material, an initiative that has won the enthusiastic support of numerous large, medium and small Italian audiovisual archives. An effort has thus been made to compensate spontaneously for institutional inaction and delay with respect to the analysis and study of certain problems regarding the treatment of special items of cultural heritage such as audiovisual sources.

The group was initially divided into two sections, one focusing in particular on the treatment of film and the other on “extra-film” or “non-film” (terms whose appropriacy is currently under discussion) materials connected with films and held in audiovisual archives, including objects, posters, playbills, and paper-based documents.

In accordance with the wishes of the majority, the last few meetings have been devoted to developing a cataloguing method for film description, a standard filmographic model capable of acting first of all as a reference source for the identification and description of the works associated with the various archival materials held by the bodies involved in the project (material on film, videos, film stills, film posters, paper-based documentation of various types regarding films, and so on).

In the course of the meetings held as from April 2004, the work connected with this specific theme was addressed in a preliminary phase through the presentation of the criteria and descriptive standards adopted by the individual bodies involved. The meeting held in Sacile near Pordenone in the Friuli film library on 10 October 2005, marked the beginning of in the operative phase with the definition of an initial minimal series of fields (just over twenty) and associated specifications. An initial draft was completed at the next meeting, held in the National Film Library in Rome on 13 December 2005. The efforts are also aimed at creating a descriptive meta-structure based on the primary international models of description and a national catalogue of description and location for audiovisual sources permitting access to Italy’s heritage in this field.

Stimulus had been provided in this direction by the EU project of standardization for the cataloguing of cinematographic works launched in 2005 by the European Commission and entrusted to the CEN (Comité Européen de Normalisation). A ·task force has recently been set up in this connection involving some of the most important European film libraries (Germany, France, United Kingdom, Spain). Italy is represented at present by the National Film Library but the participation of other bodies is not ruled out. The European project pursues two objectives: 1) a minimal set of rules for the cataloguing of audiovisual and cinematographic works (limited to 20 essential fields); 2) a complete cataloguing standard capable of acting as a point of reference both for the creation of new databases for the description of audiovisual materials and for the adoption of a common language with a view to the interoperability of computerized archives.

In this connection, having noted that its work on a national filmographic model coincided with the aims of the European project, the ANAI group decided at the meeting in Sacile to focus in this phase on the first goal set by the European task force, i.e. the definition of a minimal standard of 20 fields (accompanied by a glossary). This model was regarded as the minimum required for the sharing of data, the interoperability of databases, and the creation of a national catalogue.