Today is World Day for Audiovisual Heritage, started in 2005 by UNESCO in order to help “build global awareness of the various issues at stake in preserving audiovisual heritage.” These issues include deterioration and loss due to time, handling, improper storage, format obsolescence, and poor documentation, and they continue to threaten much of the world’s moving image heritage.
Among these irreplaceable materials are collections devoted to human rights, especially as audiovisual documentation becomes an increasingly important component in human rights campaigns. We are therefore marking the day by taking a deeper look at the role of archives in protecting human rights. From challenging impunity to helping advance restorative justice in countries like Cambodia and Rwanda, archives around the world are proving increasingly crucial for human rights memory and advocacy.
This year’s effort was put together by Teague Schneiter, a current MA candidate at University of Amsterdam’s Presentation and Preservation of the Moving Image program, as part of her internship with both the Hub and the Media Archive.
Get involved by checking out the videos, resources, readings, and the first in a series of interviews with human rights archivists. And we would love thoughts and feedback!