Film preservation is about the future of your films – and it begins at the production stage (or before). How do you document yourself? Do you know where your materials and data are? How are they organised and stored – and who can access them? How sustainably have rights issues been resolved – especially if you have integrated third-party material?

This session is about empowering you as a filmmaking professional – so that you may become aware of challenges and opportunities that are not much talked about in the film industry and so that you are equipped to ask the right questions and find answers that serve your individual work best. Which archive might be right for you, when is the right moment for such a decision and why? Let’s take a look together at the most practicable journey of your film into the film archive.

Elisa Jochum, Department Head of Film, and Jennifer Borrmann, Documentation Audiovisual Collection, from the film archive at Deutsche Kinemathek talk to you about what the archive can do for your films, but also what you can do to archive yourself and prepare the safekeeping of your work for posteriority as well as its accessibility for future use. In order to empower yourself in this respect, knowledge about the minimum safety standards for preservation is essential.

Endorsing the circular nature of new and archival film, this session also discusses relevant questions and possible steps when you are researching already archived film material for your next project. Only thanks to previous preservation work, you can draw on existing films to enrich your documentary and fiction films. Exploring archival films can lead you to new films.

With this offer, the EFM Industry Sessions aim to contribute to the UN Sustainable Development Goals 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth) and 12 (Responsible Consumption & Production).