Goals and Achievements

The Association of European Cinémathèques (ACE) is an affiliation of 40 national and regional preservation film archives from all over Europe. Its joint role is to protect the European film heritage and to assure that the audio-visual records of our century survive to be enjoyed and studied for generations to come.

Recognising that film is essentially trans-national in character and that its problems of survival cannot be solved at national level alone, the founder-members of ACE came together in the late 80s to seek co-operative ways of saving and restoring the European film heritage.

ACE´s main aims are:

to guarantee the survival of the European film heritage

• to ensure and enhance its continuing visibility on the cinema screen as well as through new moving-image technologies

To achieve these aims, ACE strives to:

• promote public interest in European film culture and its history
• awaken awareness of its cultural and economic value among European decisionmakers and the audio-visual industry
• create favourable economic and legal conditions to allow the European film archives to fulfil their professional tasks
• raise sufficient funds to safeguard the medium
• co-ordinate support for the conservation, restoration and revival of films preserved in European archives
• develop European-wide technical and scientific research into conservation and restoration of film materials

European Co-operation:

The achievement of ACE's predecessor, the LUMIERE Project, supported by the MEDIA I Programme of the European Union, has already proved how successful European collaboration among film archives can be. The LUMIERE Project led to:

• new-scale effects and positive structural changes in the European archive community
• the preservation and restoration of more than 1.000 European films (including shorts and documentaries) up to the 1960s, based on international technical co-operation and exchanges
• the rediscovery and identification of 700 European films or unique film versions
• a filmographic database of all European feature films produced since 1895

Under MEDIA II, ACE has succeeded in setting up a professional training programme for students and archivists (ARCHIMEDIA), and in gaining funds from RAPHAEL for the continued support of a search for lost European films; from CALEIDOSCOPE for the technical research project All the Colours of the World (the restoration of silent film colouring systems); and from LEONARDO for the Internet project Film Archives Online.

However, these projects - although valuable in themselves - are not sufficient to change the overall critical situation regarding the protection and accessibility of the European film heritage.

What ACE needs:

Active financial, political and public support for

• its initiatives in the field of preservation and restoration
• a change in the relationship between the archives and the film industry, allowing the systematic re-investment of exploitation funds back into preservation
• a new legal framework for archive activity
• more technical and scientific research into preservation and restoration methods on a European scale.

Film heritage will play a decisive role in our cultural identity and memory and in the aspirations of the audio-visual industries. The preservation archives are the basic platform for that process.