AVA interfilm Kurzfilmbibliothek ZLB Berlin © James-McBreen (AVA)
The “Audio Visual Access” (AVA) project, which is supported by Creative Europe MEDIA, networks European short film festivals with local public libraries, with the aim of reaching and attracting new audience groups with short film programmes from various festivals.
In Germany, the project kicked off in March in Cologne. Two viewing stations were set up in the city library here, where 50 short films from the most recent edition of the KFFK/Short Film Festival Cologne can be viewed free-of-charge. In Berlin, thanks to a cooperative arrangement between the interfilm festival and the ZLB Berlin Central and Regional Library, roughly 200 short films from the festival’s programme can be seen from 5 May to 31 July 2017. AVA has set up eight viewing stations in the Amerika-Gedenkbibliothek and in the Berliner Stadtbibliothek public libraries for this.
Further cooperative arrangements with AVA have also been established in Amentea, Italy (La Guarimba Festival), in Bristol (Encounters), in Cork (Cork Film Festival), in Leuven (Kort Film Festival) and in Ylöjärvi (Tampere Film Festival).
AVA is a project from the reelport GmbH company, for which the Cologne-based firm received Creative Europe MEDIA support of €150,000 in 2016 in the “Audience Development” area. On a technical level, reelport has set up AVA on its PicturePipe service. This business-to-business platform has already run several digital media libraries at various film and television events, including the MIPDoc film market, as well as with Cinando at the Marché du Film in Cannes.
The festivals clarify the respective rights to the films for AVA and upload them together with metadata to the AVA film server. The member libraries then provide access for their users to the streamed films at viewing stations. Films can be browsed on the basis of key words, genres, direction, year of release or country categories, and compiled into individualised playlists. The number of films, as well as the various project durations and the distribution systems adopted by the libraries differ from location to location.
The Tampere Film Festival, for instance, has provided access in the neighbouring city of Ylöjärvi to 57 short films from this year’s programme. With the regional library there even planning to let the users have access to the films at home via its online network. Since 1 June of this year, the Cork Film Festival has shown 13 films from the 2016 festival programme in the city’s Central Library. After the 2017 festival, the aim is to include further films, which the holder of a library pass can then access at a video-on-demand station.
The aim of the projects is to avail of the film festivals’ expertise so as to make quality films accessible to larger audiences and to facilitate libraries in the non-physical lending of audio-visual content.
further information: www.ava-library.com
AVA Kurzfilmbibliothek Köln: stadtbibliothek/zentralbibliothek/ava-die-kurzfilmbibliothek
Cinemathek der ZLB Berlin: www.zlb.de/fachinformation/spezialbereiche/cinemathek.html
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