film material from EFG1914
The Deutsches Filminstitut, coordinator of the European film digitisation project about the First World War, EFG1914, and its European partners welcome the appreciation of their work by the United Nations
With a ceremonial event, the United Nations (UN) commemorate the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the First World War in the presence of Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon tonight (6:30 p.m. local time) in New York. The event will be the only commemoration of WW1 that will bring all the Member States of the United Nations together. A clip with film material digitised by the EFG1914 partners will be shown to several hundred international diplomatic representatives as introduction to the event. European film archives participating in the EFG1914 digitisation project provided the trailer to the UN. It shows original footage from and about WW1, which was digitised with support by the European Commission over the last two years. EFG1914 has digitised more than 700 hours of historic film material and made these available online for the first time on the European Film Gateway (http://europeanfilmgateway.eu/1914) and on Europeana (http://europeana.eu).
Organised by the Permanent Missions of France and Germany, the event commemorates the tragedy of the First World War and sends out a joint message of peace and reconciliation through a speech by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. ´We very much appreciate that footage from the valuable films digitised by EFG1914 partners can now be seen on the central commemoration event of the United Nations´, says Claudia Dillmann, Director of the Deutsches Filminstitut.
A live webcast of the event will be available 8 July 2014 at 18:30 EDT (0:30 CEST): http://webtv.un.org/
The European Film Gateway 1914 provides an extensive overview of the contemporary film production during WW1. Almost 3,000 newsreels, documentary, animation and feature films can be viewed online. The Deutsches Filminstitut in Frankfurt am Main coordinated the work of 31 partners in 15 countries. With the engagement of film archives across Europe, a unique corpus of historic film material has been made available to the public that not only covers all phases and most of the places of the First World War, but also all forms and genres from propaganda films to anti-war dramas.
The films can also be found on the theme portal www.europeana1914-1918.eu, which contains also books and text documents digitised by national libraries and private collection items and memorabilia collected by Europeana1914-1918 ongoing activity of collection days all across Europe.
EFG1914 Project partners and associated partners: Arhiva Nationala de Filme, Bucharest | Association des Cinémathèques Européennes, Brussels/Frankfurt | Athena Research and Innovation Center in Information, Communication and Knowledge Technologies, Athens | Bundesarchiv, Berlin | Centre National du Cinéma et de l´Image Animée-Archives françaises du film, Bois d´Arcy| Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, Rom | Cinecittà Luce S.p.A, Rome | Cinémathèque royale de Belgique, Brussels | Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna | CNR-ISTI, Pisa | Det Danske Filminstitut, Copenhagen | Deutsche Kinemathek - Museum für Film und Fernsehen, Berlin | Deutsches Filminstitut - DIF, Frankfurt | Estonian Film Archive, Tallinn | EYE Film Institut Netherlands, Amsterdam | Filmarchiv Austria, Vienna| Filmoteca Española, Madrid | Fondazione Cineteca Italiana, Milan| Fraunhofer IIS, Erlangen | Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung, Wiesbaden | Imperial War Museums, London | IVAC, Valencia | Jugoslovenska Kinoteka, Belgrade | La Cineteca del Friuli, Gemona | Landesfilmsammlung Baden Württemberg, Stuttgart | Magyar Nemzeti Digitalís Archivum És Filmintezét, Budapest | Museo Nazionale del Cinema, Turin | Národní filmový archiv, Prague | Nasjonalbiblioteket, Oslo | Österreichisches Filmmuseum, Vienna | reelport GmbH, Cologne
Facts about the EFG1914 project and the European Film Gateway:
EFG1914 is co-ordinated by the Deutsches Filminstitut with the support of the Federal Commissioner for Culture and the Media and the Hessen State Ministry of Higher Education, Research and the Arts. The project is co-financed with €2.1 million by the ICT-PSP Programme of the European Union.
The digitised films are stored and hosted locally on the websites and repositories of the participating archives. The European Film Gateway (EFG), developed 2008-2011, provides a single point of research and access to these materials.
EFG collects descriptive and access information (metadata) and provides them to Europeana, the platform for cultural heritage in Europe initiated by the European Commission. This way, the collections of Europe's film archives are connected with collections of more than 2,000 cultural heritage institutions – libraries, museums and archives – in Europe. To date, EFG provides access to almost 650,000 images, posters, films and film historic documents from more than 30 European archives, providing film archivists, researchers and scientists, students and interested citizens with important information.
Links:
EFG1914: http://www.europeanfilmgateway.eu/1914
Europeana 1914-1918: http://www.europeana1914-1918.eu
Filmportal: http://www.filmportal.de
Presse- und Öffentlichkeitsarbeit
Leitung: Frauke Haß
Tel. 069 961 220-222
Fax 069 961 220-579
EFG - The European Film Gateway
Georg Eckes (Projektkoordination)
Tel +49 69 961 220 631
Fax +49 69 961 220 999