Digital expansion of Soviet Estonian newsreels collection: Challenges and new perspectives

BAAC CONFERENCE 2022 ABSTRACT

Kadi Sikka
Preservation specialist and project manager at the Film Archive of the National Archives of Estonia

The Soviet Estonian newsreels collection consists of around 1,400 titles. This unique material reflects local life and people through 50 years, including the politically loaded and carefully
staged footage of the first decade of Soviet occupation as well as more complex, even experimental pieces from the late 1960s onward. The production of Soviet Estonian
newsreels reached its peak in the early 1960s when Tallinnfilm studio made around 50 items annually, thus offering great news value to the public.

Between 2020–2023, the Estonian Film Archive (EFA) is managing two large-scale digitization projects. The core of this newly digitized content comprises 140 hours of 35mm
newsreels from 1940–1972. As a result, the majority of the EFA’s newsreels collection will be digitized, cataloged and made accessible online.

More than four times busier digitization workflow is a challenge requiring extensive preparation work and research of existing film elements, but it also opens up new
perspectives and provides an opportunity to analyze the content and its physical condition from a fresh angle. Unlike narrative features produced in Soviet Estonia, the original film
elements of newsreels are physically preserved in Estonia, at the EFA. However, the existing sets of elements weren’t as homogeneous as expected and needed an individual approach – in contrast to the nature of mass digitization. This presentation will peek inside the conservation lab, focus on the preparation workflow prior digitization and gives an insight into the
mapping of film elements, selection criteria, condition survey processes and educational use of the analyzed content.