In mid-June this year, I travelled to the Thai Film Archive to attend the 3rd Global Audiovisual Archiving (GAVA) Conference. Many attendees of this event also took the opportunity to participate in other conferences held in the same month: the annual conferences of the Southeast Asia-Pacific Audiovisual Archive Association (SEAPAVAA), held in Malaysia, and of the Association for Curators and Programmers of Asian Cinemas (ACPAC), hosted concurrently at the Thai Film Archive. The gathering brought together a community with a long-standing history of collaboration and exchange. The rare reunion fostered an enthusiastic and vibrant atmosphere of discussion on site.
GAVA is a biennial roving platform designed to promote exchange within the audiovisual archiving community. Guided by an Advisory Board composed of film archive practitioners and scholars worldwide, the conference is dedicated to bridging cultural, institutional, and economic gaps within the field. Following its successful editions at the Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam (2022) and the Toronto International Film Festival (2024), this year’s conference continued to drive deep cross-border dialogues and close interactions. The organising committee for this edition included Chalida Uabumrungjit and Sanchai Chotirosseranee from the Thai Film Archive, Karen Chan from the Asian Film Archive (Singapore), Lisabona Rahman from the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF), Martino Cipriani from Bangkok University, and Giovanna Fossati from Utrecht University. This year’s host institution, the Thai Film Archive, operates as a state agency. Formerly part of government departments, it was restructured into a public organisation in 2009 to allow for greater administrative flexibility.
Spanning four days from 15 to 18 June, the programme was compact and substantial, featuring multiple roundtables, individual presentations, lecture-performances, and film screenings, focusing on global film heritage preservation, local practices, and transnational mobility. The topics addressed preservation crises, digital restoration, and community collaboration challenges across Asia, Africa, and beyond. In addition to academic symposia, participants had the opportunity to explore the comprehensive facilities of the Thai Film Archive. On the final day, delegates were taken on a tour of century-old cinemas and other landmarks to experience the local cultural context firsthand.
Under the theme ‘Outside of the Frame’, this year’s conference concentrated on audiovisual preservation issues beyond mainstream perspectives and traditional boundaries. Drawing from the practices of diverse regions and communities, numerous speakers reflected on how archives formulate strategies to counter geopolitical tensions, resource disparities, and technological gaps, thereby re-examining how audiovisual materials can highlight overlooked historical landscapes. Please refer to this link for detailed programme.
To be continued in Part II.