Journal of Film Preservation N° 56 - FIAF

in English and Vietnamese, with simultaneous translation. Symposium
papers were available in hard-copy in both English and Vietnamese
translations.
The official opening, on the evening of Sunday 22 March, was honoured
by the participation of the Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Pham Gia Khiem,
who gave the keynote address. Professor Tran Luan Kim, VFI Director,
welcomed the delegates and SEAPAVAA President, Ray Edmondson,
responded. It was a colourful occasion, with participants wearing their
national dress and an honour guard from Vietnam’s youth movement
presenting a bouquet of flowers to each foreign guest.
The conference got down to work at 8 am the following morning, as the
theme symposium began. Papers and presentations ranged over current
situation reports from various countries, a detailed coverage of AV
archiving activity in Vietnam, the newly-launched ASEAN AV database,
copyright and legal-deposit issues, a range of technical topics in audio,
video and film, and the promotion and delivery of access services. These
were interspersed with the sharing of case studies and “solutions that
worked”.
The General Assembly - the “annual general meeting” of SEAPAVAA -
took place in three sessions, the final one on the closing day, 28 March.
This embraced committee reports, the admission of new members, work
program and budget for the coming year, and other formal business. (In
accordance with regional practice, the minutes of the week’s proceedings
were reviewed and confirmed at this closing session).
As context to these two streams, a festival of films from the collections of
SEAPAVAA members was publicly presented at the VFI’s cinema, and a
presentation by historians David Hannan (Australia) and Augustin Sotto
(Philippines) offered an overview, in contemporary film clips, of the
emergence of S E Asia from colonialism during the first 70 years of this
century.
Participants gained a taste of Vietnam though a performance at the
famed Water Puppet theatre, a presentation of traditional Vietnamese
music, a visit to the house of President Ho Chi Minh (a historic site) and
an excursion to Ha Long Bay, a breathtaking UNESCO World Heritage
site which participants toured by boat. There was also a tour of the VFI’s
building in Hanoi, including its storage vaults and newly-installed
telecine chain. (With a substantial operation also in Ho Chi Minh City,
the VFI is one of the largest AV archives in S E Asia/Pacific).
One important and visible outcome of the conference was the adoption
of a policy statement (SEAPAVAA’s first) on the subject of Access - which
will be circulated separately. Another will be the production of a succinct
history of the cinemas of S E Asian countries, to be published by VFI at
the end of 1988. A third is the strengthening of committee activity (SEA-
PAVAA now has 4 standing committees: Collections, Technical, Training,
Promotion/Communication).
65 Journal of Film Preservation / 56 / 1998