Exploring the Moving Image: The Role of Audiovisual Archives as Partners for Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage Institutions

Film archives still linger at the fringes of the galleries, libraries, archives, and museums sector. However, in the opinion of this author, they are the logical partners when it comes to the curation, publication, exploration, and interconnection of online resources. I intend to address some of the obstacles which have so far prevented more successful collaborations and projects, as well as present positive examples of interdisciplinary exchange within the field. Modern universities still tend to separate scholarship from curation, a fact that is hardly deniable. The latter is normally reduced to a secondary and supportive role, while the digital humanities instead commit themselves explicitly to a new definition of the “scholar as curator and curator as scholar.” Lev Manovich, who coined the term “cultural analytics,” is among the pioneers in the field who work on projects that unite cultures and institutions. My own work with Manovich on the visualization of filmic structures in the films by the Russian filmmaker Dziga Vertov can serve as a model for successful collaboration between a film archive and a research institution