World Day for Audiovisual Heritage 2025; October 27th.

FORUM: "Your window to the world." World Day for Audiovisual Heritage 2025. This year is special as audiovisual archives around the world commemorate the 20th anniversary of WDAVH in raising awareness of the importance and urgency of protecting audiovisual materials to ensure their long-term availability and accessibility. Audiovisual documentary heritage opens a window to the world through the generations of incredibly unique stories. They reveal the ingenuity of the human spirit and vision, the spectacular lessons learnt from the diversity of cultures, that generate inspiration and creativity. In a world now wrought by insularity and struggling with the pain of war, moving images, aural and oral recordings are effective tools to bridge differences, bringing about much needed empathy, compassion and encouragement. You can be a part of this preservation movement. Follow the conversations with the hashtags: #WorldDayforAudiovisualHeritage, #WDAH, #audiovisual ,#27october, #AudiovisualHeritageDay #AudiovisualHeritage.

EVENT: On October 27th, a virtual event will be held by the UNESCO and the Coordinating Council of Audiovisual Archives Association (CCAAA) to mark the World Day for Audiovisual Heritage 2025. The WDAH 20th anniversary was celebrated at the UNESCO HQ in Paris.

On Thursday 23 October,  From 16:00 to19:00 at UNESCO Cinema, 7 Place de Fontenoy in Paris; was held the 20th anniversary of World Day for Audiovisual Heritage; On this special occasion, have been showcased a selection of newly digitized films from the UNESCO Archives thanks to the support of UNESCO Member States France and Monaco. The Co-ordinating Council of Audiovisual Archives Associations (CCAAA) have also presented films from around the world shared by its member organizations. This celebration emphasizes the importance of preserving the world’s audiovisual heritage by highlighting a rich selection of unique audiovisual archives. Powerful films and unseen footage that embody UNESCO’s and CCAAA’s core values, alongside brief talks by members of UNESCO and CCAAA. The screening will end with a question-and-answer period inviting lively discussions with the public about the preservation and impact of audiovisual archives. The event is free of charge.Seating is limited and registration is required. Click here to take part in the event. For further information, please contact info@ccaaa.org to help you. Registration.

Presented by Moving Image Research Collections at the University of South Carolina for the 2025 World Day for Audiovisual Heritage. Streaming from October 27, 2025.

MIRC celebrates the 2025 World Day for Audiovisual Heritage — marking its 20th anniversary — with a program drawn from our remarkable home movie collections. A journey through time and space inspired by the classic Grand Tour — the journey through Europe once taken by artists, scholars, and travelers seeking culture, art, and experience. Reimagined through home movies from the 1920s to the 1960s, the program traces an American traveler’s cinematic itinerary across the Atlantic and through Europe’s storied landscapes. It includes clips from the following family collections: De Kozlowski, Dungan, Gleason, Hallowell, Livingston, Nagel, Seibels, Shapiro, Urbanek-Heins, Walton, Weir.  For information, contact MIRC@mailbox.sc.edu.

COMMUNICATION MATERIALS: Use the poster and video for reaching out to different communities. Share about the events you are organising on and around October 27th. Enable the motivation to contribute time, expertise, effort to save the extraordinary audiovisual legacy for posterity.

Get the poster in Arabic, in English, in French, in Spanish, in German, in Portuguese, in Chinese, in Russian

World Day for Audiovisual Heritage Day 2024; October 27th.

FORUM: “Your widow to the world.” World Day for Audiovisual Heritage Day 2024. As a window to the world, audiovisual heritage enables us to witness events we do not attend, listen to voices of the past, and create narratives that inform and entertain. Through the exploration of recorded sounds and visual imagery captured on film and video, we not only gain an appreciation for the cultural wealth but also extract valuable lessons from it. Audiovisual materials can tell your story, your truth, and your presence. They provide a window to the world, allowing us to observe events we cannot attend, hear voices from the past who can no longer speak, and craft stories that inform and entertain. By listening to recorded sounds and looking at images captured on film and video we can not only appreciate the richness of this culture but also learn from it. Audiovisual archives tell us stories about people’s lives and cultures from all over the world. They represent a priceless heritage which is an affirmation of our collective memory and a valuable source of knowledge since they reflect the cultural, social and linguistic diversity of our communities. They help us grow and comprehend the world we all share. Conserving this heritage and ensuring it remains accessible to the public and future generations is a vital goal for all memory institutions as well as the public at large. Follow the conversations with the hashtags: #WorldDayforAudiovisualHeritage, #WDAH, #audiovisual ,#27october, #AudiovisualHeritageDay #AudiovisualHeritage.

EVENTS: WDAH 2024 - Celebrations around the world.

On and around the Octobe 27th; Celebrations around the world of the World Day for Audiovisual Heritage Day 2024 will be held in many countries and organized by national and regional sound and film archives, broadcasters, museums and libraries, and major audiovisual associations to honor audiovisual preservation professionals and institutions that safeguard our heritage for future generations. The nine associations forming the CCAAA (AMIA, ARSC, FIAF, FIAT-IFTA, FOCAL International, IASA, ICA, SEAPAVAA, IFLA) strongly encourage all their members (and any other institutions) to Participate to the global celebrations of the World Day. You can now visualize all events on a dedicated world map that is updated in real time. Explore the world map of WDAH 2024 events.

On July 2nd, 2024 - Panel Discussion on how Library Translates Essential Resources in the Field of Audiovisual Heritage Preservation - The Qatar National Library partnered with IASA to complete Arabic translations of four pivotal publications from IASA’s Technical Committee.


From 15 to 18 May 2024; ARSC's 58th Annual Conference - The Call for presentations for ARSC's 58th Annual Conference to be held in St. Paul, Minnesota is open until 12 January. The Association for Recorded Sound Collections welcomes all who are interested in any aspect of sound recording to attend or present at the conference. The program will include individual presentations, posters, and panel discussions with sound recording scholars, collectors, preservationists, and creators engaged in a broad range of topics that cross geographic, cultural, and collection boundaries. There will also be a silent auction and social events (screenings, Ask the Technical Committee, a Collector's Roundtable) offered each evening. Get the Conference Flyer and the Call for Presentations.


From 22 to 23 April 2024, 2024 FIAF Congress: The call for papers for the symposium of the 2024 International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) Congress in Bangkok on the theme "Film Archives in the Global South" is now open. In 2023, out of the 173 FIAF members and associates, 41 affiliates were located in what is being referred to as the "Global South", spreading predominantly across Latin America, Asia, and Africa. Despite struggling with developmental and economic challenges, alongside political and social instability, these collections are significant for their cultural diversity, local history, and poignant reflections of societal and political issues experienced by the vast majority of the world's population. As they continue their work on the preservation of the world's audiovisual memory, film archives of the Global South have become important centers for developing specific strategies, approaches and concepts of preservation beyond hegemonic models. More than that, these developments may expand preservation practices to areas and contexts that were previously ignored or considered unreachable through traditional methods and ideas, highlighting the resourcefulness and ingenuity of archival practices in the often under-resourced contexts of the Global South. Participants must fill out the online form before 8 January 2024.


On March 8th - Participate to the 2024 FIAT-IFTA Conference. The Call for Papers of the 2024 FIAT-IFTA World Conference, set to take place in Bucharest in October 2024, is open until 31 March.

PUBLICATIONS: Read the Guidelines on the Production and Preservation of Digital Audio Objects Published by the International Association of Sound and Audio Visual Archives (web edition).

The theme for 2012 World Audiovisual Heritage Day is “Audiovisual Heritage Memory? The Clock is Ticking.”

The world’s audiovisual heritage is endangered with some of it having been lost through chemical decay, lack of resources, skills, and structures. More will be lost if stronger and concerted international action is not taken. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), in coordination with other organizations have taken the lead in preserving and sharing these documents.
To raise global awareness of the significance of audiovisual documents and to draw attention to the need to safeguard and preserve them, World Audiovisual Day was proclaimed by the UNESCO in 2005 and is celebrated on October 27 annually. The theme for 2012 is “Audiovisual Heritage Memory? The Clock is Ticking.”

Audiovisual documents include films, radio and televisions programs, and audio and video recordings contain the principal records of the 20th and 21st century that go beyond language and culture. They are lasting supplements to the traditional written record. The United Nations through its Department of Public Information has had its audiovisual archives which date back to the early 1920’s. The UNESCO says these audiovisual records have to be transformed to digital within the next 15 years.

Knowledge in world history, literature, and daily news is important to scholars worldwide, which makes the content of information stored in audiovisual archives important. Public consciousness of the importance of the preservation of these documents and recordings has given the momentum to conservation professionals to manage a range of technical, political, social, financial, and other factors to ensure the safeguarding of this audiovisual heritage.

Message from Ms Irina Bokova, Director-General of UNESCO, on the occasion of the World Day for Audiovisual Heritage - 27 October 2011

Message from Ms Irina Bokova,Director-General of UNESCO,on the occasion of the World Day for Audiovisual Heritage 27 October 2011

Among all the types of humanity’s heritage, the audiovisual heritage is one of those that provide the most direct and intuitive access to the wealth of world cultures and the infinite diversity of human civilization.

Audiovisual records offer unique means of learning, sharing and becoming informed through sound and image. They are, in form and content, living testimonies to the history of technology, performance and culture. By presenting images and sounds from foreign cultures, historic moments shaping our collective memory, they contribute to cementing the foundations of intercultural dialogue and enriching humanity’s awareness.

All these records, these films and soundtracks, are also extremely vulnerable. Part of the twentieth century audiovisual archive collection has already disappeared, victim of technological obsolescence, institutional neglect and losses due to deterioration, deliberate destruction or ignorance. The rapid development of the digital world has only compounded the challenges.

Protection of these records is a cultural and educational imperative and must never be taken for granted. Quite the opposite: it is an ongoing task. It is one of the central aspects of UNESCO’s flagship Memory of the World programme, which ensures the protection of humanity’s documentary heritage in all its forms. Many audiovisual records have already been included in the Memory of the World Register: “The Story of the Kelly Gang”, the first feature-length fiction film, the complete original film production of the Lumière brothers, and the “Liberation

Struggle Living Archive Collection”, a unique documentary on the apartheid system in South Africa. They are each an irreplaceable source of learning and discovery. Their loss would impoverish our world heritage and be tantamount to collective amnesia.

To protect the audiovisual heritage, appropriate safeguard measures should be instituted and training and support for archive professionals, libraries and specialized institutions provided. I invite today all UNESCO’s partners and collaborators to redouble efforts to ensure the protection of this unique documentary heritage and help it to fulfil all its educational and cultural promises.

Irina Bokova

27 October is World Day of Audiovisual Heritage

27 October is World Day of Audiovisual Heritage, declared by UNESCO in 2005, a day which aims to raise awareness of the importance of audiovisual documents and draw attention to the urgent need to safeguard them.

The theme for this year's celebration of the World Day for Audiovisual Heritage 2011 is "Audivisual Heritage: See, Hear, and Learn." - Now!" seems especially applicable to the audiovisual archives of the United Nations. The collection at Headquarters has its share of historical audiovisual materials – photos, films, and video and audio recordings – which are unique in the world and require careful attention and preservation.

The UN's audiovisual archive dates back as early as the 1920s and constitutes the memory of the Organization, from the League of Nations to the construction of UN Headquarters in New York, as well as the footage and programmes which continue to be produced daily. Archiving such a rich and complex collection is a major challenge.


The Department of Public Information (DPI) continuing efforts to preserve the unique audiovisual heritage of the United Nations – and, as importantly, to keep this heritage accessible to the world – is critical in making sure the Organization's story may be told in images and sounds to future generations.


In the labyrinth of the Secretariat’s basements, a huge task is being performed by a small team of archivists: to inventory and classify all UN audio, film and video materials before the Capital Master Plan reaches the lower levels of the building." The history is here and needs to be preserved and be accessible" said Antonio Carlos Silva from the Multimedia Ressources Unit. Part of the work is also to select the most valuable materials to be treated in priority, taking into account the physical conditions of the items and their value to the Organization, and to recommend methods and standards of preservation and digitization of the most at-risk audiovisual materials.


Vinegar syndrome, the acidification of the plastic base of film, is one of the major concerns. With an estimated 7% of the film collection already suffering from acidification, finding digitization and storage solutions has become especially urgent.

The audiovisual archives held by the UN Department of Public Information (http://www.unmultimedia.org/tv/archives.html ) are a unique collection that tells the stories not only of international diplomacy that shaped our history but also of the people and the times they lived in. The collection comprises 37,500 hours of film and video, 800,000 photographs, and about 55,000.00 hours of audio recordings.

To address the challenges of preserving these archives, DPI, along with other departments and stakeholders, are developing a sound digitization programme. In the meantime, partnerships have been forged with the national archives from various member states such as Brazil, France, Greece, and the Republic of Korea, who selected parts of the collection and will digitize them themselves. These institutions will also provide the UN with a high resolution preservation copy of the selected material and therefore of UN historical moments affecting our humanity.