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 2011 Theme

The theme for this year's celebration of the World Day for Audiovisual Heritage 2011 is "Audiovisual Heritage: See, Hear, and Learn."


Sound recordings and moving images are extremely vulnerable as they can be quickly and deliberately destroyed. Essentially emblematic of the 20th century, audiovisual heritage can be irretrievably lost as a result of neglect, natural decay and technological obsolescence. Public consciousness of the importance of preservation of these recordings must be engaged and the World Day for Audiovisual Heritage is intended to be the platform for building global awareness.

UNESCO has adopted 27 October as the World Day for Audiovisual Heritage to better focus global attention on the issues at stake, in cooperation with the Co-ordinating Council of Audiovisual Archives Associations (CCAAA) and other partners. A growing number of archives around the world will be commemorating this Day with activities that highlight the fragility and vulnerability of this heritage, while celebrating the work of the heritage institutions that have helped to protect it.

Film, television and radio are our common heritage. They help to maintain the cultural identity of a people but countless documentary treasures have disappeared since the invention of image and sound technologies that permit the peoples of the world to better share their experiences, creativity and knowledge.
All of the world's audiovisual heritage is endangered. No where can it be said to be preserved but through initiatives such as the World Day for Audiovisual Heritage and the Memory of the World Programme, the precious work of preservation professionals is given impetus to manage a range of technical, political, social, financial and other factors that threaten the safeguard of heritage.

Recommended Resource Sites for AV Archiving

by Mick Newnham (National Film and Sound Archive, Australia)
Note: It is advised to periodically do a new search as new sites may become available, or links to existing sites may change.

• Library of Congress
  Needs a bit of searching to find what you need
• National Film and Sound Archive of Australia
• National Library of Australia
  Need to search but there is some good info, especially about digital
• National Film Preservation Foundation
  Have some nice downloadable publications
• Folkstreams.net
  Some streamed videos on av preservation techniques
• Kodak
  Not so much about preservation as such but loads of good info about photographic materials - try linking to the Student/Education section
• Image Permanence Institute
  Lots of good free tools to help with developing strategies for collections of all sorts
• Wilhelm Imaging Research
  Privately run site but full of good information about storage and has loads of case studies
• IASA
  Has downloads of some of their publications such as TC-03; new TC-04 may be up soon
• Society for Imaging Science and Technology
  Bit techo but they have a archive research section and there are some good tutorials on digital imaging
• Media Matters
  Jim Lindner's site

UNESCO encourages everyone, everywhere to join us in celebrating 27 October by showcasing their precious collections as part of a global endeavour to promote the value of audiovisual heritage.