Appointment description
In partnership with FIAF’s PACC
(Programming and Access to Collections Commission of the International Federation of Film Archives)
Tuesday 23 June 10am-1pm 2pm-4pm MAMbo – Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, via Don Minzoni 14
AI in practice
The rapid development of artificial intelligence is reshaping the way audiovisual heritage is preserved, restored, described, and accessed. Over the last decade, European film archives and cinematheques have increasingly experimented with AI-driven technologies, moving from early research initiatives to concrete applications in restoration workflows, metadata enhancement, cataloguing, and audience access. This workshop offers an opportunity to reflect collectively on how AI is already transforming archival practice – and how institutions can engage with these tools critically, responsibly, and creatively. Bringing together archivists, restorers, researchers, technicians, and cultural heritage professionals, the workshop will present an overview of European experiences developed through collaborative projects. These initiatives demonstrate how AI can support tasks ranging from film restoration, automatic image analysis and multilingual metadata correction to semantic indexing and enhanced discovery of audiovisual collections. The morning session, dedicated to film restoration, will focus on practical case studies exploring the integration of AI into restoration workflows. Speakers from leading archives and laboratories will discuss the use of AI-assisted tools for dust and scratch removal, colour restoration, subtitle removal, and image enhancement, while also addressing the ethical questions raised by automated intervention in historical film materials. The afternoon session will examine the role of AI in collection management, research, and access. Through presentations from archives, broadcasters, and digital platforms, participants will explore how AI can improve cataloguing, semantic search, recommendation systems, and knowledge graphs for audiovisual heritage. At the same time, the discussion will address urgent challenges facing archives today: professional training and critical literacy, transparency and sustainability of AI systems, and the protection of archival collections in the era of large-scale data scraping and generative AI. Rather than framing AI as either a threat or a solution, the workshop aims to foster a nuanced and practice-based conversation on the present and future of AI in film archives.