Intangible Memories: Creating the New York University (NYU) Tisch Asia School of the Arts Archive. Possible Models for Future Research and Collaboration between Film Schools

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Tisch Asia, based in Singapore is a graduate film program with the same curriculum as NYU Film School in New York City. Founded in 2007 it includes programs in Film, Animation, Dramatic Writing and International Media Producing and its students’ films have achieved success at major film festivals including Sundance, the Academy Awards, Toronto, Cannes and others. Although the program had archived some student works from its inception, closure of the school after seven years’ existence provided the impetus to archive student films in a more comprehensive way in order to preserve the intangible memory of the film school. Selected student films are being archived from the Tisch Asia Graduate Film Program, reflecting the best practices of preservation, promotion and education, and in order to record the unique nature of the program where students from all over the world shot their films throughout Asia and beyond. In formulating the best system for this Archive, questions arose as to how other film schools handle issues of copyright, financing, preservation and curation of student works and their ultimate use and purpose, as well as ways in which collaboration could lead to better Archive management and deployment for all interested film schools. More research into current practices by film schools could inspire more schools to start Archives and to benefit from shared experience. Better education in film schools about how works should be archived will help filmmakers preserve their own work ; currently there is little attention paid to this subject with subsequent loss of some potentially important works. As rich sources of content for many reasons, including as documentation of a particular time and place, promotion of student and film school and creation of content which may be repurposed at some later time, archives of students’ films present challenges and inspiration to future students, scholars and media professionals.