claudy.opdenkamp@plymouth.ac.uk

Claudy Op den Kamp is a graduate of the University of Amsterdam (Film and Television Studies) and holds an MA in Film Archiving from the University of East Anglia. She most recently worked as Haghefilm Conservation’s Account Manager in Amsterdam and prior to that as a Film Restoration Project Leader at the Nederlands Filmmuseum. She has started her PhD at Transtechnology Research in October 2009 with a research project entitled ‘Copyright legislation and the re-use of archival footage’.

This project addresses practical and immediate issues with political as well as cultural dimensions. Digitisation confronts archives and their users with the need to operate in a fundamentally different manner. The proposed project will analyse the production histories of several representative examples of the re-use of archival footage (such as historical documentaries on television) to ascertain whether copyright legislation – ideally, designed to regulate and enable exploitation of the work – impedes access. The particular focus will be on so called orphan works, works protected by copyright but with an unknown current owner. Orphan works pose a problem for heritage institutions; difficulties in acquiring legal permission for re-use can render collections dormant.

The project will examine the pressures on film archives to digitise their holdings and the difficulties arising from the uncertain copyright status of much material. These difficulties constrain archives’ attempts to make available film and audiovisual material that represents and speaks to a constantly changing local, national and international cultural heritage. What are the varying responses to these pressures by different archivists and cultural, legal and political frameworks, national and supranational? What are the practical implications for educational institutions, for the creative industries and the general public?