Bophana Audiovisual Resource Center (Cambodge, France, USA)
Since 2006 and among its first programs, the Technicolor Foundation contributed to the creation and brought its operational support to the Bophana audiovisual resource center, based in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Different projects have been developed and for some of them, the Foundation roped experts from Technicolor Thailand or leading film archives such as Archives françaises du Film-CNC or George Eastman House.Between 2006 and 2009, the contribution de la Foundation concerns the following main lines:
- the training of Cambodian librarians, particularly on the theory and practices of inventory and cataloguing of audiovisual records.
- the attendance of staff members of the center at international professional meetings : at the 64e Congress of the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) which was held in April 2008 in Paris. The staff members visited the collections of Archives françaises du film (CNC), of Cinémathèque de Toulouse and of Forum des Images. A seminar organized by SEAPAVAA (South East Asia Pacific Audiovisual Archives Association) was held in August 2007 in Phnom Penh and it was the opportunity to present the activities of Bophana center to Asia-based professionals.
- the enlargement of the center’s collection and the continuation of the collection of audiovisual records related to Cambodia. The Foundation thus initiated and managed in September 2007 the « Lost Films Search Program», a program of research of audiovisual documents conserved in USA with the collaboration of George Eastman House and the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation (Rochester, New York).
- the digitization of a part of the collection of the Direction du Cinema of Cambodia. The Bophana center outsourced the digitization of 35mm and 16mm films from the Direction du Cinema of Cambodia through the services of Technicolor Thailand. This project has been launched with the hiring of a person in charge of the audiovisual collection and a Cambodian intern as well as thanks to a donation of technical equipment (telecinema). Today, more than 30 short films are going to be digitized. This program aims also to digitize some titles identified in the USA during the « Lost Films Search Program» in order to enlarge the Bophana center’s collection.