Providing quick and easy access to multiple thousands of film historical documents as preserved in 16 European film archives and cinémathèques – that’s what the European Film Gateway (EFG) is all about. The EFG portal provides researchers with a single access point to the archives’ digital collections that had previously been widely dispersed across the Internet. Alongside documentaries, newsreels and feature films, unique collections of film stills, set photos, posters, film set drawings and text documents are also searchable. The diversity of material available through the portal offer scientific researchers, as well as pupils, students, lecturers and the interested public a comprehensive view of Europe’s rich film history as well as a look behind the scenes of filmmaking from the early days up to the present. The European Film Gateway not only facilitates online access to film historical documents, but also leads users directly to the archives that hold the respective objects, thus simplifying formerly time-consuming and complex research immensely. The EFG project, initiated by the Association des Cinémathèques Européenes (ACE) and led by Deutsches Filminstitut – DIF in Frankfurt – started in September 2008 and ran for three years until August 2011. The project is a Best Practice Network funded by the eContentplus programme of the European Commission and has 22 partners in 16 different countries. EFG addresses a number of key issues for access to digital content, especially for the 16 film archives involved. The European Film Gateway is one of two aggregator projects from the audiovisual sector to deliver content to the Europeana portal, which in turn provides integrated access to millions of digital treasures from Europe’s museums, archives, audiovisual archives and libraries. Several hundreds of thousands of records with links to digital objects have been contributed to Europeana from the EFG database so far and further contributions will follow.
2019 EFG PowerPoint Presentation given by Kerstin Herlt at the 2019 ACE Workshop
www.europeanfilmgateway.eu
www.project-efg.eu