FIAF Books
New books and Bestsellers
The books listed below can be purchased from our North American distributor, Indiana University Press, or directly via the FIAF Secretariat. Note that all prices on this page are quoted without VAT, which will be added if applicable.
The FIAF Disaster Handbook: Disaster Preparedness and Recovery for Audio-visual Archives
The FIAF Disaster Handbook provides a clear guide to making an audio-visual archive as resilient as possible to disasters of any magnitude, from local events such as fires and water leaks, to region-wide catastrophes such as severe storms and earthquakes, and covers both physical and cyber security. It shows how beneficial disaster preparedness is to an organisation, improving collection care, increasing staff engagement, and leading to better involvement from managers.
Should a disaster happen, the steps needed to achieve the best possible outcome are carefully set out, with clear instructions for the most urgent actions needed to stabilise disaster-affected items – especially those exposed to water – such as videotapes rescued from floodwater, or documents soaked by a leaking pipe. A series of case studies are included which vividly illustrate the diversity of disastrous events and the level of success of the affected collections’ preparedness and recovery efforts.
The authors, gathered from around the world, are all experts in their fields, and it is anticipated that this Handbook will greatly reduce the vulnerability of the world’s audio-visual heritage to external threats, large and small.
The book is available both as a free PDF file and in a limited print version.
FIAF, 2024. 175 pages. ISBN: 9780906973882.
Edited by David Walsh.
25.00€ (print version)
Share That Knowledge! A Road Map for Sharing Knowledge across Generations of Audiovisual Archivists
This book is the result of a four-year research project into the methods and strategies of sharing knowledge within audiovisual archives, which was initiated by the Austrian Film Museum and the Slovenian Cinematheque, joined by colleagues from 11 other audiovisual archives, and supported by the Austrian government and FIAF.
The goal of Share that Knowledge! was to find better strategies for sharing knowledge within our profession of audiovisual preservation. The final publication, a "road map", focuses on finding the right methods for transferring knowledge and skills that are at risk of being lost (organizational, technical, preservation, and collection knowledge), the situations and scenarios that need our attention when it comes to knowledge transfer (starting a job, leaving a job, during daily work, and when knowledge has left), as well as successful practices that we found in the examples of the colleagues we interviewed. The book is now available both as a free PDF file and in a limited print version. It is now also available in Persian.
FIAF/Austrian Film Museum, 2023. 175 pages. ISBN: 9780906973837.
Edited by Janneke van Dalen and Nadja Šičarov.
20.00€ (print version)
Tales from the Vaults: Film Technology over the Years and across Continents
Histoires d’appareils : la technologie du cinéma à travers les années et les continents
Tales from the Vaults: Film Technology over the Years and across Continents collects 100 stories of boundless creativity and ingenuity. Submitted by the archives and film preservationists who now care for this long-neglected heritage alongside historians, these tales cover a wide range of pre-cinema, cinema, video, and digital devices developed since the 18th century, and used all around the world by filmmakers, showmen and women, hobbyists, and archivists.
FIAF/Technès 2023, hardback, all illustrations in colour, 342p. ISBN: 9780906973783
Edited by Louis Pelletier & Rachael Stoeltje. Foreword by Christopher Nolan.
Bilingual edition English/French.
40.00€
FIAF's Periodicals Indexing Project: Celebrating the P.I.P.'s First 50 Years, 1971-2002
A comprehensive, well-researched and richly illustrated chronicle of FIAF’s Periodicals Indexing Project. Features 50 milestones describing the defining key moments of the fascinating 50-year history of the P.I.P., interviews with its successive, Editors, and 50 personal testimonies by people who have contributed to the success of this unique documentation resource about film.
Editor / Lead author : Rutger Penne.
FIAF 2022, hardback, 264p., ISBN 9780906973738
35.00€
For more information and to order the book, visit: www.fiafnet.org/pip50book
Physical Characteristics of Early Films as Aids to Identification
(New expanded edition)
by Harold Brown. Documents some features such as camera and printer apertures, edge marks, shape and size of perforations, trade marks, etc. in relation to a number of early film producing companies. This new edition of Harold Brown's seminal 1990 book, edited by Camille Blot-Wellens, includes a number of new texts by specialists in the field. Note that a short list of errata for this new edition can be found HERE.
FIAF, 2020. 336p., ISBN 9782960029697
35.00€
Hollywood Goes Latin: Spanish-Language Cinema in Los Angeles
In April 2017, the International Federation of Film Archives organized a symposium, “Hollywood Goes Latin: Spanish-language Cinema in Los Angeles”, which brought together scholars and film archivists from all over Latin America and the United States to discuss the many issues surrounding the creation of Hollywood’s “Cine Hispano.” The papers presented in this two day symposium are collected and revised here.
María Elena de las Carreras & Jan-Christopher Horak (eds), Hollywood Goes Latin: Spanish-language Cinema in Los Angeles, FIAF/UCLA Film & Television Archive, 228p., b&w, ISBN: 9782960029659
24.00€
The FIAF Moving Image Cataloguing Manual
The FIAF Moving Image Cataloguing Manual is the result of many years of labor and collaboration with numerous professionals in the moving image field. It addresses the changes in information technology that we’ve seen over the past two decades, and aligns with modern cataloguing and metadata standards and concepts such as FRBR (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records), EN 15907, and RDA (Resource Description and Access). The Manual is designed to be compatible with a variety of data structures, and provides charts, decision trees, examples, and other tools to help experts and non-experts alike in performing real-world cataloguing of moving image collections.
Natasha Fairbairn, Maria Assunta Pimpinelli, Thelma Ross (authors), Linda Tadic (ed), The FIAF Moving Image Cataloguing Manual, FIAF: 2016, 272p., colour, ISBN: 978-2-96-002963-5
25.00€
FIAF Digital Projection Guide
The FIAF Digital Projection Guide addresses the technical challenges that cinémathèques, archival and repertory cinemas and festivals encounter in the paradigm change from analogue film projection to digital cinema. The guide is an extension of, and update to, The Advanced Projection Manual (2006), a book covering the craft of projecting film classics with modern equipment. The FIAF Digital Projection Guide covers the following topics: what is D-cinema, and what are the alternatives?; pixel – the digital picture element; the DCP file format; digital projection systems; 3-D projection technology; sound for digital cinema; practical advice for digital conversions.
About the author: Torkell Sætervadet is a cinema design and technology expert based in Norway. Until 2010, the author held the post as director of technology at Unique Cinema Systems (UCS), the company responsible for the roll-out of D-cinema in Norway – the first country in the world to transfer its entire cinema exhibition industry to digital. Prior to his engagement with UCS, he co-founded Norsk kinokonsult, a company specialising in cinema design. Other past positions include technical manager at the Norwegian Film Institute in Oslo and principal cinema engineer for the digital sound format SDDS in Europe. He is a member of the SMPTE and supported the archival frame rate efforts of the SMPTE DC.21 committee. He is currently also an associate member of the FIAF Technical Commission.
The FIAF Digital Pojection Guide Projection is published by FIAF and sponsored by the Norwegian Film Institute and the Giornate Del Cinema Muto festival.
Torkell Sætervadet, FIAF Digital Projection Guide, Brussels: FIAF, 2012, 120p., colour illustrations. ISBN: 9782960029628,
19.00€
The Advanced Projection Manual
The intention behind The Advanced Projection Manual is to provide projectionists and cinema engineers alike with a practical guide to projection of classic films with modern equipment. The book will also be useful for others treating or dealing with historic film material, such as film archivists and cinémathèque programmers, but also staff at educational organizations, independent repertory cinemas and film festivals, and commercial cinemas with classic films on their programmes.
The raison d’être of this book is to enable films to be presented in exactly the way they were originally intended to be presented, without any compromises with regard to picture, sound and appearance.
About the author: Torkell Sætervadet is a cinema design and technology expert based in Norway. Until 2010, the author held the post as director of technology at Unique Cinema Systems (UCS), the company responsible for the roll-out of D-cinema in Norway – the first country in the world to transfer its entire cinema exhibition industry to digital. Prior to his engagement with UCS, he co-founded Norsk kinokonsult, a company specialising in cinema design. Other past positions include technical manager at the Norwegian Film Institute in Oslo and principal cinema engineer for the digital sound format SDDS in Europe. He is a member of the SMPTE and supported the archival frame rate efforts of the SMPTE DC.21 committee. He is currently also an associate member of the FIAF Technical Commission.
The Advanced Projection Manual is published jointly by FIAF and the Norwegian Film Institute.
Torkell Sætervadet, The Advanced Projection Manual, FIAF/Norsk Filminstitutt, 2005, 266p., color illustrations, ISBN: 9782960029611
55.00€
This Film is Dangerous - A Celebration of Nitrate Film
This Film Is Dangerous is an anthology published FIAF in 2002. It examines and celebrates the life, the death, the afterlife, and the mythology of nitrate film. It incorporates the papers given at the symposium The Last Nitrate Picture Show during the FIAF Congress in London in June 2000, as well as a wealth of original contributions by historians, archivists, veterans, and enthusiasts around the world.
About the editors: Roger Smither worked at Imperial War Museums for forty years, retiring as Keeper of the Film and Photograph Archives in August 2010. He was the Secretary-General of FIAF (1995-2001). Catherine A. Surowiec is a freelance editor, and the former editor of the Journal of Film Preservation.
Editor: Roger Smither; Associate Editor: Catherine A. Surowiec.
FIAF, 2002, 720p., illus., ISBN: 9782960029604
60.00€
FIAF Directory / Annuaire / Directorio 2022
FIAF, 2022, 15€
The full listing of all FIAF Members and Associates, as well as FIAF Supporters, and various other contacts at FIAF and partner organizations.
You can also search the online FIAF Directory via the search engine HERE.
Other FIAF Books
To order any of the books below, go to the book order form. Please note that some of these books are out of print, and are indicated in the list as "no longer available". The majority of these can be downloaded as PDF files for free.
Technical Manual of the FIAF Preservation Commission
A user's manual on practical film and video preservation procedures containing articles in English and French. (Includes: Basic Film Handling; Preservation of Moving Images and Sound; Handling,Preservation and Storage of Nitrate Film; Film Joins (Splices) Comments on Cement and Tape Slices; Basic Principles on Preserving Colour Films Produced in Processes which used Colour Seperations of Nitrate Film; A discussion Paper on Methods of Copying Tinted, Toned and Stencil-Coloured Films for Preservation and Presentation; Survey of Printing Machines; Acetate or Polyester?)
FIAF, 1993, 192p., 66€
Physical Characteristics of Early Films as Aids to Identification
by Harold Brown. Documents some features such as camera and printer apertures, edge marks, shape and size of perforations, trade marks, etc. in relation to a number of early film producing companies.
FIAF, 1990, 101p., illus., 30€
Note that the new, expanded edition (2020) is now available here.
Cinema 1900-1906 : An Analytical Study [Vol.1]
Proceedings of the FIAF Symposium held at Brighton, 1978. Vol. 1 contains transcriptions of the papers.
FIAF, 1982, 372p., 44€ for both Volumes
You can download this publication for free HERE (PDF file).
Cinema 1900-1906 : An Analytical Study [Vol.2] Filmography/Filmographie
Proceedings of the FIAF Symposium held at Brighton, 1978.
Vol. 2 contains an analytical filmography of 550 films of the period.
FIAF, 1982, 372p., 44€
You can download this publication for free HERE (PDF file).
The Slapstick Symposium
Dealings and proceedings of the Early American Slapstick Symposium held at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, May 2-3, 1985.
Edited by Eileen Bowser.
FIAF, 1988, 121p., 24€
You can download this publication for free HERE (PDF file).
A Handbook for Film Archives
(out of print)
Basic manual on the functioning of a film archive.
Edited by Eileen Bowser and John Kuiper. A French version is also available (see below).
FIAF, 1980, 151p., illus.
You can download this publication for free HERE (PDF file).
Manuel des archives du film
Manuel fondé sur l'expérience collective des membres de la FIAF.
Edité par Eileen Bowser et John Kluiper. Version française du Handbook for Film Archives.
FIAF, 1980, 151p., illus., 30€
American Film Index, 1908-1915
American Film Index, 1916-1920
A two-volume index to more than 32.000 films produced by more than 1000 companies.
Edited by Einar Lauritzen and Gunnar Lundqvist.
Volume I : 45€ / Volume II : 50€ / 2- volume set : 80€
Bibliography of FIAF Affiliates’ Publications (printed volumes)
Published annually from 1979 to 2010 (in English and French)
11€ (each volume). To order any of these volumes, please contact the FIAF Secretariat.
You can download the annual Bibliographies of the years 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010.
Glossary of Filmographic Terms
This second edition terms and indexes in English, French, German, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Dutch, Italian, Czech, Hungarian, Bulgarian. Compiled by Jon Gartenberg.
FIAF, 1989, 149p., 45€
Please note that you can also use the online version of the Glossary of Filmographic Terms.
FIAF Classification Scheme for Literature on Film and Television
Second edition revised and enlarged.
Edited by Karen Jones and Michael Moulds.
FIAF, 1992, 50€
You can download this publication for free HERE (PDF file).
Règles de catalogage des archives de films
French edition of "The FIAF Cataloguing Rules of Film Archives" translated from English by Eric Loné.
AFNOR, 1994, 280 p., 25€
(in French)
Bibliography of National Filmographies
Annotated list of filmographies, journals and other publications.
Compiled by D. Gebauer. Edited by H. W. Harrison.
FIAF, 1985, 80p., 25€
Le Cinéma français muet dans le monde, influences réciproques
Cinémathèque de Toulouse / Institut Jean Vigo for FIAF, 1988, 285p., 21€
Handling, Storage and Transport of the Cellulose Nitrate Film
Guidelines produced with the help of the FIAF Preservation Commission.
FIAF, December 1991, 20p. Out of print.
You can download this publication for free HERE (PDF file).
International Index to Film Periodicals (printed volumes)
Published from 1972 to 2012
Back volumes: 150€ 100€ / each volume [To order, please contact directly the P.I.P. Editor]
The International Index to Film Periodicals is also available in electronic format as part of the FIAF Databases.
Preservation and Restoration of Moving Image and Sound
A report by the FIAF Preservation Commission, covering in 19 chapters the physical properties of film and sound tape, their handling and storage, and the equipment used by film archives to ensure for permanent preservation.
FIAF, 1986, 268p., illus., 42€
You can download this publication for free HERE (PDF file).
FIAF Symposium Karlovy-Vary 1980 - Problems of Selection in Film Archives
FIAF, 143p., 10€
You can download this publication for free HERE (PDF)
FIAF Symposium Rapallo 1981 - L'Europe des téléphones blancs 1935-1940
Compte-rendu du Symposium historique à Rapallo à l'occasion du 37ème Congrès de la FIAF, 4-9 May 1981
FIAF, 87p., 10€
You can download this publication for free HERE (PDF file).
FIAF Symposium Varna 1977
L'influence du Cinéma soviétique muet sur le cinéma mondial / The Influence of Silent Soviet Cinema on World Cinema
FIAF, 10€
You can download this publication for free HERE (PDF file).
The LUMIERE Project: The European Film Archives at the Crossroads
This book examines the challenges of film preservation at the brink of a new millennium, raising some vital issues along the way.
Edited by Catherine A. Surowiec.
Published by The LUMIERE Project, Lisbon, 1996.
264 p., illus., 50€
Film Preservation
(out of print)
by Herbert Volkmann. A Report of the FIAF Preservation Commission.
FIAF, 1965, 60p.
You can download this publication for free HERE.
La Conservation des films
par Herbert Volkmann
Un rapport de la Commission de Conservation de films de la FIAF.
1967, FIAF, 10€
You can download this publication for free HERE.
International Index to Film Periodicals: Subject Headings
(out of print)
7th revised edition.
Editor: Rutger Penne
FIAF, 2001, 123p., 25€
International Index to Television Periodicals (printed volumes)
(out of print)
Published from 1979 to 1990.
The International Index to Television Periodicals is also available in electronic format as part of the FIAF Databases.
International Index to Television Periodicals: Subject Headings
(out of print)
Editor: Michael Moulds
FIAF, 1996
You can download this publication for free HERE (PDF file).
International Directory of Film and TV Documentation Collections
(out of print)
Edited by René Beauclair, with the assistance of Nancy Goldman.
FIAF, 220p., 1994
You can download this publication for free HERE (PDF file).
Le jeu des catégories – The Categories Game
(out of print)
A survey by the FIAF Programming Commission offering listings of the most important films in various categories such as film history, film and the other arts, national production and works in archives. Covers some 2.250 titles, with several indexes.
FIAF, 1995, 30€
You can download this publication for free HERE (PDF file).
Reglas de catalogación de la FIAF para Archivos Fílmicos
(out of print)
Spanish edition of "The FIAF Cataloguing Rules of Film Archives" by the Filmoteca de la UNAM, México, and the Archivo General de Puerto Rico, San Juan de Puerto Rico.
280p., 25€.
(in Spanish)
50 Years of Film Archives 1938-1988
(out of print)
FIAF yearbook published for the 50th anniversary, containing descriptions of its 78 members and observers and a historical account of its development.
FIAF, 1988, 203p., illus., 27€
You can download this publication for free HERE (PDF file).
Rediscovering the Role of Film Archives: to Preserve and to Show
(out of print)
Proceedings of the FIAF Symposium held in Lisboa, 1989.
FIAF, 1990, 143p., 30€
You can download this publication for free HERE (PDF file).
