Preservation & Migration Seminar 2026

Millions of 16mm film reels hold our shared visual history — and they are at risk.Until now, digitization has been constrained by complexity, cost, and lack of scalability.This session presents a new approach to film digitization through a practical demonstration.

At the core is a simple principle: True-to-source digitization — no alterations, no hidden processing, no compromises.

The session shows how institutions can move from slow, specialist-driven scanning to standardized, high-throughput digitization workflows, and how this enables the establishment of scalable internal capabilities.It is structured around three core dimensions:
 • Physical & digital capture: How analog film is transformed into a digital signal — from illumination and transport, through optics, to sensor capture — and the key parameters that define quality (resolution, dynamic range, bit depth)
 • Workflow & productionHow consistent, repeatable workflows enable reliable, preservation-grade digitization at scale 
 • Organizational model & scalingA community-based model for organizing, implementing, and scaling digitization within institutions — enabling internal capability, control, and long-term sustainability

The session draws on experience from digitizing more than 250,000 film reels in collaboration with leading broadcast archives.