CIPPM’s Claudy Op den Kamp joined colleagues from film archives worldwide for FIAF’s workshop ‘Restoring the Past, Funding the Future’ on 16 January 2025.

Organised by Matěj Strnad, Head of FIAF’s Preservation and Access Commission (PACC), the two-hour online workshop brought together curators, restorers, and legal specialists from institutions including UCLA, BFI, EYE Filmmuseum, and Slovenska Kinoteka to address fundamental tensions facing film archives today.

The session explored two interconnected challenges: how archives can protect their investments in restoring public domain works, and whether creative restoration processes might themselves generate new copyright protection.

Op den Kamp and co-presenter Annabelle Shaw (BFI) framed the core issue: while public domain works form the ‘majority of our culture,’ archives invest significant resources in preserving these materials.

Participants shared practical struggles. Some archives add visible logos to restored films shared online, despite viewer complaints, to maintain attribution and funder credits. Others charge access fees for public domain works without claiming rights. The question remains: how can institutions protect investments while keeping public domain materials accessible?

The workshop examined whether restoration itself might be copyrightable. With no case law directly addressing copyright in film restorations, archives navigate uncertain territory about what constitutes ‘creative’ versus technical work.

The workshop deliberately offered no definitive answers. As Strnad noted, the goal was learning ‘from each other—to get to know our current situation better.’