Archive

Digital Lectures in dance history. Our new concept

Deutsches Tanzfilminstitut Bremen Bremen D 29.3.2023

 

The German Dance Film Institute is a presence media library that has been able to test a new pillar of communication with colleges of dance and dance education for the first time through the project “New Accesses to the Cultural Heritage of Dance”. A special feature of archives is that the holdings cannot be viewed off-site and without context with archive staff. This means that knowledge transfer can so far only take place in-house or through specially compiled media libraries, which are shown outside in a narrowly defined framework accompanied by specialist staff. Film collections in particular may not be borrowed, as they are originals with copyrights held by dance and film makers. Due to the pandemic, this fundamental problem came to a head.

 

An important goal of our project was to realise online lectures for universities of the arts with degree programmes in professional dance and dance education. Participating in this inaugural series were the Orot College in Tel Aviv (studying dance education, among other things) and a master class in dance education at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen.

In close collaboration with the respective dance lecturers, Dr. Talia Perlshtein and Prof. Henrietta Horn, 20 dance lectures were created on the topics of “Dance and Politics” and “Solo Dance”. In addition, we have modernised a dance history tool (TGT) in the sense of a visual dance encyclopaedia for lecturers and students and updated its content. TGT is now also accessible in two languages (German and English).

 

Wissenwandel.Digitalprogramm für Bibliotheken und Archive within Neustart Kultur is funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media and is launched by dbv Deutscher Bibliotheksverband.

 



Our new Streaming Studio [WissensWandel. Digitalprogramm des dbv]

Deutsches Tanzfilminstitut Bremen Bremen D 29.3.2023

 

The German Dance Film Institute is a presence media library that has been able to test a new pillar of communication with colleges of dance and dance education for the first time through the project “New Accesses to the Cultural Heritage of Dance”. A special feature of archives is that the holdings cannot be viewed off-site and without context with archive staff. This means that knowledge transfer can so far only take place in-house or through specially compiled media libraries, which are shown outside in a narrowly defined framework accompanied by specialist staff. Film collections in particular may not be borrowed, as they are originals with copyrights held by dance and film makers. Due to the pandemic, this fundamental problem came to a head.

 

An important goal of our project was to realise online lectures for universities of the arts with degree programmes in professional dance and dance education. Participating in this inaugural series were the Orot College in Tel Aviv (studying dance education, among other things) and a master class in dance education at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen.

In close collaboration with the respective dance lecturers, Dr. Talia Perlshtein and Prof. Henrietta Horn, 20 dance lectures were created on the topics of “Dance and Politics” and “Solo Dance”. In addition, we have modernised a dance history tool (TGT) in the sense of a visual dance encyclopaedia for lecturers and students and updated its content. TGT is now also accessible in two languages (German and English).

 

Wissenwandel.Digitalprogramm für Bibliotheken und Archive within Neustart Kultur is funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media and is launched by dbv Deutscher Bibliotheksverband.

 



Tutorial on subtitling films with the help of AI [WissensWandel. Digitalprogramm des dbv]

Deutsches Tanzfilminstitut Bremen Bremen D 29.3.2023

 

 

 

 

 

This tutorial was created as part of the NEUSTART KULTUR project’s “New Approaches to Cultural Heritage Dance”. It shows how spoken texts in films can be subtitled in another language relatively easily with the help of AI-based software. The translations created in this way are no substitute for professional interpreting, but they are a good first step towards understanding the content of the film commentaries. Dance students from different countries have greatly appreciated these new possibilities during our Zoom Lectures on dance history.
The choice of open source software is now also very large for this purpose. In our case, however, we have realised this mainly with already existing film and text programmes of the institute.

 

Wissenwandel.Digitalprogramm für Bibliotheken und Archive within Neustart Kultur is funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media and is launched by dbv Deutscher Bibliotheksverband.

 



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2023-04-23 14_57_11-Tanz-Geschichts-Tool_ Final Version_WW_Präs.mp4 - VLC media player The new dance history tool for teachers and students [WissensWandel.Digitalprogramm des dbv].

Deutsches Tanzfilminstitut Bremen Bremen D 29.3.2023

As part of the dbv’s WissensWandel funding programme, the German Dance Film Institute has developed a Dance History Tool (TGT) that can be used in teaching and training. Based on the open-source software MediaWiki (known from Wikipedia), the TGT is aimed at dance professionals, dance students, dance scholars as well as young audiences who have had little or no contact with dance in the theatre.

In the first phase, the TGT is being developed.

In a first phase, 400 records with films from the database project DANCE ON DEMAND (DOD) were used. This intranet portal of the National Library was developed in 2004 by the German Dance Film Institute Bremen for the largest library in Asia in Singapore and technically realised in cooperation with the University of Bremen. For technical reasons, the DOD was no longer usable since 2019. The updated texts on the most important stage works, choreographers, institutions and topics of German dance, which are available here again, are regularly supplemented by dance-historical valuable films from the extensive holdings of the German Dance Film Institute Bremen. Currently, over 100 films can already be viewed on the TGT portal.

This new online version of the dance history tool TGT has been tested by lecturers and students and found to be very enriching. TGT is not publicly accessible for copyright reasons. User-defined access rights are managed by the German Dance Film Institute Bremen.

 

 

Wissenwandel.Digitalprogramm für Bibliotheken und Archive within Neustart Kultur is funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media and is launched by dbv Deutscher Bibliotheksverband.

 



577_Techn-Support_07 IASA as guest at the German Dance Film Institute Bremen
Exkursion der Internationalen Vereinigung der Schall- und audiovisuellen Medien - Ländergruppe Deutschland / Schweiz
Events Lectures Deutsches Tanzfilminstitut Bremen Bremen D 24.11.2018 um 15.00 Uhr

The annual conference of the IASA-Ländergruppe Deutschland/Schweiz e.V. will take place in cooperation with the Klaus Kuhnke Archive for Popular Music and the Günter Grass Foundation on 23 and 24 November 2018 at the Studienzentrum Künstlerpublikationen / Weserburg and will offer an excursion to the media archive of the Deutsches Tanzfilminstitut Bremen.

 

The conference will focus on the perspectives of institutional archiving of audiovisual media, especially under the aspect of digitisation and long-term archiving of this media genre. This is where the guided tour through the German Dance Film Institute Bremen, especially through the technical department, ties in. We are particularly pleased about the interest shown by colleagues from Switzerland / Memoriav. The tour through our rooms follows the numerous work phases that a medium goes through until it is fully recorded in our extensive dance film archive, the largest in Europe. Multi-layered, time-consuming work processes for digitising video tapes of different formats become visible. Special attention is paid to the possibilities of restoring tapes. The processing of the digitised material, its inclusion in a database individually adapted to the needs of our institute, the indexing of the films and the subsequent long-term digitisation are vividly presented by our staff. The extensive professional exchange with the director Heide-Marie Härtel establishes new connections and concludes the excursion.

Projekt Digitalisierung IT RUSTS – German Museums Association offers excursion on long-term digitisation
Fachgruppe Dokumentation besichtigt Medienarchiv des Deutschen Tanzfilminstituts Bremen
Lectures Deutscher Museumsbund Bremen D 09.05.2018

Current developments call the socio-political neutrality of museums into question. The annual conference of the German Museums Association in May 2018 will discuss whether or how political museums are today and what values they represent for society. With speakers from Germany and abroad and around 400 conference participants, the annual conference offers a platform to discuss museum-relevant issues and current developments.

 

The annual conference offers a platform to discuss museum-relevant issues and current developments.

 

As part of the Spring Conference 2018 of the Documentation Section of the German Museums Association, the panel DOCUMENTING MUSEUM COLLECTIONS AND MAKING THEM ACCESSIBLE ONLINE offers a guided tour of all the departments of the German Dance Film Institute dedicated to the long-term digitisation and systematic indexing of films on and about contemporary and classical dance.

 

About 30 conference participants take advantage of this informative offer and receive extensive information from the staff of the various trades. In small groups, they pass through five stations that correspond to the phases of the work process a videotape goes through during digitisation and indexing at the Institute. Heide-Marie Härtel’s presentation of the database, which was custom-made for our needs, attracts special attention. Our TV and video technician, Claus Bouchard, has expertise in the restoration of highly endangered video tapes. He explains how he can rescue problem tapes. The excursion participants receive vivid explanations of the digitisation workflow from the head of the technical department, Hartmut Sebel: “A multitude of work steps – starting with reading in the tape in real time including the levelling of sound and image signals, the packaging of the material, editing work and the long-term saving of the material on special storage media – the creation of a high-quality digitisation of video tapes is time-consuming. With the knowledge of these experts, it is often possible to produce a significantly better digital copy from poor-quality video material. The insight into the user-friendly multimedia tool for using the digitised material on a tablet or smartphone via intranet, including a direct connection to the database, concludes the tour and opens up a lively exchange.

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© Ivan Kmit - Fotolia Data Base

A Collection of Audio-Visual Documentation of Dance Universität Bremen Bremen D ab 1996

Ring, Felix RuckertAffectos Humanos, Dore Hoyer

The institute’s data base has been developed in co-operation with the University Bremen and has been constructed to serve the specific needs of research into dance.

It contains information about the archived tapes, about choreographers and their oeuvre, about individual performances, theatres and other institutions of dance.

The data base is continuously updated with publicised data about dance from other archives.

For reasons of copyright, individual users may view the material only on our premises.

Some recordings in our archive need a special viewing permission by the choreographer or author.

Elepsie ... Die Künstler sind anwesend, NEUER TANZNefés, Pina Bausch

2705_Erweiterung-Sammlung_02 Expansion of the Collection: From Classical Ballet to Modern Tendencies in Dance
Vom klassischen Ballett bis zu den Strömungen der Gegenwart
A Collection of Audio-Visual Documentation of Dance Deutsches Tanzfilminstitut Bremen Bremen D seit 1989

n the course of the years, the collection began to comprise the whole range of different forms of dance.

Swan Lake, Video adaptationGuest performance in New York: SOAP and Rui Horta

From classical ballet to modern tendencies in dance – we now keep a record of various different styles and schools in Germany and also abroad.

Focal Point:
Dance Pedagogics

Part of our collection is concerned with the audio-visual documentation of the work of dance pedagogues, dance academies and different educational institutions.

Focal Point:
The Reconstruction of Institutional and Private Archives

Japan Standard 1, Video tape of early days

A large part of our collection consists of material from the private archives of choreographers, film-makers and different festivals, who donated their documentation to the for reconstruction and filing.

While new material is continuously created within the context of our institute’s work, the private collection of Heide-Marie Härtel is growing simultaneously.

Focal Point:
Specimen Copies

Theatres and choreographers place specimen copies at the institute’s disposal.

Focal Point:
Documentation of Pieces

About half of our collection consists of video material which is ready to be broadcast. Our institute records between 40 to 60 performances each year on camera. Thus our collection is continuously growing and kept up-to-date with the latest productions.

Intervals, Stefan ThossL'autre et moi, Anna Huber