The SPA Film Festival 2016 - The winners!

The voting closed at 10 pm Thursday September 8th Korean time. The winners of the three different categories in the SPA Film Awards, along with the winner of The People's Award, was presented by David Fricker and Vilde Ronge in the final ICA Programe Commission Closing Plenary in Seoul Friday 9 September 2016:

Advocacy for archives and records management is something we all have on our agendas. ICA´s Section of Professional Associations, SPA, is no exception. And since film can be a powerful way of communicating, we thought we´d combine the two. We sent out a call in January of this year to archives and records management professionals across the globe, in search of films which communicate the importance of records and archives.  Within the deadline we received 70 entries, 66 of which met the required qualifications. The majority of the entries, 90 %, came from European countries, which is also reflected in the list of nominees.

The jury – SPA bureau members– reviewed all entries and decided on nine nominees in three different categories:

•    Best Film portraying the relevance and importance of Archives
•    Best Film portraying the relevance and Importance of Records Management
•    Best Film using Humor to Communicate about Archives and/or Records
      Management

The jury also decided on the three winners and we will announce them shortly. In addition, the jury decided that there should be a People´s award that anyone and everyone could vote for. The online voting amongst the nine nominees has been open from August 16 and up until last night.

The award is an Oskar with a K like this one and will be sent to all the winners.

Enough small talk, over to the hard core business of award ceremonies: the winners!

We start off with the Best Film Portraying the Relevance and Importance of Archives. And the nominees are:
Vienna City Archives, Austria
Glamorgan Archives, United Kingdom
Regional Archives Rivierenland & Heritage Guelderland, The Netherlands

And the winner is
Glamorgan Archives, United Kingdom

This is what the Jury says about the winner:
There is so much heart and soul in this film, it´s not possible to watch it without being touched somehow. Equally important, however, is it that it captures the essence of why all the work we do in the archives is essential both to society at large, but also to individual citizens. Glamorgan Archives have been smart about getting the message across in their film, when they´ve used real people, real stories and just the right amount of facts, footage, information and most of all: pathos.

Next category is Best Film Portraying the Relevance and Importance of Records Management and the nominees are:
City Archives of Antibes Juan-les-Pins, France
Barcelona Provincial Council, Spain
Aust-Agder Museum and Archives, Norway

And the winner is
City Archives of Antibes Juan-les-Pins, France

The jury says this about the winner:
All the nominated films in this category have been clever in their communication. Both by being very educational and using everyday language and recognizable cases that can be easily relatable in their communication. What made Antibes to stand out amongst the three, was their very simple and good idea! We often hear the phrase “no money” when it comes to marketing in our profession. Antibes has done a genius thing when making the film, anyone can do it as long as they have a printer and a camera. And the speed is just right, engaging and informational, not boring. So easy, so efficient.

The final category the jury has decided on is Best Film using Humor to Communicate about Archives and/or Records Management. And the nominees are:
The City Archives of Bergen, Norway
The Departemental Archives of Ille-et-Vilaine, France
Swiss Federal Archives, Switzerland

And the winner is
Swiss Federal Archives, Switzerland

The jury says this about the winner:
The Swiss have made an animation and the drawings are simple, fresh and fun. It´s very easy to follow the story and understand the message. They´ve used humor in their communication in a clever way, used a personal and very relatable situation, a guy on a honey moon who gets stuck in paradise due to a volcano outbreak and all the trouble that could have been if he hadn´t made sure his documentation was available in the records management system.   

The final award is the People´s award. We started the online voting August 16 and made all nine nominees available through a website. When the voting closed last night at 22:00 Korean time, we had received a total of 2379 votes. And the result is very clear, the winner got a total of 1016 votes where as the runner up got 366 votes. In fact the winning film has been in the lead from day one.

And the winner is
Regional Archives Rivierenland & Heritage Guelderland, The Netherlands

Unfortunately we don´t have time to show all nine films, but they are all available at this website:
The SPA Film Festival - The films

SPA plans to make all entries available online, so that we can share, learn from each other, get ideas and be inspired. And prepare yourself for another SPA Film Festival in 2018!

And here is the winner of the People´s Award!

"Rens at the Archive"
Regional Archives Rivierenland & Heritage Guelderland, The Netherlands