The EUscreen Symposium: “Reframing Openness ― Empowering Authenticity and Reuse in Audiovisual Heritage” was held 8–9 April 2026 at Filmoteka Narodowa ― Instytut Audiowizualny (FINA) in Warsaw, hosted by EUscreen and FINA.
I spoke on the panel “Collaboration & Participatory Practices”, presenting on ISSA and the open-source, modular approach we’re taking to AI in moving image archives. Below a recording of my talk:
Intelligent Systems for Screen Archives: Investing in Knowledge, Not Tokens
When moving image archives purchase AI services, they receive outputs —automated transcription, object detection, metadata generation— but the knowledge of how those outputs were produced remains with the vendor. Each token bought is capacity not built. The Intelligent Systems for Screen Archives (ISSA) project, funded by the BFI through the National Lottery, explores an alternative: five UK regional and national archives collaborating on open-source, modular prototypes. This is a longer path, but the returns are different in kind: shared infrastructure, methods and skills that build collective understanding of what AI can and cannot do for moving image collections. In this panel, the principal investigator of ISSA reflects on early lessons from the first phase of the project and shares its direction of travel going forward.
See also DEERIN for the prototypes discussed in this talk.