Plan Images Archives

Abstract

In 2005, the French Ministry for Foreign Affairs established a four-million-euro programme aimed at supporting cultural diversity in the countries of the South, which is one of the priorities of French foreign policy. It is certainly legitimate to question whether this focus on the cultural sphere is appropriate when the eradication of (extreme) poverty and the fight against disease and epidemics would seem to constitute more pressing challenges. However, France has made a conscious decision to place cultural issues on the same plane as the other major preoccupations of these peoples, a decision that was welcomed by UNESCO at the signing of the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions in March 2007, which was supported by France and other European countries. The Ministry's programme in favour of cultural diversity includes a specific plan, the Plan Images Archives, which is devoted to salvaging the audiovisual heritage of some of the poorest countries on the planet; it aims to support the preservation, management, development and diffusion of this audiovisual heritage, which is an essential element in the construction of the cultural identity of the peoples that produced it. The Plan Images Archives is concerned with film, radio, television and photographic material. People working in the audiovisual field in the countries of the South who wish to take part can send a request for funding or technical support to the Ministry for Foreign Affairs via the French Embassy in their own country. Ideally, these projects should involve more than the simple restoration or digitization of audiovisual material; they should include a plan designed to manage and exploit this material, thereby making it available to a wider public; projects must also be cofinanced.