The National Archives of Hungary (Budapest, 2006)

PRESS AND MEDIA ARCHIVES - The Archives of the Hungarian Television by Anikó Józsa

and aired material so the Archive was formed in 1960. The organization of the archive was gradually formed and the prevailing view was - and still held today is - that the producer and later the editorial staff, should select which of their programmes have to be archived. The editorial staffs intended to keep all the programmes that were of artistic, historical and cultural value for future generations. Owing to the continuous and rapid change in television technology and modernization, the material of the programmes was obtained by the Archives via different films and video carriers. In the archives of the television, 29371 hours of programmes could be found as of the year 1999; out of which 8000 hours of film, 150000 film containers, the rest are on videocassettes. Besides the demands for internal use, the demands for the material of the archives of MTV have also increased, due to the appearance of other public service, commercial and cable television companies. We are able to supply their requests continuously. The technical conditions of material held in the MTV archives vary considerably. The renewal of the old material began in 1996. First the programmes on 2 inches carriers were preserved and restored. We discovered during an extended control, that some film rolls had shrunk, were tainted or perforated and had suffered other damage. In the case of coloured material, there was often discolouration and their repair became a very urgent necessity. Da-Vinci film restoring - film restoration equipment was obtained at the beginning of 1999; therefore, the renewal of the film collection that could have happened 25 years ago, was launched. We usually request direct help from the makers of the film during the restoration work whenever films are in poor condition. As a result of this work, the first restored films were broadcast in March, 1999. Films such as The Testament of Koppányi Agha, The Boy from Komárom, The Black Town, Mézga Family and so on. Newsreels and other former magazine programmes as in THE WEEK, Panorama, Blue Lights and so on; on films that were stored in even worse condition. During the restoration process before cleaning and rewriting, all of the interviews had to be meticulously glued together frame by frame. The newsreel interviews between 1957 and 1963 nowadays are recorded on BETA video films. The programmes being restored are recorded on analogue and digital beta cassettes and a VHS Time code watching copies are made from them, too. The television archive is also available for the researchers. Nowadays