European Rural History Film Association (ERHFA): Database and Online Portal

 

The European Rural History Film Association (ERHFA) is a non-profit organisation. It promotes the documentation, conservation and study of all aspects concerning films on rural history. The aim of the ERHFA is to make the films produced on rural Europe visible and provide rural historians with the necessary information to identify and contextualise these films by providing not only information about the location of the original film (and a digitised version of it, if there exists one), but also data and guidance towards the necessary contextual information about who was producing, financing and using the film.

For this purpose, the ERHFA maintains together with the Archives of Rural History (ARH) a film database, an Online-Portal (https://ruralfilms.eu/filmdatabaseOnline/) and publishes the series Video Essays in Rural History (https://visual-history.de/project/wigger-video-essays-in-rural-history/). Members of the Association are archival and scientific institutions.

The database is a working tool of the members of the ERHFA. It provides an overview over the films produced on rural Europe in the 20th century. The entries in the database are continually upgraded and extended by the existing and new member institutions of the ERHFA. Entries are structured along the identified films. Each entry provides context information on the work and guides researchers to institutions that hold archival sources or to other databases, in which more information about the registered film (and/or versions of it) is available. The database also entails information on whether the film has physically survived, where it is actually held and whether there is a digitised version available.

The Online-Portal contains a selection of the films (works) which are catalogued in the database. Institutions that hold digitised film material can make it accessible to the public via the Online-Portal by joining the ERHFA as a member. Recently, new institutions from Switzerland and Portugal joined the contributing institutions to the Online-Portal. Furthermore, chronological collections of films were created alongside the already existing thematic collections.

 

European Rural History Film Association (ERHFA) https://ruralfilms.eu/