Almost 6000 of the 100 000 Polish films from the Polish National Film Archive collections have been made available online. Film digitization and online sharing processes are long and tedious from the legal and technical perspective. Media to be digitized need to be selected, adequately prepared and described in order to be finally published online. The end result is more than just the video shared on the web. Comprehensive film outlines include voiceover transcription, description of the contents and any additional materials (posters and film stills), commentaries from the filmmakers and film scholars as well as archival press reviews. The landing page of the Repository project is “live” and showcases theme-based collections. Aside from the films themselves, the website also offers a database of film professionals.
FINA Repository has established cooperation with other European film databases, including the European Film Gateway and Europeana. The Repository team is currently working on digitizing and digital restoration of selected “Se-Ma-For” studio productions.
Film enthusiasts may also want to delve into FINA’s FOTOTEKA digital archives, which presents film history through film stills at http://fototeka.fn.org.pl, or its digital film poster gallery GAPLA at http://www.gapla.fn.org.pl .