Euro-Mediterranean Partnership and Developing Televisual […]

Introduction

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The Mediterranean, as political and cultural entity, arises from a long historical sedimentation and a unique perception of shared space. Depictions of the Mediterranean world or worlds depend largely on the country and period at hand. From the French and European point of view, this shared space acquired in recent times an essential place in political, economic and diplomatic challenges. Human rights issues and international conflicts echo across the world. Human, migration and touristic mobility made it a meeting area between the South and Europe. Furthermore, the arrangements or confrontations between the three monotheistic religions (Christianity, Islam, and Judaism) in addition to the civilizations that followed gave this space a symbolic dimension.
 
Moreover, international structures such as the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (EUROMED) or the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) sought to challenge potential clashes of the sea perceived as a border. In addition to the main "classic" issues updated by research[1], the role of the media and social networks continued to prove their importance especially in the light of the recent Arab revolutions. In this context, two projects for safeguarding and disseminating audiovisual archives of the national televisions of the Mediterranean were launched thanks to the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership. The CapMed project (2000-2005) saved the television archives from twelve Mediterranean countries which were endangered due to material degradation. It was important to digitize those archives and make them available in professional circles. This transition to digitization was accompanied by training sessions for archivists and image technicians in the archives of televisions, partners of the project. MedMem project, Audiovisual Mediterranean Memories, launched in 2009, started in October 2012 in Marseilles and was announced to the international press and the European Union in Rabat and Fez, in January 2013. The project aimed at creating a free website editorialized through a selection of televisual archives from across Mediterranean countries similar to the interactive frescoes of the National Audiovisual Institute (INA) such as "Milestones in modern history" [2](Jalons pour l’histoire du temps present). As for their approach, these projects are at the intersections of memory, institutional, political and academic issues. Not only do these projects involve the emergence of a Mediterranean political space and raise awareness for a televisual heritage in this space, they participate also in structuring Mediterranean policies and studies.


[1] This text is based on the work of EUROMED's Mediterranean House of Human Sciences which coordinated the Network of Research Centers in Human Sciences on the Mediterranean Area (Ramses II), an international network of human and social sciences research. It brings together 33 research institutions, in the Euro-Mediterranean and many laboratories of the French National Center for Scientific Research. It was part of the European research policy (FP6) ad was financed for four years by the European Commission for an amount of 3.4 million Euros. The Mediterranean House of Human Sciences in Aix-en-Provence is the institution responsible of the coordination of the network. Ramses2 is referred to as a network of excellence. Its main objective was to establish a new field of study and comparative analysis, the field of Mediterranean studies. It combined numerous disciplines: archeology, history, studies of ancient texts, ethnology, sociology, political science ... The purpose of a network of excellence, within the framework of the European research policy is to encourage integration. . Ramses2 aimed to build a Euro-Mediterranean research space and to encourage a sustainable way of working together between the scientific institutions of the network" http://ramses2.mmsh.univ-aix.fr/Actualites/A-la-Une.htm. This network is operated henceforth under the laboratory Mediterranean House of Human Sciences, Labexmed labexmed.mmsh.univ-aix.fr/
[2] http://www.ina.fr/fresques/jalons/accueil

Introduction

Televisual heritage in the Euro...

Conservation and distribution o...

Conclusion

Abstract

Euro-Mediterranean Partnership and Developing a Televisual Heritage in the Mediterranean (2000-2013) The Mediterranean, as political and cultural entity, arises from a long historical sedimentation and a unique perception of shared space. Depictions of the Mediterranean world or worlds depend largely on the country and period at hand. From the French and European point of view, this shared space acquired in recent times an essential place in political, economic and diplomatic challenges. Human rights issues and international conflicts echo across the world. Human, migration and touristic mobility made it a meeting area between the South and Europe. Furthermore, the arrangements or confrontations between the three monotheistic religions (Christianity, Islam, and Judaism) in addition...

Author

Crivello Maryline
Professor in history, University of Aix-Marseille, TELEMME, MMSH.