The archive of the Milano Film Network is a large multimedia collection that catalogs the works selected and awarded throughout their history by the network’s seven festivals, representing a unique heritage of cinematographic and audiovisual works.
To access the MFN archive, you must purchase the MFN Supporter Card and belong to certain user categories.
In many years of activity, each Festival has collected often rare or unobtainable works , and to these are added every year those from the latest editions: it is a database of thousands of titles, constantly increasing, that the Milano Film Network wants to safeguard, catalog and make available to users.
The main objectives of the archive are:
– the conservation and the filing of the works
– the creation of an online video-library that can be consulted by researchers, students, scholars, teachers and professionals in the sector
Through video acquisition from analog sources (BVU, U-matic, VHS, Betacam …) and digital (DigiBeta, Mini-DV …), the Milano Film Network guarantees the preservation and safety of the rich heritage of the Milanese festivals which, otherwise, would risk being lost due to the progressive obsolescence of the formats.
The purpose of the Network, however, is also to enhance this heritage, making it available to the public, as well as promoting the visibility of the authors who have consented to be part of the video library. A dedicated software has therefore been designed, equipped with a user interface, which allows consultation of the files of each work and their viewing in streaming with anti-piracy measures to protect directors and their works. For this reason the films are subjected to geo-blocking and visible only by Italian IPs.
Researchers, students, scholars, teachers and professionals in the film and audiovisual sector thus have at their disposal a vast and varied database of films that can be consulted online which fully reflects the different research orientations of Network Festival.
To access the archive, you need to purchase the MFN Supporter Card .
MFN began in 2013 to carry out this work of archiving the cinematographic works presented in their history by the 7 festivals that are part of MFN, and today the numbers speak of:
- 1461 movie cards
- 23,973 minutes of works that can be viewed by the public
- over 663 hours worked and digitized overall
Thanks to the partnership with the Civic School of Cinema “Luchino Visconti” in Milan , a workstation for free and free access to the MFN online archive has been set up for all film students who access the School’s video library.
Census of the archives of the seven festivals
of Milano Film Network
Inventory project
of a unique organizational and artistic heritage,
co-financed by the Lombardy Region
To cover the role of collector of experiences and authoritative referent for the territory, in 2016 Milano Film Network set itself the goal of making the wealth of knowledge acquired over time by the festivals that compose it by one side tidy and preserved, the other usable by the public.
The census project of the archives of the seven Milan Film Network festivals co-financed in 2016 by the Lombardy Region intended to go beyond the multimedia archive and:
- on the one hand, to expand the collection of cataloged and digitized cinematographic works
- on the other hand, to carry out a cataloging and archival description of other materials present today in the individual archives and which tell the whole productive and organizational history of the aforementioned festivals, thus recording a wealth of knowledge in the field of cultural organization – and especially cinema – of great interest in the region, but also nationally and internationally.
MFN has therefore realized, thanks to the contribution of the Lombardy Region, a first phase of recognition of the documentary material of the Festivals limited to photographic material; audio and video testimonials; press reviews; communication materials; publications.
The project was designed for:
- store products and knowledge in an appropriate manner
- share them with the widest possible audience and transfer knowledge to new generations also for the purpose of entering the world of work