Archive is in the frame at SSD on June 24, as top US doccer Louise Rosen moderates two sessions of fundamental interest to attendees.
The morning Archives and New Alliances event will offer up three examples of how to monetise archive content, while the afternoon Archive Showcase session “reimagines the archive pitch as a creative encounter.” During the latter event, participating companies (Reuters, British Pathé and Getty Images) will muse on the stories out there waiting to be yet discovered, all emanating from “a recent discovery…a newly restored gem.”
Archives and New Alliances
“Archives are engines of innovation,” reads the intro to the morning session, which sets out to offer a “practical blueprint for archive holders and producers looking for new revenue streams and content strategies.” Panelists are Gunnar Dedio, MD of Progress Film; Alex Hryniewicz, Managing Director, Network Social Platforms at Little Dot Studios; Emmanuel Prosnier, Business Development Manager at Getty Images; Xenia Shevnina, Head of EMEA Licensing, Protégé; and Matthew Frank, CEO of Rocket Rights.
“Little Dot and Getty are collaborating on creating new content out of exclusively Getty material,” moderator Rosen tells BDE of their two‑part 90‑minute doc, Moons of our Solar System. “It’s an entirely archive-based piece of work [and] an example of refashioning existing material into something that is new. And what I’m learning is the extent to which the metadata around these types of projects really has to be put out there for search engines to capture the people who are specifically looking for a moment in time, a particular event, a particular battle, or a particular political shift that will then bring them specifically to this subject area, and the programme that has been made out of this material.”
Gunnar Dedio, MD of Progress Film explains his company’s contribution to this key area of interest. “Progress is one of the biggest film archives in Europe, founded in 1950. And one of the activities we offer to producers and other content owners is to digitise their archive and to monetise these archives through footage license, to licence their films, but also to license their content to AI companies. In this process, Protégé is our partner. So, we are digitising, [applying] metadata, and formatting it in a way which is digestible for Protégé,” he tells BDE.
“Protégé aggregates this material…and this is a way to monetise the archive of our partners. The AI companies train their models with this content, and therefore they pay a license fee. If this content is prepared in a good way, the they pay more, and we are preparing it in a good way.”
Matthew Frank, CEO of Rocket Rights, will also sit on the morning panel. On its website, Rocket Rights underlines its rationale. “Rocket works hand in hand with producers and rightsholders to identify valuable IP to take to the worldwide market. We understand what sells and work closely with producers to ensure programmes are in the best possible shape to distribute internationally.”
Adds Rosen: “Matthew has a very particular focus on the advertiser-supported VOD networks, the AVOD channels, fast channels, again, advertiser-supported, and he’s finding that there is a significant market in the relicensing of certain material that continues to hold up well.”
New From The Archives: 2026 showcase
The June 24 afternoon showcase will comprise a series of a 2-minute showreels, 8 minutes of presentation and one question from the floor ahead of ongoing examination, discussion and rumination during the following cocktail. On the panel will be Julian Ridgway, Managing Editor, Archive at Getty Images; Siri Abrahamson, Director of Archive Licensing at Reuters; and Archives Licensing topper Eric Cambronne at British Pathé.
“Rather than a traditional catalogue showcase, this session reimagines the archive pitch as a creative encounter,” reads the session notes, during which each of the participating companies presents “one recent discovery, unseen footage, a newly restored gem, an exclusive that hasn’t yet found its story.”
Reuters’ Siri Abrahamson tells BDE: “At Reuters, we have an extraordinary historical treasure. Decades of video and photographs captured by journalists who at times found themselves in harm’s way to tell the story. At the height of the Iranian Revolution, on oil tankers in the Persian Gulf, in the streets of Sarajevo, on the sidelines of every World Cup since 1985. History, captured in real time, by the people who were there. This is the legacy of Reuters – the world’s leading news agency, this year celebrating its 175th anniversary.”
“But the value locked inside an archive of Reuters scale is only realised when someone can find the content, use it, and build something with it. This session explores how Reuters is making that happen – and the bigger question is: which stories are still waiting to be told?” she underlines.
Getty’s Emmanuel Prosnier adds: “The panel is, for us, the opportunity to explain what we do on a daily basis to, let’s say, resurface some hidden gems that are not, for the moment, restored, or not available, digitally speaking.”
“Producers are looking for new ideas, finding something new, something that we’ve lost at some point, [and which] can be the starting point of a new story,” he adds. “So Julian [Ridgway] is going to take everyone through the work he and his team are doing every day and what are, let’s say, the latest examples of some things we have resurfaced and that have been the beginning of great production stories.”
Jazz aficionado Eric Cambronne of British Pathé will be sharing a fantastic black and white clip 2-minute from the Harlem Renaissance. “It’s a clip that I found while I was checking out what we had on jazz, and particularly on Juke Ellington,” he tells BDE. “It’s an era of North American music history that fascinates me because I love jazz. So it’s quite a personal choice, and I went for this clip because there is a lot of material to unpack, to understand the context and the evolution of Afro-American society both in this particular area, but also in US generally. It shows the development of the great art of jazz, but also all the industry around music in New York.”
Rosen articulates her gratitude to Sunny Side for its dedication to archive over the years. “They drew so many companies into the archive space that part of the feedback that they got when they initially said that they were going to cancel this year came from archive companies who said, no, this event has been really important for us. ‘Please don’t take it away.’ Sunnyside really brought archive into the picture.”
Whichever way the June market space will be filled in the future, (seemingly out of Strasbourg) there are still strategic “tentpole” moments throughout the year when archive is in the ascendant. February has Berlin, and October has DOK Leipzig. Earlier in October is the FootageFest, run by Dominic Dare and Sandra Coelho (LOLA Clips), which switches from LA to New York this autumn.
“It’s interesting to me to see how there is this geographic diversity, and a seasonal diversity to these events, which I believe points to the relevance of archive no matter what part of the world you’re in,” Rosen signs off.
