By Christopher Natzén/Mats Rohdin
On 4 March 2010, Sonja De Leeuw and Pelle Snickars presented Video Active and EUscreen at the Department of Cinema Studies, Stockholm University’s research seminar. The presentation attracted attention afterwards in an article in the second largest Swedish newspaper, Svenska Dagbladet, written by Professor Astrid Söderbergh-Widding from the Department of Cinema Studies. The article emphasises the importance of the EUscreen project for creating better access to European television history through a digital portal. EUscreen’s focus on research, learning and viewing just for pleasure is highlighted as well as the comparative aspects between Europe’s television histories. EUscreen’s link to Europeana’s larger context is also described. Furthermore, Söderbergh-Widding compares EUscreen with YouTube and writes that “the absence of a historical framework for interpreting” what is seen in the latter is fatal in the long run as these items are presented without enough contextualisation. The article concludes that “it is sometimes said that images gain ground from the written word”, and if this is true EUscreen is even more crucial as the need to present these images with an accurate framework increases as they grow in importance for everyday life.
Read the article (in Swedish)