Corsican audiovisual production: what future after broadcasting?

Since 1982 and the birth of the regional office France 3 Corse, Corsican production has developed very widely. In addition to the achievements of ViaStella and RCFM, the two island public service audiovisual sectors, many production companies, private televisions and radio stations have appeared, which have produced a number of films, shows and documentaries. What happens to these productions after their broadcast? A second life would undoubtedly be possible for this neglected heritage.

The public service and its archives

A major problem with the management and distribution in Corsica of public audiovisual archives lies in the question of their effective intellectual property. After their broadcast on ViaStella or RCFM, these contents fall into the bosom of FranceTélévisions and Radiofrance, then become the property of the INA (National Audiovisual Institute) which was in charge, before the digital development, of their centralization.

With the advent of digital technology, INA’s mission has changed. Initially, it was necessary to digitize these archives, then to manage their editorialization and their distribution. This is where the shoe pinches: in a series of videos produced by Ina, we learn about the astonishing management of these Corsican archives. A “regional delegation” from the INA, based in Marseille and made up of four people, is in charge of highlighting the entire audiovisual heritage of the immense territory of the “Grand Sud” region… and Corsica! And this is how this island heritage finds itself locked up, on the dusty shelves and servers of the INA.

How to change the situation?

In Corsica, for those who want to recover, use and distribute these archives, “l’affari sò in francesi”! For use by the public service, a request can be made to the INA in order to obtain broadcasting rights, which will be limited to a few months, even within the framework of archives from the same media. With regard to the Private, these rights can be bought, but they are extremely expensive. To give a specific example, ALLINDI SVOD, a platform funded by the CDC and launched in 2020, aims to centralize island audiovisual content. To obtain the broadcasting rights for these archives, and even for Via Stella’s own productions – such as the Ghjenti collection, produced in-house – colossal financial resources would have to be invested. Paradoxically, Allindi cannot therefore give these productions a second life in the digital age. For the time being, the platform must therefore be limited to private productions and co-productions.

A Radiofrance & France Télévisions platform

Not long ago, the Minister of Culture Roselyne Bachelot mentioned the establishment in spring 2022 of a common digital public service platform bringing together audiovisual content from France Television and Radio France. In an interview published on Corse-Matin on November 23, Philippe Martinetti, former director of Viastella , who has recently been director of the France 3 network, defined the main lines as follows:

« Notre ambition est de mettre en place un grand média du service public de la proximité qui englobe TV, radio et numérique. Ce sera la première offre gratuite numérique de proximité en Europe. […] Un média global de demain et d’information de proximité. »

The M3C: cultural media library of Corsica and Corsicans

The M3C centralizes various audiovisual content: 42,843 documents, 33 collections and 13 exhibitions. In partnership with INA and the University of Corsica, an archive of island audiovisual history was recently created by a team from the Lisa university laboratory. Entitled « Médias et mobilisations en Corse de 1945 à nos jours », a dedicated site is dedicated to it. There is a chronology of Ina archives which poses the generic question of the media representation of Corsica over more than half a century. It is unfortunate, however, that certain major events in the contemporary history of Corsica are not represented there. This is particularly the case with nationalist electoral victories, the first demonstrations against the Mafia in the early 1990s, but also many other mobilizations. So many “blanks” in history that force us to wonder about the reasons, seeming very subjective, for these cancellations.