AV Preservation by reto.ch

If it’s not awesome, we don’t do it.

A stencil-coloured print of
Création de la Serpentine by Segundo de Chomón,
Pathé Frères, France 1908
(Courtesy by Österreichisches Filmmuseum, the Austrian Film Museum)

We are a highly skilled moving image conservation and restoration company, partly operating at the Lichtspiel in Bern, Switzerland. Our small team provides worldwide comprehensive services that encompass the whole range of audiovisual preservation, offering Swiss quality at a competitive price. We publish a newsletter approximately once a month, summarising news relevant to the preservation of audiovisual media. We have a particular commitment to the dissemination of low-technology and low-energy audiovisual conservation and restoration techniques. We support open-source projects which we believe are beneficial for the archival community.

Our Services Include

research, training and consultancy on audiovisual preservation
film digitisation for both preservation and access purposes
digital moving image and sound restoration
files and data transformation
maintenance and migration of digital archives

Training

Medienkunst: Technologie und Erhaltungsstrategien III at the Akademie der bildenden Künste in Vienna, Austria, on 27 and 28 May 2026 [de]
Was können wir überhaupt noch bewahren? at the Akademie der bildenden Künste in Vienna, Austria, on 28 May 2026 [de]
The Path from Analogue to Digital, for the SEAPAVAA Fellows Lecture Series AV Archiving: Do We Still Need Vaults?, online in 2026 [en]
No More Time to Waste, mid-October 2026 [en]
Blurriness Was Photogenic: A Personal and Technical Memoir, on 27 June 2027 [en]

Publications

Reto Kromer: Review of The Future of Memory, in Journal of Film Preservation, n. 113 (October 2025) [en]
Reto Kromer: Review of The FIAF Disaster Handbook, in Journal of Film Preservation, n. 112 (April 2025) [en]

Patronage of the Arts and the Sciences

AMIA, the Association of Moving Image Archivists
FIAF, the International Federation of Film Archives
IASA, the International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives
No Time to Wait, the 10^th edition will take place at Filmoteka Narodowa – Instytut Audiowizualny (FINA) in Warsaw, Poland, from 14 to 16 October 2026

2026-05-15