=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-3643/paper11
|storemode=property
|title=Ontofest: An Ontology to Integrate and Retrieve Data from the Locarno Film
Festival Archives
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3643/paper11.pdf
|volume=Vol-3643
|authors=Alessandro Cosentino,Webert Júnio
Araújo,Fabio Crestani
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/ircdl/CosentinoAC24
}}
==Ontofest: An Ontology to Integrate and Retrieve Data from the Locarno Film
Festival Archives==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3643/paper11.pdf
Ontofest: An Ontology to Integrate and Retrieve Data
from the Locarno Film Festival Archives
Alessandro Cosentino1 , Webert Júnio Araújo2 and Fabio Crestani1
1
Faculty of Informatics, Università della Svizzera italiana, Lugano, Switzerland
2
Escola de Ciência da Informação, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais
Abstract
This work explores the transformation of the Locarno Film Festival (LFF) archives into dynamic, in-
terconnected resources through the development of an ontology. The main aim of this work is to
facilitate access to the information related to the LFF, thereby improving its discoverability and making
it more user-friendly for research and preservation of cinematic heritage. Adopting an interdisciplinary
approach, we developed OntoFest following the “Ontology Development 101” methodology. Thanks to
the collaboration with LFF and RSI (Radiotelevisione Svizzera), it was possible to integrate data from
diverse sources. Significant results of this work include the development of an ontology that facilitates
semantic search and analysis, focusing on information related to the LFF. This work highlights the
potential of digital archives in the cinematic field but also provides a foundation for future initiatives in
the digitalization of cinematic heritage archives. In conclusion, OntoFest lays the foundation for the
valorization and integration of cinematic heritage, which has profound implications for its preservation.
Keywords
Digital Archive, Semantic Web, Interoperability, Linked Open Data, Ontology
1. Introduction
In the era of cultural digitalization, archives are no longer passive repositories of defunct data.
In the “Age of Big Data”, where the previously overwhelming volume of data is now increasingly
becoming more accessible and controllable, these archives must be reconceptualized as dynamic
and significant repositories of knowledge. In this work, we focus on the Locarno Film Festival
(LFF) archives as an outstanding case study of cinematographic archival collections, highlighting
a largely dormant yet increasingly recognized legacy of which we are only now beginning to
become aware. These archives, along with those of RSI Radiotelevisione Svizzera in Lugano
and Cinémathèque Suisse in Lausanne, play a crucial role in preserving cinematic and cultural
heritage. Spanning various locations and ranging from analog to digital formats, these archives
are essential for historians and require proper management. Currently, the significant challenges
include efficiently locating, accessing, and integrating these materials into new research. The
OntoFest project aims to address a specific sector within the broad research area of humanities
by developing standards and creating tools for the diffusion of Open Research Data (ORD) for
20th conference on Information and Research science Connecting to Digital and Library science, Bressanone, Brixen,
Italy - 22-23 February 2024
Envelope-Open alessandro.cosentino@usi.ch (A. Cosentino); webert@cefetmg.br (W. J. Araújo); fabio.crestani@usi.ch
(F. Crestani)
© 2021 Copyright for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
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the analysis of cinematography. In particular, this project aims to: (i) create an ontology for
semantically rich descriptions of the cataloged material; (ii) produce data following the Findable,
Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR) principles [1]; and (iii) publish the data as Linked
Open Data (LOD). The final goal of the project is to provide access to research material about
films in various formats and supports. The main novelty introduced by OntoFest lies in its
aim to transform traditional film archives into a dynamic and interconnected resource. This
transformation is pivotal in enhancing the discoverability and usability of cinematic heritage,
aiding both research and preservation initiatives. OntoFest distinguishes itself from other
projects that emphasize the historical or cultural aspects of film, focusing on creating a versatile,
semantically rich framework. This framework, initially tailored for the LFF, is designed with the
goal to be adaptable to other film festivals, thereby improving discoverability and accessibility
to this information.
This paper is organized as follows. Section 2 presents relevant projects and initiatives aimed
at providing access to cinematographic research materials. Section 3 details the methodology
used in the development of OntoFest, following the guidelines described in the Ontology
Development 101 [2]. Section 4 discusses the specific characteristics of OntoFest, including its
framework, data model and the structure of its ontology. Finally, section 5 offers final remarks
and expectations for future works.
2. Related Work
The digitization of cultural heritage has emerged as a key area of interest in a wide range of
research studies and projects. Among different frameworks, CIDOC-CRM [3] and its extensions,
such as FRBRoo [4] and its reformulation LRMoo [5], hold particular importance. These models
offer a comprehensive structure for cultural heritage data, yet they mainly focus on particular
aspects that might not fully align to the particular needs of the seventh art domain. However,
recent literature indicates numerous efforts to adapt these methodologies to the cinematic
context, making significant progress in managing cinematic cultural heritage. For example,
the Cinema Context [6] project investigates the history of Dutch cinema from the late 19th
century, with a primary focus on distribution and dissemination, but it omits key figures such
as directors and actors. OntoFest aims to fill this gap by defining an ontology that encompasses
all aspects of cinema, with particular emphasis on central figures not fully explored in Cinema
Context. Similarly, the CINECOS project [7] proposes to develop an open-access platform for
exploring the history of cinema in Belgium and Flanders, integrating information on production,
distribution, and other fundamental aspects. Its goal is to make data easily accessible and
interoperable, thereby promoting research and preservation of cinematic heritage. While this
project covers various cinema aspects, it does not particularly emphasize the development of a
comprehensive ontology, a gap highlighted by the authors of Cinema Belgica [8], a spin-off of
the project. Finally, the European Cinema Audiences (ECA) project [9] examines the film culture
of the 1950s in seven European cities, collecting and harmonizing a standardized archive of
materials related to the cinematic experience. The project focuses on audience experience and
film popularity in a post-war context, providing valuable data on demographics, preferences,
and audience behavior. While ECA aims to understand the diverse cinematic experiences
across Europe, OntoFest focuses on film production and presentation, effectively connecting
the history of cinema to the structures and events of film festivals. In conclusion, projects like
Cinema Context, CINECOS, and ECA significantly contribute to the understanding of cinema
and its audience. However, there is a clear need for an integrated and comprehensive approach
to representing the film industry, especially with respect to film festivals. OntoFest proposes
to tackle this challenge, offering a holistic approach that connects the history, practice, and
structural aspects of cinema, enriching the research and digitalization for this domain. This
review has been limited to projects offering insights analogous to the goals of OntoFest, with a
particular focus on those works that explicitly deal with cinematic archives. Further research in
related areas might provide additional perspectives and insights beyond the scope of this study.
3. Methodology
The OntoFest ontology is developed using the Protégé editor and a knowledge management
system, adhering to the guidelines outlined in Ontology Development 101 [2], chosen for its
straightforward procedural steps and its alignment to the fundamental principles in ontology
engineering. This methodology emphasizes best practices in ontology creation, including
iterative development, collaboration, and integration with existing ontologies. The choice of
this approach has ensured a robust and scalable ontological structure, facilitating knowledge
representation and reasoning.
This approach involves seven steps:
Step 1: Determine the Domain and Scope of the Ontology At the first meeting with the
project stakeholders, three key considerations for defining the scope of the OntoFest Ontology
were discussed:
1. Domain covered by the OntoFest Ontology.
2. Potential users of the OntoFest Ontology.
3. Types of questions the OntoFest Ontology should answer.
The domain covered by the ontology is that of film festivals, covering various aspects of a
film festival such as film screenings, festival events, directors and actors, critic reviews, and data
on television programming regarding the film festival during its occurrence. This information,
provided by RSI, may explore various elements of the festival, including the showcased films,
details about the directors and actors involved, award ceremonies, and other significant aspects
of the festival. Users will include researchers, film historians, students, and cinema enthusiasts.
Some Examples of competency questions the OntoFest should be able to answer:
• Film-Related Questions: Film screenings, genres, directors, and actors involved in the
festival.
• Media Coverage Questions: Coverage of films, actors, directors, and key events by
television programs.
• Awards Questions: Information on awards given at the festival, including categories
and winners.
Step 2: Consider reusing existing ontologies This step involved a comprehensive analysis
of existing ontologies that fully or partially cover the domain of interest. We aim to assess
and refine these ontologies to better align them with our specific requirements, ensuring they
remain fully interoperable with the original frameworks. For this purpose, the Cinema Context
[6] and the Cinema Belgica projects [8] have been selected as prominent examples. A detailed
review of these projects was conducted to identify classes and properties that are pertinent to
the domain our new ontology aims to cover.
Step 3: Enumerate important terms in the ontology The step involved in enumerating
terms relevant to the domain of film festivals consisted of several phases. Initially, we collected
and organized specific terms, starting with the identification of key components such as films,
directors, actors, screenings, and festival events. Subsequently, we focused on terms describing
the qualities or attributes of these entities. Finally, the process addressed terms that define the
relationships between these entities, distinguishing between interactions or connections among
entities and the inherent properties of each entity.
Step 4: Define the classes and the class hierarchy This step focused on grouping enu-
merated entities into classes and specifying their interrelations, adopting a combined approach
(top-down and bottom up). We have started with some general classes like Film, Film Festivals,
and some specific ones like TV Show, moving on to intermediate classes such as Film Festival
Edition, Film Festival Section, Film Festival Award and so on. This led to the establishment
of a taxonomy, which forms the hierarchical aspect of the ontology. We strongly emphasized
the fundamental importance of each class, highlighting that classes should not merely serve as
linguistic labels but encapsulate core concepts of the domain.
Steps 5 and 6: Define slots and their facets These were carried out together due to their
mutual focus on class properties, covering both object and data properties. The focus was to
define the crucial attributes for each class. Particular attention was given to delineating and
establishing relationships among different classes. Finally, we specified the facets of properties
and relationships, including cardinality, value type, domain, and range, and provided some
axioms, such as class disjunction, inverse relations, and some restrictions (existential restriction
and universal restriction).
Step 7: Create instances Finally, after the ontology schema was ready, we automatically
populate it with data from the LFF and RSI archives.
4. OntoFest
The ontology is built upon five interconnected entities: Film, Film Festival, Person, TV Show,
and Archive. These core entities have been meticulously selected to capture the essence of
the modeled domain. Each of these entities is assigned a URI sourced from Wikidata [10],
underlining the importance of leveraging shared vocabularies for the Semantic Web. Where
the Wikidata vocabulary falls shorts, it is complemented by Dublin Core [11] and Schema.org
[12]. This choice is crucial in improving the ontology’s level of interoperability and reusability,
aligning it with the FAIR principles. Furthermore, we introduced custom classes and properties
to depict terms not represented in the reference vocabularies. How we model these entities is
described below (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: Classes and their interrelation in OntoFest. Note: The ontology includes inverse relationships
and data properties in its representation that are not depicted in this figure.
Here is a short description of the classes of Ontofest:
Archive: represents the television and film archives. In our case, these are maintained and
preserved by two organizations, LFF and RSI, both contributing to this project.
Film: provides information about its title, description, country of production, year of produc-
tion, genre, and duration. These films represent the entire collection presented at the LFF.
All this information is preserved at the LFF Archive.
Film Festival: comprises three subclasses: Film Festival Edition, Film Festival Section, and
Film Festival Award, which offer a holistic view of the domain, encompassing the awards
given out, detailed information on all past editions, and the various sections where films
are screened.
Person: comprises two subclasses: Cast and Director, which play a crucial role in the domain by
identifying the individuals behind the films. The key data properties include biographical
information, providing a structured way to reference these individuals.
TV Show: provides details on the television coverage during the LFF, reflecting media perspec-
tives on elements such as actors and directors participating in the festival, films showcased
in particular sections, and the awards received. All this information is archived at the
RadioTelevisione Svizzera (RSI) Archive. The key data properties include broadcast date
and time, program name, program description.
To validate the consistency of the ontology we employed HermiT reasoner [13]. This check
guarantees that OntoFest infers knowledge accurately and delivers correct information. Table 1
shows some queries executed within the ontology. The results obtained from these queries
align with reality, confirming that the model faithfully represents its domain.
Table 1
A list of SPARQL queries and the respective results retrieved from the OntoFest ontology. Note: Partial
Results only contains a subset of the total results due to space constraints.
Q No. Question SPARQL Code Partial Results
Q1 Which films, along SELECT ?films ?directors ?country [Film: Delta; Coun-
with their produc- WHERE { ?films schema:workP- try: Italy; Director:
tion countries and resented 75th_LFF_Edition ; of:is- Vannucci ... Film:
directors, were fea- DirectedBy1 ?director ; wiki:P4952 Drii Winter; Coun-
tured in the 75th ?country.} try: Switzerland;
edition of the LFF? Director: Koch]
Q2 What film from the SELECT ?films ?IMDB_id Film: Regra34;
“Concorso Inter- WHERE { ?films schema:workP- IMDB_id:
nazionale” section resented of:75th_LFF_Edition; tt15520368
was awarded the schema:workPresented of:Con-
“Pardo d’Oro” at the corso Internazionale; wiki:P1663
75th edition of the of:Pardo d’Oro; schema:sameAs
LFF? ?IMDB_id. }
Q3 Which television SELECT ?films ?TVShow Film: Regra 34;
programs discussed WHERE {?films schema:workP- TVShow: [Telegior-
the film that won resented of:75th_LFF_Edition ; nale, Il Quotidiano,
the “Pardo d’Oro” in schema:workPresented of:Con- Fuori Schema]
the “Concorso Inter- corso Internazionale ; wiki:P1663
nazionale” section at of:Pardo d’Oro ; of:ismentionedBy
the 75th edition of ?TVShow.}
the LFF?
5. Conclusion and Future Work
OntoFest contributes to the broader effort of digitizing Film Festival archives for preserving
cultural heritage and extracting value from information that might otherwise remain unused.
1
of stands for Ontofest and isDirectedBy is the inverse relationship of hasDirected
2
wiki:P495 stands for Country of Production
3
wiki:P166 stands for awardReceived
4
of:ismentionedBy is the inverse relationship of schema:mentions
This work aligns with similar European initiatives by adopting and promoting good practices in
digital archive transformation and ontology development. However, we believe that OntoFest
represents a step towards a more interconnected and accessible digital landscape for digitizing
information in film festival archives. We believe that the ontology development process should
be iterative and ongoing, since ontologies can only be improved as they are applied to actual
instances of data and when these data are used to answer research questions. For this reason,
we are collaborating with film experts to refine the ontology, ensuring it is best suited for their
purposes. The work is at its early stage and this paper introduces our ontology. Although
our initial results indicate that the developed ontology performs well in facilitating access to
research material related to the LFF, future developments are crucial to further enhance the
ontology’s robustness. More specifically:
• Ontology Enrichment: we plan to integrate data from other essential sources, notably
the Cinémathèque Suisse, a key player in LFF archives, to further enrich the ontology
with greater value and diversity. To achieve this, we intend to use ontology enrichment
methods [14] and leverage established shared vocabularies such as FOAF [15] and SKOS
[16], as well as LOD dataset like DBpedia [17], to enhance the semantic content and
knowledge representation within the ontology.
• Automatic Analysis of Textual Data: we aim to develop methods for the automatic
analysis of collected textual data, such as film reviews and newspaper articles about film
screenings. We intend to directly link these reviews to the corresponding films listed
in OntoFest. This linkage will not only enrich the documents with relevant metadata
but also enhance the ontology by adding contextual information to the film entries. For
instance, we aim to automatically identify reviews pertaining to a specific film and then
cross-link these reviews with the corresponding entries in OntoFest, as well as with other
relevant Linked Open Data datasets.
• Development of User Interfaces: we plan to develop a unified user interface that
integrates two complementary functionalities for data exploration. This interface will
have a visual browsing feature, which will enable users to navigate and explore data
intuitively without requiring technical expertise. Access to data using a direct query
function will be facilitated through a SPARQL endpoint, accessible via an API, enabling
complex queries in line with LOD standards and allowing for potential cross-references
with other LOD datasets. These two functionalities are designed to work seamlessly
together, allowing users to transition fluidly between them. For example, a user might
start with a direct query to fetch specific data, then switch to browsing mode to explore
related information, or vice versa.
• Evaluation Methods: we plan to conduct two different types of evaluation: a system
evaluation [18] and a user evaluation. To start with, we will employ an automatic system
to evaluate the ontology such as OntoEval [19]. Later, we will conduct a user-based
evaluation, specifically through questionnaires. Based on the results of these evaluations,
we will review and refine the ontology.
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