Moving Image Archiving and Preservation

Issue 1 / Fall 2007

In This Issue

Welcome from Dan Streible

Dan Streible

MIAP Students Uncover Origins of Forgotten Film

Zack Lischer-Katz

Natalia Fidelholtz ('06) Becomes Registrar at Museum of the Moving Image

Zack Lischer-Katz

Redesigning the MIAP Website

Juan Monroy

Orphans 6 Film Symposium

Print Edition (PDF)

Welcome from Dan Streible

by Dan Streible / Associate Director, MIAP

Welcome, gentle readers, to the first issue of the MIAP newsletter.

During my first year with NYU Cinema Studies, it was my good fortune to serve as acting director of the Moving Image Archiving and Preservation program.

The students, faculty and staff in MIAP made my job a pleasure. In truth, my labor was light, as the system that director Howard Besser and our colleague Mona Jimenez have established went into motion and the do-everything talents of Alicia Kubes were always there to deploy the agenda and attend to every bump in the road.

A true measure of the success and abilities of our MIAP students is the fact that all of this year's graduates stepped into full-time jobs straight away.

Lauren Sorensen followed her passions for experimental film back to San Francisco, where she works for Canyon Cinema. Los Angelina Loni Shibuyama also returned home, where she is an archivist for the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives. Joshua Ranger accepted a Mellon Fellowship to work with the staff of NYU Bobst Library's preservation and conservation department. And Sarah Resnick turned her thesis project into a full-time position as musician David Byrne's AV archivist.

The eight students who will complete the MIAP rigors in May 2008 have demonstrated a now-well-known solidarity in their first year, and have been involved in a wide-range of instutions and projects. They spent this past summer interning at places ranging from Colorlab and the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, to Media Matters LLC and the Library of Congress' new National Audio-Visual Conservation Center.

I look forward to working with The Eight (aka "the orphans") as we prepare to host the Orphan Film Symposium, March 26-29, 2008. This will mark the symposium's debut at NYU.

As director of the biannual symposium, I have been thrilled with the support the Cinema Studies Department and the Tisch School of the Arts have already given to this event. Among the presentations on the program will be the screening of newly-preserved nitrate-era films that three MIAP students (Lisa Fehsenfeld, Yvonne Ng, and Jude Kiernan) uncovered in Washington, New Jersey. (See "MIAP Students Uncover Origins of Forgotten Film" elsewhere in this issue.)

Another part of this 6th Orphan Film Symposium will be a tribute to the late filmmaker Helen Hill.

Again, MIAP students have played a central role in the archiving and preservation of her films. Kara van Malssen (Class of '06) worked with Helen as part of her thesis on disaster recovery. After Helen's tragic death in January, the MIAP students in Bill Brand's Film Restoration course accomplished an impressive reconstruction of the animated short Rain Dance (1990). This and other newly preserved work will be screened as part of the tribute, funded in part by a grant from the Maxine Greene Foundation.

Finally, I can report that this incoming class of MIAP students have an impressive array of talents and life accomplishments.

With experiences at the Smithsonian, MoMA, the Film Foundation, Tribeca Film Festival, and other places around the world, they will be another dynamic group to work with.

Please stay in touch with the MIAP Program. Drop us a line, or stop by the new digs at 665 Broadway to welcome Howard Besser back from his sabbatical in Brazil and California.

You can also find me in new environs, room 626,of the renovated Cinema Studies Department, still at 721 Broadway.