The Harvard Film Archive (HFA) is a

film archive An archive is an accumulation of Historical document, historical records or Historical source, materials – in any medium – or the physical facility in which they are located. Archives contain primary source documents that have accumula ...

and

cinema Cinema may refer to: Film * Cinematography, the art of motion-picture photography * Film or movie, a series of still images that create the illusion of a moving image ** Film industry, the technological and commercial institutions of filmmaking ...

located in the

Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts The Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts is the only building designed primarily by Le Corbusier in the United States—he contributed to the design of the United Nations Secretariat Building—a ...

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston, ...

. Dedicated to the collection, preservation and exhibition of film, the HFA houses a collection of over 25,000 films in addition to videos, photos, posters and other film ephemera from around the world and from almost every period in film history. The HFA cinematheque screens films weekly in its 188-seat theater. It also maintains a film conservation center near Central Square, Cambridge. Harvard Film Archive won the 2020 Webby Award for Cultural Institution in the category Web.

History

The archive was founded in 1979 by Robert Gardner, Vlada K. Petric and

Stanley Cavell Stanley Louis Cavell (; September 1, 1926 – June 19, 2018) was an American philosopher. He was the Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value at Harvard University. He worked in the fields of ethics, aesthetics, an ...

in Harvard's Department of Visual and Environmental Studies, with grants from the Henry Luce Foundation and the

National Endowment for the Humanities The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is an independent federal agency of the U.S. government, established by thNational Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965(), dedicated to supporting research, education, preserv ...

. It opened on March 16, 1979 with a screening of

Ernst Lubitsch Ernst Lubitsch (; January 29, 1892November 30, 1947) was a German-born American film director, producer, writer, and actor. His urbane comedies of manners gave him the reputation of being Hollywood's most elegant and sophisticated director; as ...

’s silent film, ''

Lady Windermere's Fan ''Lady Windermere's Fan, A Play About a Good Woman'' is a four-act comedy by Oscar Wilde, first performed on Saturday, 20 February 1892, at the St James's Theatre in London. The story concerns Lady Windermere, who suspects that her husband is ...

''. Film programmer

Amos Vogel Amos Vogel ( Vogelbaum; April 18, 1921 – April 24, 2012) was a New York City cineaste and curator. Biography Vogel was born in Vienna, Austria. He fled Austria with his parents after the Nazi Anschluß in 1938 and at first studied animal husband ...

's extensive

Cinema 16 Cinema 16 was a New York City–based film society founded by Amos Vogel. From 1947-63, he and his wife, Marcia, ran the most successful and influential membership film society in North American history, at its height boasting 7000 members. Histo ...

film collection, originally sold to

Barney Rosset Barnet Lee "Barney" Rosset, Jr. (May 28, 1922 – February 21, 2012) was a pioneering American book and magazine publisher. An avant-garde taste maker, he founded Grove Press in 1951 and ''Evergreen Review'' in 1957, both of which gave him platf ...

and Grove Press circa 1966-1967, served as the founding collection for the Harvard Film Archive. The archive's first curator was Vlada K. Petric, who expanded the collection and established the year-round regular screenings. He retired in 1995 and in 1999 Bruce Jenkins assumed the post. In January 2005,

Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences The Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) is the largest of the ten faculties that constitute Harvard University. Headquartered principally in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and centered in the historic Harvard Yard, FAS is the only faculty respon ...

dean William C. Kirby announced that the archive would be absorbed by the Harvard College Library and managed by the Library of Fine Arts. This caused some concern within the Harvard community about the future of the archive and its programming. Jenkins resigned soon after the announcement. In September 2006 film scholar

Haden Guest , Haden Guest (born 1971) in Geneva, New York, is a film historian, archivist and curator. He is Director of the Harvard Film Archive and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Art, Film and Visual Studies, Harvard University Harvard Unive ...

became the new director of the archive. He addressed worries that the archives' absorption in the Library would affect its public film screenings.

Collection

The collection spans the history of film-making from the

silent film A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound (or more generally, no audible dialogue). Though silent films convey narrative and emotion visually, various plot elements (such as a setting or era) or key lines of dialogue may, when ...

era to today, and includes

Hollywood films The cinema of the United States, consisting mainly of major film studios (also known as Hollywood) along with some independent film, has had a large effect on the global film industry since the early 20th century. The dominant style of Ame ...

documentaries A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in term ...

animation Animation is a method by which image, still figures are manipulated to appear as Motion picture, moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent cel, celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited ...

, short films,

B-movie A B movie or B film is a low-budget commercial motion picture. In its original usage, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the term more precisely identified films intended for distribution as the less-publicized bottom half of a double featur ...

s and feature films from all over the world. It is the largest collection of 35mm film in New England. The collection grows by an average of 15 to 20 films a year and contains some rarities, such as some of the only prints in the United States of several films by Serbian director

Dusan Makavejev Dusan may refer to: * Dušan, a Slavic given name * Dusan, a son of Ra's al Ghul * Stefan Dušan (1308–1355), emperor of Serbia See also *Doosan Group Doosan Group () is a South Korean multinational conglomerate corporation. In 2009, the corp ...

. It also features a large collection of

German cinema The film industry in Germany can be traced back to the late 19th century. German cinema made major technical and artistic contributions to early film, broadcasting and television technology. Babelsberg became a household synonym for the early 20 ...

and the Bavarian Film Fund donates prints of any films that it finances. After the death of

Karen Aqua Karen Aqua (February 2, 1954-May 30, 2011) was an American filmmaker and animator. Early life Aqua was born in 1954 in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania and grew up in the nearby town of Forty Fort. She graduated in 1972 from Wyoming Valley West Senior H ...

, the archive was given more than 300 of her works, both completed and unfinished.

Film conservation

The Archive's mission includes to conserve, restore, and exhibit the collection's prints. It prioritizes film-to-film preservation for archival stability, authenticity, and aesthetics. It may also perform film-to-digital transfers.

References

External links

The Harvard Film Archive's website
{{Authority control Film archives in the United States Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts Cultural history of Boston 1979 establishments in Massachusetts FIAF-affiliated institutions