The Harvard Film Archive (HFA) is a film archive and cinema located in the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at

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 highe ...

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 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''. Film programmer Amos Vogel's extensive Cinema 16 film collection, originally sold to Barney Rosset and

Grove Press Grove Press is an American publishing imprint that was founded in 1947. Imprints include: Black Cat, Evergreen, Venus Library, and Zebra. Barney Rosset purchased the company in 1951 and turned it into an alternative book press in the United Sta ...

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 respo ...

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 Univer ...

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, w ...

era to today, and includes Hollywood films,

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 still figures are manipulated to appear as moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on film. Today, most ani ...

, short films, B-movies 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 Serbian may refer to: * someone or something related to Serbia, a country in Southeastern Europe * someone or something related to the Serbs, a South Slavic people * Serbian language * Serbian names See also * * * Old Serbian (disambiguation ...

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 co ...

. It also features a large collection of German cinema and the Bavarian Film Fund donates prints of any films that it finances. After the death of Karen Aqua, 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