How did you become an archive researcher?
I owe my career to Martin Scorsese. I was watching the 2005 Academy Awards and Scorsese was presenting Roger Mayer with the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. The video package mentioned how Mayer was the founding chair of the National Film Preservation Foundation. At the time I was a sophomore studying film history and theory at the University of Florida but knew absolutely nothing about film archives. I looked up the NFPF’s website and found a link to archives that had received grants, which included the Lynn and Louis Wolfson II Florida Moving Image Archive in my hometown of Miami, Florida. I inquired about a summer internship and was fortunate to work with Lou Ellen Kramer (who is still there) and then-curator/preservationist Barron Sherer, who taught me about researching, cataloging and screeners, as well as how to clean, splice, store, transfer and preserve film and videotape. (more…)