In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Editor’s Foreword
  • Jan-Christopher Horak (bio)

Moving image programming both within and outside of moving image archives is essential to the work of our profession. Preservation and restoration are at the heart of archival work, but without programming the fruits of our labor would remain hidden in the vaults, usually seen by only a few adventuresome scholars. There is, in fact, hardly a moving image archive that doesn't also organize some kind of public programming in order to make its treasures available to a larger audience. In some institutions, programming actually takes precedence over preservation as a matter of philosophy. In almost all archives, programming is an economic necessity, since it provides a much-needed source of income, whether from the box offices of their own theaters or as rentals from other archival institutions, screening spaces, film festivals, and universities.

Given the ever-greater concentration of moving image media in the hands of a limited group of conglomerates, programming becomes more than just a public relations exercise or money generator; it is a contributor to moving image diversity that is lacking in the mass media. With the shrinking of the art house circuit and the virtual death of commercial retrospective theaters, which flourished in the 1960s and 1970s, nonprofit archives and screening spaces are practically the only sites where classic films, silent films, and lesser-known works of film history can be seen on a big screen, as originally intended. Such spaces also program new work by filmmakers far from the mainstream, filmmakers who have few other options for showing their work. Moving image archives, as well as the institutions they supply with material, are thus endowed with a public trust to educate, to inspire, and to create the plurality of voices so necessary for a functioning democracy. [End Page vi]

In spite of the importance of this aspect of work in moving image archives, AMIA has been relatively slow to give programming its due recognition. While AMIA formed a committee on access at its founding, its work seems to concentrate more on setting standards for physical access to moving image materials by scholars, filmmakers, and nonarchival screening spaces than on curatorship, organization, and funding of public moving image programs. Programmers work at all the major archives but are usually in short supply at AMIA conferences and sessions devoted specifically to programming content, ethics, or the introduction of new work by marginalized filmmakers. Of course, at smaller institutions, archivists must do double duty as programmers and therefore have less time to be concerned with programming. Their priority is often preservation, which seemingly requires more technical expertise than throwing an image up on the screen.

Surprisingly, moving image programmers for film festivals, permanent screening spaces without archives, and university film programs have no organization of their own. As one film programmer who functioned as a peer reviewer for this issue noted in conversation with me, film programmers sometimes gather informally at the Toronto Film Festival, but there is in fact no forum for them to exchange ideas in a regular and consistent fashion. It might be time to make a concerted effort to bring such programmers into the fold of AMIA, allowing them to interact directly with other programmers and public access officers in the archives, since indeed they are all involved in the great project of moving image education for the public.

This is the first special issue of The Moving Image and is the result of a suggestion by editorial board member Laura Marks, who functioned as coeditor for the essays on film programming in the Features section. These papers are a result of a conference on [End Page vii] film programming, which Laura attended as a speaker, herself a longtime moving image programmer as well as a professor of film studies. She introduces the programming section in more detail in her foreword.

The Features section of this issue concludes with a historical piece by Martin Loiperdinger, who discusses the myths surrounding the first screening of the Lumière Brothers film Arrival of the Train (1895), officially designated as the film inaugurating the birth of cinema. Who hasn't heard the often-told tale, repeated in almost...

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