Pam Wintle Interview in Celebration of AMIA's Twenty-Fifth Anniversary

Abstract

Pam Wintle Interview in Celebration of AMIA's Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Pam Wintle (bio) amia: Tell us about the early days. Pam Wintle (pw): At the plenary session, I gave the background that I worked for the American Film Institute [AFI]. I joined them—I think that was in 1976?—and I was a secretary because they actually had secretaries back then, and I was a secretary first for David Shepard, who was the archivist, and then, when he left, I became Sam Kula's secretary, who, as my memory has it, organized a group of the major nitrate-holding archives of the United States, and that included John Kuiper from the Library of Congress, Eileen Bowser from the Museum of Modern Art, Bill Murphy from the National Archives, and James Card for the George Eastman House (which is now called the Museum), and then, I believe, also Bob Rosen, at some point, attended from UCLA. And it was to really talk about issues of nitrate film preservation and funding. That seemed to be the overriding concern of film preservation at that point. And I'm going to add that there was no such thing as formal training to be a film archivist. It didn't exist, and so it was really apprenticeship training. So I felt extremely fortunate to work with David Shepard and felt that I basically earned my master's in film and film preservation working with him because it was a wonderful experience, in that anything I wanted to learn or do or know, he was willing to let me experience. And also, just being at AFI at that time, because it was a new organization and 16mm film prints were coming in and out, and so I found my little slice of heaven, you could say, in doing this. And so, as the secretary, I took notes, not knowing where my future was going to be going. And then I left AFI and ended up, in 1977, joining the Smithsonian. The Human Studies Film Archives was, at that time, a Film Center. But I was still both a film editor and also an archivist and was moving into taking care of collections that were coming in—so slowly moving into my [End Page 293] Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Pam Wintle. own sort of archival identity. And at that time, the nitrate-holding archives became known as the Film Archives Advisory Committee, otherwise known as FAAC. It was still being maintained under the auspices of the AFI and was growing as the field suddenly was growing and more moving image archives, more programs, whether they be universities or historical societies or museums or whatever, were adding film preservation and then video preservation components to their concerns. And the film archives that I joined at the Smithsonian started participating in the FAAC meetings. I actually left to join my husband in Brussels, where I then worked sort of under the table, so to speak, at the FIAF, the International Federation of Film Archives Secretariat, in Brussels. And, also, a little bit before that, the film archives at the Smithsonian had actually been sponsored for provisional membership in FIAF. So I had attended some FIAF congresses. So I both worked and attended congresses, as a professional, and also worked in the office just doing whatever they needed me to do. It could be stuffing envelopes, but it was just a really [End Page 294] fascinating experience to watch how an international organization operated. And then being able to attend the conferences also as a professional—and it was an organization of organizations. So, when I came back to the United States and began working back at the Smithsonian, in the film archives, I started attending the FAAC meetings again. And right around then, the Television Archives Advisory Committee was formed and joined with FAAC to become F/TAAC and still under AFI. It really is kind of interesting how the two programs evolved. I'm talking about FIAF and AMIA, because AMIA, when they decided to try to become formalized, one of the main discussions was around would it be an...