Being ushered through the Anthology Film Archives by John Mhiripiri, the administrative director and exhibitions coordinator, was a rare experience. The Anthology Film Archives house the most film of any archive in the nation, and head up their mission statement with the idea that a great film must be seen many times. For this reason, those at Anthology try to provide the best viewing environment for avant-garde and other significant films while having several of the foremost film archivists to preserve all of the films shown and preserved in their 'Essential Cinema' collection.
John gave us a brief history of Anthology, and how it had gotten started back in the sixties by Jonas Mekas, one of the more prolific avant-garde filmmakers. We were then fortunate enough to watch a show that John had assembled for us featuring various 16mm filmstrips from the likes of: Bruce Baille, Stan Brackhage, Bruce Conner, Paul Sherits, Oskar Fischinger, and Harry Smith. This collection was put together with the idea of echoing some of the avant-garde cinema John had experienced as a student of John Schott's while at Carleton, years earlier. It was of the utmost quality, each film preserved and unfaded, shown in flickering 16mm glory.
After, John showed us the rest of the facilities including another theater, the vault where the films were in cold-storage, an extensive library of various film publications, and an archival room where films were curated, restored, or otherwise treated. He was more than happy to answer any of our questions, and made it clear that he was a man who loved his job.
The thing that struck me most about this visit was that film itself provides a powerful, visceral aesthetic to the moving image. This is an idea that in a culture of New Media, and the propagation of the moving image through the internet which is too easily lost. This is what makes Anthology so important; without a reminder of what 'film' means, many, especially in my generation, will cease to understand where cinema came from.
Death to digital projection!
Written by Sam Scherf, Images by Sam Scherf
For more on Anthology
A beautiful Stan Brackhage film (or video on YouTube
