Milt Shefter Named President of AMIA

VANCOUVER, November 17-Milt Shefter has been elected president ofthe Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA). He succeeds Sam Kulaof Canada. The announcement was made at the 13th Annual Conference ofAMIA. The non-profit association has some 700 individual andinstitutional members in more than 30 countries.

"Our goal is to ensure that the stories of our times are recorded asmoving images on film and other media are preserved for posterity,"says Shefter. "Nothing less than the future financial, cultural andhistorical value of irreplaceable assets is at stake."

Shefter notes that preservation was not a high-profile issue in thepast because no one anticipated that movies and television programswould pay big dividends on future cable television channels, DVD andother home video distribution markets. He notes that many classicmotion pictures and television programs, newsreels and other "visualcultural heritage" content were subsequently lost.

"The growing number of television channels and households with DVDplayers have created an insatiable appetite for content," he says."Everyone realizes that there are considerable financial incentives forpreserving motion pictures and television programs. Our members alsorecognize that we have an obligation to restore and preserve agingfilms, not just commercial titles, for future generations."

Joining Shefter on the AMIA Board of Directors is Gregory Lukow,chief of the Motion Picture, Broadcast and Recorded Sound (M/BRS)Branch of the Library of Congress. They join incumbents Treasurer RickUtley, V.P. Preservation Services for Kodak's PRO-TEK PreservationServices; Secretary Lee Shoulders, Getty Images; Director KarenCariani, WGBH Educational Foundation; Director Oksana Dykyj, ConcordiaUniversity; and Director Jane Johnson, project coordinator of MovingImage Collections (M.I.C.).

The organization traces its roots to the late 1960s whenrepresentatives of moving image archives began meeting informally toexchange information and discuss ideas. The group was initially namedThe Film and Television Archives Advisory Committee. By the late 1980s,there were several hundred members representing more than 100organizations. The name of the group was changed to AMIA in 1990, andthe following year, voted to formalize as an individual-basedprofessional association--the only one of its kind in the moving imagearchival field. Its year-round information sharing and educationaloutreach activities are headed by volunteers of 14 committees and taskforces and nine interest groups. In addition to its annual conferences,AMIA will host the International Joint Technical Symposium in Torontoin June 2004. The organization's administration is run by ManagingDirector Janice Simpson and her executive office staff in LosAngeles.

Shefter is the president and founder of Miljoy Ent. Inc., a LosAngeles-based consulting and project management firm that specializesin the media asset preservation. Serendipity put him on a career pathas a preservationist. Shefter was working for a film production companyon the East Coast of the United States when it was acquired by RepublicCorporation. He was moved to Los Angeles to handle Republic'sConsolidated Film Industries (CFI) marketing and eventually became vicepresident of their video division. He later moved to Bonded ServicesInternational where he created a computerized tracking system thatenabled studios and other content owners to inventory and track films,TV programs and other moving image assets they owned. Based on thisexperience, Shefter was then selected as director of Library Resourcesunder contract to Paramount Pictures. His responsibilities includedsupervising the design and construction of a 40,000 square foot,environmentally controlled archive on the Hollywood studio lot, in anunderground facility in Pennsylvania and in London, England. He alsoimplemented a "protection-by-separation" strategy for archivingvaluable and irreplaceable film and video assets owned by the studio.Shefter subsequently played a similar role with other major studios andother library content owning organizations in the U.S. and Europe.

Shefter has served on the National Film Preservation Board and is aformer governor of the Society of Motion Picture and TelevisionEngineers (SMPTE.) He was elevated to Fellow Status and receivedSMPTE's Outstanding Service Award. He is an associate member of theAmerican Society of Cinematographers (ASC), and directs and narratestheir annual awards show. He is also a member of the Writers Guild ofAmerica and of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

For additional information about AMIA, visit the organization'swebsite www.amianet.org.