Yale Film Archive

In 1968, Yale began collecting 16mm film with the purchase of several hundred prints known as the John Griggs Collection of Classic Films.[3] The Griggs films came to Yale largely through the efforts of experimental filmmaker Standish Lawder, then Assistant Professor in Yale’s History of Art Department, and Yale alumnus Spencer Berger, a film collector and historian of the Barrymore family. The purchase was funded by three alumni: Fred W. Beinecke, Richard E. Fuller, and Chester J. LaRoche Jr., all graduates of the University. Although modest, this acquisition encouraged other collectors to donate their films, which then became part a vital part of film curricula.

Over the next 15 years, film as an academic discipline grew immensely, leading to the formation of both the Film Studies Program and the Yale Film Study Center in 1982. During the 1980s, the 16mm archive burgeoned with film donations by Yale alumni Spencer Berger, Ralph Hirshorn, and others, while Yale’s 35mm archive was born with hundreds of rare prints of television programs produced by Herbert Brodkin, and collections such as those of the pioneering experimental director Mary Ellen Bute, a 1926 alumna of the Yale School of Drama.

In 2013, the monthly screening series "Treasures from the Yale Film Archive," showcasing 35mm prints from the archive's collection, began. The screenings feature introductions by Film Archive staff as well as Yale faculty, and have also included guest filmmakers such as Michael Roemer, Warrington Hudlin, Tamar Simon Hoffs, Norman Weissman, Frank and Caroline Mouris, and Willie Ruff,[4] as well as musical accompaniment for silent films by Donald Sosin.

In July, 2017, the Yale Film Archive formally became part of the Yale University Library. In January, 2021, the Film Archive moved to a newly renovated 3,200 square foot headquarters, designed by Apicella + Bunton Architects, in Sterling Memorial Library.[5]

Films preserved by the Yale Film Archive include Passages from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake (directed by Mary Ellen Bute) and The Boy Who Saw Through (produced by Bute and directed by George C. Stoney);[6] Our Union, directed by Carl Marzani; To Be a Man,[7] directed by Murray Lerner; and four films by animator Frank Mouris: Quick Dream, You're Not Real Pretty But You're Mine..., Chemical Architecture, and Coney Island Eats. In 2018, the Film Archive completed preservation of director Nicholas Doob's 1979 film "Street Music," which features performances by 19 street musicians including "Oliver "Pork Chop" Anderson," Brother Blue, Bongo Joe Coleman, Jimmy Davis, Guy Mosley, Gene Palma, and "The Automatic Human Jukebox."

The Yale Film Archive also preserved 2-inch videotapes containing a 1972 broadcast by WTIC of "What's Happening," a local news program that covered the visit to Yale by Duke Ellington and other jazz musicians including Eubie Blake, Dizzy Gillespie, Jo Jones, Charles Mingus, Max Roach, and Mary Lou Williams.[8] In 2021, the archive completed preservation work on Sedat Pakay's 1973 short film James Baldwin: From Another Place, which captures James Baldwin during his time living in Istanbul, Turkey in 1970.[9]

In 2022, thanks to a grant from The Film Foundation, the Yale Film Archive restored Losing Ground in 4K using the original 16mm negative to create a new 35mm negative, 35mm prints, and DCPs.[10]

The Yale Film Archive holds a number of individual collections of the films of various filmmakers and film collectors, some of which are listed below.

• Ashish Avikunthak, filmmaker
• Steve Benson, poet and filmmaker
• Spencer Berger, film collector
• Mary Ellen Bute, animator
• Phyllis Chillingworth, painter, filmmaker
• Kathleen Collins, filmmaker
• Victor Cromwell, former CBS cameraman[11]
• Nicholas Doob, documentary filmmaker
• Herb Graff, film collector[12]
• John Griggs, actor and film collector
• Warrington Hudlin, filmmaker
• Alexis Krasilovsky, filmmaker, writer, professor
• Carl Marzani, activist and publisher
• Jordan Mechner, filmmaker and video game designer
• Josh Morton, filmmaker
• Frank Mouris, animator
• Sedat Pakay, photographer and filmmaker
• Leopold Pospisil, anthropologist and filmmaker
• Paul Preuss, writer and filmmaker
• Willie Ruff, musician and filmmaker
• Norman Weissman, filmmaker and author
• Robert Withers, filmmaker

• The Yale Film Archive