HAGHEFILM FOUNDATION STUDENTS AND INTERNS
Massimo Benvegnù (August – December 2009), an Amsterdam resident originally from Padova, Italy, is a writer and film critic, and 1997 veteran of the Archimedia program. During his Haghefilm Foundation internship, Massimo has revived and expanded his film restoration expertise by working on the inspection and preparation of nitrate originals for photochemical duplication in the Conservation Department, and also contributed to the scanning of film clipping collections.
Nino Dzandzava (September – November 2009), a film and art critic from Tbilisi, Georgia, is currently working in the Film Heritage Department of the Georgian National Film Center. At Haghefilm, she expanded her expertise in photographic chemistry, sensitometry, print inspection and repair, and got acquainted with printing techniques as well as both black and white and color grading. She also explored potential technical equipment she might recommend when continuing her mission to help building a preservation culture and share her new knowledge in the emerging archival community of her home country.
Loubna Régragui (October 2009 – March 2010), Project Manager at the Thomson Foundation for Film & Television Heritage (Paris, France) is a graduate of the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation. In her six month internship, she explored the entire breadth of digital technologies and approaches available at Haghefilm. Employing the knowledge thus obtained, Loubna also participated in the Haghefilm Foundation’s ongoing research into the historic techniques of tinting and toning, and their simulation in Desmet and Digital Desmet restoration routes.
Simone Venturini (October 2009 – January 2010) from La Spezia, Italy, is a researcher at the University of Udine Department of History and Preservation of Cultural Heritage and is also responsible for the preservation projects of the University’s video laboratory La Camera Ottica in Gorizia. His internship project concerned the preservation of 35mm medical films from the Vincenzo Neri Collection. The project is sponsored by Haghefilm Conservation BV.
Lila Silva Foster (February to May, 2010) comes from São Paulo, Brazil. After Film and Philosophy studies, Lila has been working as intern and later as staff cataloguer in the Cinemateca Brasileira of São Paulo since 2003. She has also been teaching Brazilian film history and writing about cinema for an online magazine since 2005. Before coming to Amsterdam, Lila completed her dissertation on Brazilian home movies. Based on this research field, Lila is especially interested in reversal and small gauge formats, but also worked with nitrate originals in the Conservation Department at Haghefilm.
Adelheid Heftberger (February to May, 2010) from Vienna, Austria, holds Masters Degrees in Slavic Studies and in Comparative Literature. Her previous research has focused on the work of Dziga Vertov, for instance, contributing to the interdisciplinary Vertov research project Digital Formalism at the Austrian Filmmuseum in Vienna. Adelheid strongly believes that it is impossible to write about motion pictures without knowing the technology and history of the medium. Thus, she was very happy that the Haghefilm Foundation has given her the possibility to learn more about film preservation in both the chemistry and the conservation department.
Sean Kelly (January 2010, University of Amsterdam Preservation and Presentation of the Moving Image program) from the UK is a Film Studies Graduate who has previously worked for the East Anglian Film Archive. In his internship, Sean conducted experiments with chemical coloring of black and white film and finalized Haghefilm’s first internal applied color print, based on chemical tinting of found footage. Sean has been awarded an AMIA Fellowship at the Image Permanence Institute in Rochester, New York for the year 2010.
Anna Sperone (March to April, 2010) from Turin, Italy, holds an Arts Degree in Film Studies and is a 2004 graduate of the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation at George Eastman House. As a film archivist at the Museo Nazionale del Cinema in Turin, she works on film inspection and cataloguing. Also, Anna obtained her license as film projectionist in 2007. At Haghefilm, she focused on furthering her understanding of film stocks and materials by working in the chemistry department, and by learning about digital restoration.
Henry Borchers (February to May, 2010, University of Amsterdam Preservation and Presentation of the Moving Image program) from Wisconsin, USA, is a bachelor in Communication Arts and has previously participated in an exchange program with the University of Utrecht. He is especially interested in sound, whether motion picture soundtracks or musical recordings. Henry believes that filmmakers and academics neglect the importance of sound despite its prevalence. For that reason, he was excited to have the opportunity for an internship in Haghefilm’s sound department.
Stefania Carta (May to July, 2010) is second of three interns to join us from the Museo Nazionale del Cinema in Turin where she has been employed since 2006, focusing on preliminary cataloguing, conservation and film inspection, cleaning, repair, and storage, especially of recent aquisitions. Starting in 2008, she has been working on the conservation of the Museum trailers collection, in collaboration with the University of Torino. Her internship allowed Stefania to obtain her first, direct hands-on laboratory experience by gaining a deeper knowledge of film materials and analog preservation processes, with particular interest towards the appraisal of preservation work in comparison with the original materials. In addition, Stefania was introduced to modern digital processes and took over the inspection and preparation work of some Stan Brakhage and Kenneth Anger materials to be preserved at the Haghefilm Laboratory.
Karin Carlson (September 2010) is this year’s winner of the Haghefilm Foundation Fellowship (formerly Haghefilm Fellowship) awarded annually to an outstanding student upon graduation from The L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation at George Eastman House. Karin comes from Wisconsin and holds Masters degrees in Media Communications and Public History. She interned at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York City and worked in video production at Governors State University in Chicago prior to her enrollment in the Selznick School. Within the archival field, Karin is especially interested in preservation and collection management. During her fellowship, Karin will restore a 1910 split reel of comedies produced by the Essanay company, Mulcahy’s Raid / A College Chicken, from the collections of Eastman House, and looks forward to the opportunity to further her understanding of preservation within a laboratory environment.
Stella Dagna (September to October, 2010), originally from Milano, Italy, has been working for several years in the film archive at the Museo Nazionale del Cinema in Turin and is the third and final intern to visit us from that institution this year. After two years of silent film inspection and inventory work, she has been focusing on restoration projects, in particular print comparison and analysis of production documents, as well as identification of nitrate prints. Stella is also working on her PhD project on Cinema History with focus on Italian silent cinema. Regarding herself a future ‘researcher-archivist’, a career path still little followed in Italy, Stella is looking forward to her training experience at the Haghefilm Foundation.
Rossella Catanese (November, 2010 to February, 2011) is a PhD candidate at La Sapienza University of Rome, investigating digital technologies and research methods in the realm of the performing arts. Among other things, Rossella has worked on the digital restorations promoted by her university’s performing arts research center, the Centro Teatro Ateneo, and has shared her knowledge on restoration and futurist cinema on various conferences. Both in her PhD research and her internship at the Haghefilm Foundation, her work focuses on the digital avant-garde of audiovisual restoration, ranging from the scanning process, digital image manipulation, and the digital intermediate process in its entirety.
Heather Heckman (September to December, 2010) is a PhD candidate in the Film Studies program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and holds Master's degrees in Film Studies and Library and Information Studies from the same institution. Heather is currently researching towards a dissertation on Hollywood's conversion to Eastman Color film stock in the 1950s. Her publications include Burn After Viewing, or, Fire in the Vaults: Nitrate Decomposition and Combustibility (forthcoming in The American Archivist) and Gray or Black? Howard Koch and the Elusive Architecture of the Hollywood 'Lists.' She recently concluded a three-year appointment as programmer at the UW Cinematheque and continues to work at the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research in her spare time.
Luca Antoniazzi (February to April 2011) from Venice, Italy, is a Master Degree candidate at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, specializing in Cultural Economics (economics and management of cultural organizations - EGART). After having earned his BA in Anthropology at the University of Bologna, Luca turned his attention to cultural economics, and in particular to the question of financial sustainability in cultural initiatives for the general public. His growing interest in the motion pictures industry led him to turn his attention to the management issues surrounding the business of film preservation in the transition from the analog to the digital era. Luca’s internship program at the Haghefilm Foundation is designed as a research project to be incorporated in his Master thesis.
Chrystel Bonne (February to June 2011), from Paris, holds a bachelor degree in Performing Arts. She started a master in Appreciation of Cinema’s Heritage in 2009 and made an internship at the LNF laboratory in Paris, working on film archives. Currently participating in an Erasmus program in Amsterdam, she is keen to develop her knowledge in preservation and restoration in collecting institutions, and to further improve her skills in film handling, printing and processing with the support of the Haghefilm Foundation. A passionate viewer of silent movies, she is currently doing research for a thesis on nitrate films and their preservation.
Viktorija Eksta (March to June 2011), a film and photography scholar from Latvia, has written a thesis on Lev Kuleshov and his working methods as described in his book The basics of film directing, with particular emphasis on editing techniques. She is especially interested in the aesthetics of silent cinema, its rhythmic construction, and its impact on spectatorship. In order to further her knowledge on these topics, Viktorija has been involved for several years in research on movement and performance in experimental theater. She believes that practical experience in a film laboratory is essential to an understanding of the cinematic practice and experience; to this end, her activity at the Haghefilm laboratories is focused on the basic aspects of preservation work, ranging from film handling, inspection and repair to grading, printing, and analog processing.