The American Cinematheque’s birth in 1984 fulfilled a collective dream many years in the making: to reimagine the Cinémathèque Française as an American project, with Los Angeles as the home for a dazzlingly rich year-round film festival. Legendary director Sydney Pollack was instrumental in fulfilling this dream, as was co-founder Gary Essert, who explained, “Film is the one art form that we don’t have any kind of cultural center for and it’s the one form that was born and developed in this country.”
Supported today by 8,500 members, the American Cinematheque is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit cultural arts organization that builds a diverse and engaged film community through immersive film curation, conversation, and presentation. We bridge the filmmaker to the audience and film history to its future, hosting screenings, panels, and special events with thousands of luminaries as well as a youth education program. The American Cinematheque celebrates the communal movie-going experience at our mission’s core, showcasing 1,500+ films annually in 35mm, 70mm, state-of-the-art digital, and rare nitrate (one of only five in the U.S. with this capability) at Hollywood’s historic Egyptian Theatre, Santa Monica’s Aero Theatre, and the Los Feliz 3.
Our organization is the backbone for some of the region’s beloved cultural traditions. The American Cinematheque is the organizer of Beyond Fest, the U.S.-based genre film festival with the highest attendance and the home – for 25 years! – of NOIR CITY: Hollywood, a festival co-presented with the Film Noir Foundation.
A priority for us since 2020 has been developing our Archive with the end goal of turning it into a public resource. This Archive would be a focus of the Yale Class of 1993 Summer Fellow’s responsibilities. The Archive documents the organization’s 16,253 events since 1985 through audio-visual materials, photography, and ephemera. Not only have its stories and knowledge been “hidden in plain sight” to the public, but they have been unavailable even to our own staff members. Our holdings:
1. Illuminate Hollywood and Los Angeles history: We have transcripts, photos, and footage of conversations with such legendary actors as Tony Curtis, Vincent Price, Debbie Reynolds, and Ginger Rogers; directors Richard Fleischer, Lina Wertmüller, and Robert Wise; and many others. Among the Q&A sessions are appearances by Eva Marie Saint (ON THE WATERFRONT), Jack Lemmon and Edie Adams (THE APARTMENT), Michael Cimino (THE DEER HUNTER), George Chakiris & Russ Tamblyn (WEST SIDE STORY), and Kim Novak (VERTIGO).
2. Offer insights into the evolution of individual artists’ work: Among the filmmakers who have made multiple appearances at the Cinematheque over the course of their careers are American directors Kathryn Bigelow and Spike Lee; French directors Leos Carax, Claire Denis, and Agnès Varda; and Scottish director Lynne Ramsay as well as screenwriter Paul Schrader.
3. Document and spotlight the achievements of women, people of color, and members of the LGBTQIA+ community: The AC was the first to offer in-person retrospectives of female directors Kelly Reichardt, Agnès Varda, and Lina Wertmüller. Actor/filmmaker Melvin Van Peebles, who has said “I decided to make films to reach…a black public that the studios had never even considered,” participated in “A Tribute to Melvin Van Peebles” at the AC in 1992. In our safe space, we presented “Homosexual Revolution: A Tribute to Rosa von Praunheim” in 1997. This German pioneer of gay cinema made live appearances to discuss his films and stage his own act, “55 Years of Perversity.”
4. Document the thoughts and concerns of international filmmakers: It is particularly exciting to find footage of filmmakers who operated under repressive regimes and had limited free expression. Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski discussed the films he had created during the 1960s, which ran afoul of Polish censors. He was present for each screening of these rare early films.
Under the aegis of our full-time archivist and a preservation associate and with a team of interns, we have inventoried and digitized our holdings, re-housed photographs and negatives, and arranged for the historic deposit of the majority of physical media with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Film Archive. Among the tasks that remain is activating our Archive, which would be the focus of the Yale Class of 1993 Summer Fellowship.
The Summer Research Intern would be a full- or part-time – we are flexible! – temporary remote position between June 3 and August 9 or June 10 and August 16, with research and preservation responsibilities. Staff and interns typically work between 10 am and 5 pm. Should the intern have an interest in hybrid work, coming to Los Angeles for part of the summer, we would be open to exploring that as well. ‘
We can ensure both an educational and a fun experience. As our brand values state, “Film is alive. Through the joy of movies, we celebrate with new friends and reunite with old friends. Most importantly, we have fun.”
The position is part historian, part archivist, and part master storyteller. The expectation is that the Fellow would become an expert in our now-digitized holdings and conduct a series of research projects. Wearing the “historian” hat, the Fellow would look at our history as a whole, tracking the most-played films, the number of events held each year, and the number and nature of appearances that each actor and filmmaker made in public programs across the years. Wearing the “master storyteller,” the Fellow would listen to the Q&As/panel discussions/ moderated conversations, delving deep into a particular filmmaker’s contributions or looking for interesting themes that could be developed into podcasts or articles for our members. He/she/they could trace the popularization of independent cinema, technological advances, media globalization, and/or the emergence of new cinematic voices in the developing world.
As archivist, the intern would annotate audio and video files of newly recorded programs and transfer them to the Audio/Video Archive and the American Cinematheque Event Record. The Fellow would ensure accuracy of information and notations in these databases against the server.
The Fellow would join a small team of interns, some of whom are on site (including our first intern funded by The Getty Foundation) and others who work remotely.
The Cinematheque can offer an intern a broad education with real-world skills development in research; archival techniques; use of professional editing software (Media Encoder/Audacity/Premiere) for audio/video trimming; film research; and nonprofit administration.
We have posted this position as unpaid, with the understanding that Yale undergraduate students have access to funding through the college.
