2025 | Conference Program
Session times are subject to change. Tours, screenings, and additional sessions will be added as confirmed.
9:00 AM – 5:00 PM – Separate Registration Required
Film Restoration Essentials for Small Archives and Non-Profits
Fabio Paul Bedoya Huerta
This hands on workshop is designed for individuals working in small archives or nonprofit organizations who manage digitized film collections and want to develop or improve their restoration workflows. Using the DaVinci Resolve toolset, participants will be guided through a series of essential restoration techniques that can be implemented with accessible, low cost resources. The session will cover tasks such as image stabilization, cleanup, color correction, and repair of common visual defects. Each step will be demonstrated using sample materials provided in advance, allowing attendees to follow along and apply the same processes in their own environments. The workshop is intended for those with basic experience using DaVinci Resolve and familiarity with digitization workflows, but no prior restoration training is required. Instruction is practical, repeatable, and adaptable to various film formats. Participants will leave with a clear foundation for performing restoration work in house, using tools and strategies suited to their institutional needs.
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1:00 PM – 5:00 PM – Separate Registration Required
Automating and ‘Not-omating’ Access Copies: Using FFMPEG
Russell Zych, LA County Museum of Art
Jackie Forsyte, TAPE Los Angeles
Ongoing conversations about the hype and dangers of Generative AI and/or Large Language Model (LLM) tools that promise increased productivity mark an important moment for archivists to think critically about how we use technology to produce and maintain knowledge. This workshop is a basic introduction to using the open-source command line tool FFMPEG with a healthy dose of thoughtful reflection about the trade-offs of automating video tasks, equipping participants to be better collaborators with colleagues at every level of tech-fluency. As an exercise in making informed decisions about technology, participants will use and then compare two different methods for creating access video files: first using the open-source non-linear editing application Shotcut (compare with PremierePro) and then FFMPEG. Creating the same product two different ways, participants will gain greater insight into the quirks, advantages, limitations, and appropriate uses of each method.
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1:00 PM – 2:00 PM – Separate Registration Required
Tour: Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History & Culture
The Reginald F. Lewis Museum documents, interprets and preserves the complex experiences, contributions and culture of Black people in Maryland. We serve as a catalyst for sustained change by providing programs, exhibitions and bold conversations that educate and challenge. The Lewis stewards more than 14,000 objects and archival records in its collection, including highlights such as the 3,500 vinyl records of The Hecht Jazz Collection, hundreds of African objects in our Harvey and McMillan collections, robust archaeology collections, and Billie Holliday’s own grand piano. The entirety of the Lewis’ Collection is stored on site in the museum’s “Vault,” which AMIA attendees will get a chance to tour. As an added bonus, attendees will get a private experience of the Lewis’ landmark 20th anniversary exhibit, TITAN: The Legacy of Reginald F. Lewis, and temporary exhibit iWitness: The Media and the Movement, on a day the museum is closed to the general public.
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6:00 PM – 7:00 PM
AMIA 2025 Opening Night Cocktails
It’s opening night in Baltimore! A chance to raise a glass, say hello to friends, and meet new colleagues in person before heading out for dinner or other fun.
8:30 AM – 10:30 AM
AMIA 2025 Welcome & Keynote
Welcome to AMIA 2025! Mike Mashon welcomes everyone to AMIA’s 35th conference and welcomes an amazing keynote speaker.
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11:00 AM – 11:30 AM
Mapping the Magnetic Media Landscape: Report from the National Survey
Kelli Shay Hix, Community Archiving Workshop
Moriah Ulinskas, Community Archiving Workshop
From 2023-2024, BAVC Media conducted a national study, Mapping the Magnetic Media Landscape. The purpose of the study is to develop a data driven analysis of the state of magnetic media preservation in the United States. The study gathered data from 131 survey responses, 22 organizational interviews, five preservation vendor interviews, and three site visits. In 2025, the data was analyzed and developed into a publicly available report (scheduled for release July 2025). This presentation highlights key findings from the report, including greatest challenges, needs, and solutions in action from the field. It also describes how three geographically diverse organizations– ‘Ulu’ulu Moving Image Archive, ENTRE Film Center and Archive, and Smithsonian’s Audiovisual Media Preservation Initiative (AVMPI), approach the challenge of the magnetic media crisis.
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11:00 AM – 11:30 AM
Locals Only: Accessibility and Archival Surf Films
Veronica Luke, Origins Archival
Laura Jean Treat Liebhaber, UCSB Library
Justin Misch, Origins Archival
In this presentation, UCSB Library Film and Television and Local History Curator Laura Jean Treat Liebhaber and Origins Archival founder Justin Misch will discuss the often discounted genre of surf films, and the different documentation that archival surf footage offers, such as their relationship to travelogs and anthropological films, exhibition and distribution practices, and technological innovations and also offer much to consider from the standpoint of content including their documentation of coastal development, climate change, and the development of a pastime and culture that was foundational to California’s identity on and off screen, the humble surf film has thus far been underrepresented at conferences related to moving image preservation and has been the domain of surfing enthusiasts, private collectors, and for-profit entities.
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11:00 AM – 12:00 PM
Classroom to Archive and Back: Teamwork Makes the Dream Work
Oliver Gaycken, University of Maryland, College Park
Caitlin McGrath, Greenbelt Cinema
Mark Coulbourne, University of Maryland, College Park
Stephanie Sapienza, University of Maryland, College Park
This panel will report and reflect on collaboration among an undergraduate course in film and media preservation taught at the University of Maryland, College Park the preservation unit in the university’s library; a digital-humanities archivist, and a local arthouse cinema that maintains a legacy 16mm collection. Taken together, the experience is an example of an emerging film and media preservation ensemble that includes a university-community partnership. The panel will include highlights from the semester’s discoveries: a Kodachrome home movie from Occupation-era Japan; A Chance for Change, a direct-cinema documentary about the first year of the Head Start program in rural Mississippi (1962); The Story behind Film, a Kodak “informational promotion” from 1970; and Prince George’s in Profile, a film sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce to celebrate the US Bicentennial.
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11:00 AM – 12:00 PM
Preserving The Fabric of Film: Safeguarding an Iconic Costume Collection
Andrea Kalas, Iron Mountain’s Media and Archival Services
Anna Lynn Martino, Iron Mountain’s Media and Archival Services
Warner Bros. Discovery Global Archives and Preservation Services (WBD) manages an exquisite costume collection, featuring legendary pieces that contribute to the studio’s storied legacy. Learn how the Media and Archival Services team from Iron Mountain worked onsite to assess thousands of items, like the shirt Paul Newman sported in “Cool Hand Luke” or the two-piece ensemble that Natalie Wood wore in, “The Great Race.” After assessment, they wrote condition reports, photographed the costumes and rehoused assets as necessary, making recommendations for their long-term care and ensuring costumes spanning from the 1920s to today will be accessible in the future.
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11:30 AM – 12:00 PM
Looking Forward at the Virtual Film Bench Grant Project
Thomas Aschenbach, Colorlab
The session will review the work of the NEH-funded Virtual Film Bench research and development grant. A very early version of the software was shown to AMIA audiences in 2023, but a lot of functionality has been added to that first iteration of their vision. They will include an overview of the Virtual Film Bench desktop application, the purpose and evolution of two AI models completed, and the challenges of building custom datasets for training cultural heritage AI. Additionally, they will introduce the National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded open science platform (Open Science Framework) to advocate for its use by AMIA members as a free repository of data as well as a platform for broad collaboration to solve problems.
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12:30 PM – 1:30 PM
Lunchtime Screening: Screen Your Own Adventure! Video Data Bank’s Educational Streaming Platform
Elise Schierbeck, Video Data Bank
Join Video Data Bank for a participatory screening session! In 2024, VDB launched its Educational Streaming Platform, a subscription service available to higher educational institutions to provide greater access to VDB’s vast collections of video art, experimental film, documentaries, and artist interviews. In this screening session, VDB will first give an introduction to the platform, sharing information about how it was developed, describing its collections content and user experience design, as well as highlighting bibliographic and accessibility features. Then, tempting fate and Wifi, VDB will screen titles directly from the platform. Audience members will be invited to vote between pre-selected titles, resulting in a screening program curated by popular choice.
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12:30 PM – 1:30 PM
Luncthtime Screening: Screening the Showcase: The Moving Image Legacy of Johnson Publishing Company
Bleakley McDowell, Smithsonian NMAAHC
David Sohl, NMAAHC / Media Burn
This screening presents newly preserved film and video materials from the Johnson Publishing Company Archive (JPCA), a collection documenting Black life and media across the 20th century. Co-stewarded by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture and the Getty Research Institute, the archive includes over 10,000 audiovisual items. This 45-minute program highlights selections from televised productions, public affairs segments, behind-the-scenes reels, and rare kinescopes—much of it never broadcast or previously available. With a focus on the Ebony/Jet Showcase (1982–1993), the session explores Johnson Publishing’s role in shaping Black visual culture while offering insight into preservation, access, and archival reuse. Speakers will present the material and discuss the challenges and opportunities of activating a legacy collection across institutional partnerships with a focus on public audiences and scholars.
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12:30 PM – 1:30 PM – Registration Required
Tour: Welcome to the Walters Tour + Art MakingTour
“Welcome to the Walters” tour! Included is a 30 minute galleries tour, and after exploring the Museum, you’ll have the opportunity to design your own dream museum! Using fun art materials and questions that mirror the museums’ behind-the-scenes processes, reflect, plan, and design your own gallery space.
The Walters Art Museum was established in 1934 “for the benefit of the public.” Originally called the Walters Art Gallery, the museum started when Henry Walters bequeathed to the City of Baltimore an extensive art collection begun by his father, William T. Walters, two buildings, and an endowment. Moving through the museum’s galleries, visitors encounter a stunning array of objects, from 19th-century paintings of French country and city life to Ethiopian icons, richly illuminated Qur’ans and Gospel books, ancient Roman sarcophagi, and images of the Buddha. The Walters is also a leader in digitization, releasing high-resolution, digital images of collection objects into the public domain for any use, free of charge, on the works of art site and award-winning manuscripts website Walters Ex Libris.
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2:00 PM – 3:00 PM
What a Difference a Day Makes: Evolution of CAW Collective
Moriah Ulinskas, Community Archiving Workshop
Marie Lascu, Community Archiving Workshop
Kelli Shay Hix, Community Archiving Workshop
Sandra Yates, Community Archiving Workshop
Since its beginning fourteen years ago as a one-day volunteer-run event, the Community Archiving Workshop (CAW) has evolved into a collective of A/V archivists collaborating with community partners to run national and international workshops and develop grassroots preservation tools. CAW grew rapidly starting in 2018, thanks to an infusion of over $780k in federal grants. This funding allowed us to develop new workshop modules and training resources and travel extensively to deliver our flagship workshop. Struggling under the weight of this sudden growth—and, like many of our peers, now reeling from the sudden loss of federal support— the collective is embarking on a next phase to assess our operating model, consider what kind of organization we want to be, where we will focus our contributions, and build toward sustainability. The purpose of this session is to share lessons learned with our peers.
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2:00 PM – 3:00 PM
Beyond Video: Preserving the George Udel Collection
Fin Hatfield, MARMIA
Austin Miller, MARMIA
George Figgs, MARMIA
What do John Waters, Steve Martin, and Carl Reiner have to do with a collection of 2,000 moldy VHS tapes donated to MARMIA in 2022? This panel explores MARMIA’s approach to processing this material, highlighting practical and sustainable methods for its conservation, preservation, and access. Panelists will share how they prioritized materials, developed in-house workflows for cleaning and digitizing problem tapes with limited resources, and created a linked-data catalog to surface content—including undigitized items—for public use. Presenters will reflect on the collection’s cultural and historical value for the Mid-Atlantic region and beyond, its alignment with the institution’s mission, and how digitized clips are already being used. Emphasizing a resourceful, replicable approach, this session is ideal for practitioners working with legacy formats, community-based collections, or limited resources. Attendees will leave with practical strategies for prioritization, preservation, and descriptive access beyond digitization alone.
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2:00 PM – 3:00 PM
Teaching Media Archives
Hugo Ljungbäck, University of Chicago
Christian Balistreri, Library of Congress
Travis L. Wagner
Nathan Holmes
Aparna Subramanian, Film and Television Institute of India
Brian Meacham, Yale Film Archives
This roundtable celebrates the release of the Synoptique special issue, “Teaching Media Archives,” co-edited by Hugo Ljungbäck and Christian Balistreri. Featuring eighteen articles and essays by archivists, librarians, scholars, and teachers—many of them AMIA members—this special issue explores strategies to activate student interest in archives and media preservation, bridging a gap between film and media education and the archival profession through curricular or extracurricular courses, programs, initiatives, or activities. This special issue provides an expansive view of media archival education today, and the panel will provide an overview of the issue’s contents.
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2:00 PM – 3:00 PM
Roundtable: Cloud Storage for Archives: What Goes Up May Come Down
Nicole Martin, Human Rights Watch
This lightning talk addresses the intersection of digital preservation, cloud storage, and the practical and ethical questions faced by archivists in today’s data-driven landscape. As cultural heritage institutions and community archives increasingly rely on convenient propriety cloud platforms for storing and managing unique collections, they encounter a web of technical, practical, and ethical challenges that require careful navigation. Speakers will describe their experience managing files, accessing and batch-downloading collections, verifying data integrity, obtaining logs and performing digital preservation audits. We will discuss information security, vendor privacy policies and their implications, and the specific needs of archives, community groups, and others stewarding rare and unique materials in cooperation with proprietary cloud storage providers. In an era where there are clear commercial interests in cultural heritage data, how do archives navigate partnerships with cloud storage vendors? As a community, how might we work together to ensure archival ethics and basic operational objectives are understood and achieved?
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3:15 PM – 3:30 PM
Reports from the Field: Cinematographic Traces: Archival Challenges at the Museum of Image and Sound of Campinas (MIS-Campinas)
Fernanda Parrado, Universidade de São Paulo (USP)
This session will present a previously unexplored film archive, through a new database developed at the Museum of Image and Sound of Campinas (MIS-Campinas) in Brazil. Drawing from original research conducted by the speaker, Fernanda Parrado, the presentation will explore the content of the archive and its potential relevance to other institutions, particularly the methodologies, tools, and techniques used to identify and analyze each film. Through this case study, the Project Report aims to highlight the importance of preservation efforts within the Brazilian community and its impact in other underrepresented regions.This session is designed to engage with a wide audience—from beginners to advanced professionals—who are interested in film preservation, archival studies, and cultural heritage in general.
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3:15 PM – 3:45 PM
Diasporic Archive and Archival Diasporas. Negotiating Collective Identity through the Polish Highlanders Archive
Agata Zborowska, University of Chicago/Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
This presentation examines the Polish Highlanders Archive (in Polish, Archiwum Góralszczyzny), a self-initiated audiovisual collection created over 25 years by a member of the Polish Highlanders diaspora in Chicago. The Archive consists primarily of hundreds of hours of digitized videos, including home movies and recordings that document community life in the US, as well as visits to the Polish Podhale region, the homeland of the Highlanders. The Polish Highlanders Archive, although informally organized, provides an ethnographic and audiovisual record of a diasporic America—one shaped not only by legal frameworks and historical milestones but also by lived experiences, collective memories, and the agency of migrant communities in shaping their own pasts.
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3:15 PM – 4:15 PM
Ray Dolby, Ampex, and Collection Components as Infrastructure
Rebecca Gordon, Stanford University
Claire Fox, Yale University
This panel considers collections whose own materials could provide infrastructure for playing, preserving, or making accessible otherwise obsolete content. Rebecca Gordon will describe how the Dolby Papers shed light on Ray Dolby’s connections to Ampex Corporation. An inventory of Ampex AV revealed Dolby’s handwriting tucked into some test calibration tapes he created for the Ampex 200 as a teenager. To play the tapes to understand the purpose of calibration (or discover any interesting content) would require using an Ampex 200. Claire Fox will discuss in-progress work to build a legacy software collection within Yale Library’s Software Preservation and Emulation unit. Such a collection could be used to support archival materials that are dependent on specific software and hardware to be rendered, much like the Dolby calibration tapes are dependent on the Ampex 200. Q&A will ideally suggest best practices and/or spur solutions that are reproducible across institutions.
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3:30 PM – 3:45 PM
Reports freom the Field: WCVB TV Boston: Echoes from 50 Years Ago
Karin Carlson-Snider, Northeast Historic Film
A local news reporter covering the rising cost of eggs and other groceries, a protest against police violence in the Black community, debates over women’s healthcare, and conversations about whether a former president could face jail time—while this might sound like last night’s headlines, these are actually stories from 1974 Boston. Project Director Karin Carlson-Snider, from Northeast Historic Film, will provide an overview of the effort to digitize, catalog, and share news stories produced by WCVB-TV Boston during 1973 and 1974. She will discuss how the project has streamlined the archive’s cataloging process, the unexpected challenges encountered along the way, and some of the fascinating content that has come to light.
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3:45 PM – 4:00 PM
Synthetic DNA for Archival Data Storage: Fact or Fiction?
Bill Banyai, Atlas Data Storage
Storing digital data in synthetic DNA was first proposed 65 years ago by renowned physicist Richard Feynman as the ultimate data storage solution because it is compact, low cost, energy efficient, and long-lived. With the explosion of the field of synthetic biology in the last 20 years, synthetic DNA technology has progressed to the point where DNA Data Storage commercialization is imminent. In this presentation, we discuss the key workflow components including writing, storing, and reading as well as trade-offs for various applications.
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3:45 PM – 4:15 PM
NYU Moving Image Archiving and Preservation Program: 20 years and Onwards!
Juana Suarez, New York University MIAP
A reflection on the 20th anniversary of NYU Moving Image Archiving and Preservation Program, its contributions to the professionalization of training in the field, reflecting on the past, analyzing the present and thinking creatively on how to face the challenges of the future in the current educational climate in the US.
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4:30 PM – 5:00 PM
Beyond LUTs: Machine Learning for Chroma Reconstruction in Film Restoration
Fabio Paul Bedoya Huerta,
This session offers a deep dive into the use of machine learning for chroma reconstruction in film restoration, focusing on how locally trained models can recover color information in faded or dye degraded elements. Drawing from ongoing research, it explores reference-based approaches using alternate gauge prints, telecine transfers, visually similar films, and curated still images. More than a conceptual overview, the session will include a step by step walkthrough of the reconstruction process, along with a short live demo illustrating how these models function in a real restoration environment. The results will be critically compared to traditional grading and LUT based workflows, highlighting both the benefits and limitations of machine learning in this context. Designed for practitioners with an intermediate understanding of digital restoration, this session offers practical insights into integrating machine learning into chroma recovery workflows, while emphasizing reproducibility, transparency, and archival responsibility through the use of locally trained and inferred models.
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4:30 PM – 5:30 PM
The New Digital Archivists: Building the Field Through Apprenticeship
Martha Diaz, The Alliance for Media Arts + Culture
Wendy Levy, The Alliance for Media Arts + Culture
Jeffrey Obike, Wide Angle Media
Amber Smalls, Hip-Hop Education Center
How can we create sustainable, equitable pathways into the archival profession? This session introduces the Arts2Work Digital Archivist Apprenticeship, a new Registered Apprenticeship program that prepares emerging archivists—including youth and historically excluded communities—for careers in digital preservation, archival production and exhibition. Developed by the Alliance for Media Arts + Culture, in partnership with the California Opportunity Youth Apprenticeship Initiative, the program centers community-based archives, mentorship, AI technologies, and culturally responsive pedagogy. This Panel is also a celebration – of the launch of the new registered Apprenticeship pathway, and of MARKA, a digital Archive platform designed as a learning innovation hub for community-based archivists and apprentices. Panelists will share a new workforce model for media and arts organizations and institutions, demonstrating how Registered Apprenticeships can expand who enters the profession, how archival labor is valued, and how cultural memory is preserved in today’s digital-first world. This session is ideal for anyone interested in community archiving, leveraging workforce models in arts and tech training, and inclusive practices in the field of media production, creative technologies, and narrative change.
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4:30 PM – 5:30 PM
“One More River to Cross” – Land, Power and Community in Southwest Georgia in the late 1960’s
Guha Shankar, Library of Congress
“One More River to Cross” – Land, Power and Community in Southwest Georgia in the late 1960’s, centers on an unique film documenting the Black Freedom Struggle in Georgia and the fight for land tenure and self- sufficiency for Black farming communities ran headlong into the realities of white supremacy in the Cotton Belt.
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5:00 PM – 5:30 PM
35mm Sound Quality From 16mm Films Using “Camera Original” Elements
Nicholas Bergh, Endpoint Audio Labs, Inc.
Although it is typical and even expected for modern film restorations to use the original camera negative rather than a print or intermediate pre-print material, the sound work within a restored film essentially never attempts to achieve a similar quality to the camera negative. In fact, the sound used is not just one generation away from the source like an interpositive, but rather three or more generations away from the original production recording. Custom software tools have now made it possible to auto-conform and forensically remix higher quality “camera negative” production audio back to the original mix. This approach not only increases overall sound quality dramatically, but also eliminates audio anomalies that occur in the analog post-production process—anomalies that are typically the entire reason for modern sound restoration work. This workflow is especially powerful for 16mm independent films, and a number of case studies will be discussed.
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7:15 PM – 10:00 PM
Archival Screening Night
Archival Screening Night is a showcase for AMIA members’ recent acquisitions, discoveries and preservation efforts. The program represents the magnificent spectrum of media formats, works, and collections protected and preserved by the AMIA community.
8:00 AM – 9:00 AM
Keynote Speaker
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9:00 AM – 5:30 PM
The Pavilion
Don’t miss an opportunity to visit the Pavilion! The Pavilion brings together exhibitors with demos, skill shares, and specialist spaces. Our goal is to create a hub for sharing information at the conference.
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9:30 AM – 10:00 AM
FM RF Archival Methods for Video Preservation: A Case Study
Michael Metzger, Block Museum of Art
This paper explores an unconventional new method for capturing and preserving information from magnetic and optical analog media. The FM RF Archival method, also known as the “Decode” (vhs-decode) workflow, emerged recently in online preservationist circles. This method bypasses baseband AV signal outputs, instead tapping into the RF output of modified media players such as VCRs and capturing signals directly to PCM format via low cost analog-to-digital cards (PCIe/USB). Users then decode, process, and time-base correct these direct digital archives using open-source software tools. Despite the drawbacks (longer processing times; larger files; the need to modify playback devices), the FM RF method promises significant improvements in quality over conventional capture, especially to exhibitors, galleries, museums, and archives seeking maximal picture and sound fidelity. This paper will introduce and compare the FM RF method through case studies from recent media preservation efforts undertaken at Northwestern’s Block Museum of Art.
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9:30 AM – 10:30 AM
Designed for Learning: Archiving, Preserving, and Accessing Rare Educational Television
Owen Gottlieb, Rochester Institute of Technology
Mark Quigley, UCLA Film and Television Archive
Ina Archer, National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC)
Margaret Compton, University of Georgia Libraries’ Brown Media Archives & Peabody Awards Collection
More of our television heritage slips away each day as tapes degrade, are discarded, or become inaccessible due to deck degralescence. Television we have saved becomes inaccessible behind copyright curtains. Even more ephemeral than network programming are the orphaned works including those designed for learning – even for Emmy Award winning instructional programming. Television for learning had to solve dual-design problems – engaging the viewer while also inspiring, encouraging, and guiding viewers to learn. This panel celebrates rescued television for learning across a wide spectrum – from Soul Food television by Pearl Bowser to hand drawn children’s literature shows of John Robbins, from religious education programming of the Protestant Radio and Television Center to the salvaged Righteous Apples, a social issues PBS show for teens directed by pioneering African American directors. Join us to explore gems of television and learning history. Sponsorship by the AMIA News, Documentary, and Television Committee.
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9:30 AM – 10:30 AM
From Degralescence to Collective Action: Community-Driven Responses to the Magnetic Media Crisis
Brianna Toth, Smithsonian Libraries and Archives
Libby Hopfauf, Seattle Municipal Archives/MIPoPS
Annalise Nicholson, Moving Image Preservation of Puget Sound (MIPOPS)
Joshua Yocum, George Eastman Museum
Emily Nabasny, Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC)
In response to the escalating crisis of magnetic media degradation and equipment obsolescence—collectively termed “degralescence”—the Magnetic Media Crisis Committee (MMCC) has reformed as an independent, cross-disciplinary collective. Expanding its scope to encompass both audiotape and videotape, the MMCC aims to foster collaborative solutions that are proactive and empowering. This presentation will outline the committee’s mission to support the archival community through knowledge-sharing, resource consolidation, and the development of sustainable preservation workflows. Presenters Libby and Brianna will discuss current MMCC initiatives, including community-driven training programs and the creation of shared documentation platforms, as well as prospective research avenues. Emphasizing that degralescence is not a looming threat but a present reality, the MMCC advocates for collective action and shared responsibility in preserving our audiovisual heritage.
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9:30 AM – 10:30 AM
Still Got Nitrate? Adventures Building a Nitrate Vault
Doug Sylvester, PRO-TEK Vaults
Tim Knapp, PRO-TEK Vaults
Nitrate film vaults are constructed very infrequently and the handling and storage of nitrate film requires exceptional levels of expertise, care, training, and safety precautions. Building a new nitrate film vault is, therefore, a challenging undertaking—and the process is even more complex when building in California in 2025. PRO-TEK Vaults is one of the few certified providers of nitrate film restoration and preservation services in the U.S. and PRO-TEK’s team regularly provides guidance and services to presidential libraries, universities, museums, news organizations, corporations, and motion picture studios. In 2022, PRO-TEK began the process of scoping and designing a new nitrate film storage facility.
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10:00 AM – 10:30 AM
Making WAVs by Asserting Actions: FADGI AV Explores C2PA
Kate Murray, Library of Congress
Morgan Morel, Library of Congress
Dan Hockstein, Library of Congress
The U.S. Federal Agencies Digital Guidelines Initiative (FADGI) AudioVisual Working Group has started a new project to explore the potential digital preservation benefits of adopting Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA) standards. FADGI seeks to provide guidance about the use of C2PA in digital audio preservation – more specifically, in Broadcast Wave files – as its initial efforts for AV content. The open C2PA standard defines a set of metadata about the provenance of information displayed on a digital device, including images, video, sound or text data both as standalone files and embedded within files. Critically, it provides publishers, creators, and consumers the ability to trace the origin of media, including data created or impacted by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). This presentation will help spread awareness of the effort and serve as an information gathering and feedback sharing opportunity.
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11:00 AM – 11:30 AM
Multiple Versioning Considerations in the Archives: Recuperating a Soviet-Ukrainian Documentary Catalog
Nicholas Avedisian-Cohen, Concordia University
Anna Sidun, Concordia University
This paper presents an intriguing case study in assessing multiple-versioned films. In the summer of 2024 a research group was formed to investigate a collection of unidentified Ukrainian documentaries at the Visual Collections Repository of Concordia. We soon learned that most of these film had uncredited English dubbing and annotation on the can, despite being housed on Soviet-era reels and printed on East German stock. This posed an interesting historiographic question for our research team that we set about trying to resolve.
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11:00 AM – 12:00 PM
It’s All On Tape: Case Studies in LTO Technology
Rebecca Fraimow, GBH Archives
Kristin MacDonough, Video Data Bank
Linda Tadic, Digital Bedrock
Raananah Sarid-Segal, GBH Archives
LTO data tape is currently one of the most cost-effective and sustainable ways to store large amounts of data – but what does it actually look like to set up and manage LTO workflows on the day-to-day? On this panel, speakers from three organizations operating at different scales – Video Data Bank, GBH Archives, and Digital Bedrock – will present on their LTO workflow use cases. The session will begin with the process of installation, moving to migration between different tape formats, and finally discussing collaborative LTO workflows at scale, for a complete picture of the digital storage lifecycle on tape. The session will conclude with a look forward at the future of LTO technology and how that outlook has changed since 2024.
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11:00 AM – 12:00 PM
Legal Brief: AI, Fair Use, and the Copyright Office
Patricia Aufderheide, American University
Jenni Matz, Academy of Television Arts and Sciences
Brandon Butler, Butler Jaszi LLC
Katherine Klosek, Association of Research Libraries
Nicolas Garcia, Public Knowledge
Robert Kasunic, American University
Sponsored by the Copyright Committee. The advent of generative AI has spurred lawsuits, regulatory attempts, and controversy. Where does copyright law land these days in relation to AI? Is the archivist’s fair use practice affected? What is the role of the Copyright Office? Legal experts who work with nonprofits provide a briefing on latest developments in a fast-changing landscape.
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11:00 AM – 12:00 PM
Navigating the End of Perchloroethylene and Methylene Chloride
Alison Reppert Gerber, Library of Congress
Andrew Oran, FotoKem
Todd Mitchell, Library of Congress
Tommy Aschenbach, Colorlab
In recent years, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has finalized prohibitions and workplace protections under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) for two chemicals frequently used in motion picture film preservation—perchloroethylene and methylene chloride. In this panel, presenters will discuss the regulations and timelines for compliance and findings from research and testing for safer alternatives.
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11:30 AM – 12:00 PM
Help! Finding Resources and Building Community for Film Collections Care
Jenna Simpson, The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation
So, you’re in charge of a motion picture film collection, but you’re not an expert in film conservation, you don’t really know what you have in the collection, resources are limited, and, with that vinegar aroma wafting through the storage vault, you know the clock is ticking . . . how do you tackle the challenge? This case study will show how the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation’s Rockefeller Library approached the inventory and condition assessment of their film collection under such circumstances. Turning vinegar to vinaigrette, this effort became an opportunity to learn from others and forge connections within our institution and community.
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12:00 PM – 2:00 PM
Poster Session I
- Next Steps for “Preserving Community Memory in the Balkans”
Siobhan Hagan, Mid-Atlantic Regional Moving Image Archive (MARMIA)
Kelli Shay Hix, Community Archiving Workshop
Marie Lascu, Community Archiving Workshop
Biljana Milenkovic, Library of Congress - Archiving the Aurora: Contextualizing Starfish Prime through Archival Media
Megan Kilidjian, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Laura McGuiness, Los Alamos National Laboratory
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12:30 PM – 1:30 PM
Lunchtime Screening: Operation Luggage: The Making of Lady Baltimore
Kate Dollenmayer, Prelinger Archives
“There is little, if any, controversy as to the facts. Baltimore Luggage Company manufactures luggage in the city of Baltimore, which it sells under the trade name of ‘Lady Baltimore’, in eight different sizes and eight different colors, directly to retail dealers throughout the United States.” So reads a 1961 opinion of the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in the case of The Baltimore Luggage Company v. the Federal Trade Commission. The court findings go on, but this session will dwell here, making these facts visible in all their Kodachrome glory by screening a new preservation scan of the 1957 amateur documentary OPERATION LUGGAGE. This lovingly filmed tour of the company’s offices, factory, and cafeteria in Southwest Baltimore shows African American and white workers in an integrated workplace, while also revealing divisions of labor and association based on race and gender.
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2:00 PM – 2:30 PM
Searching for Scarlett: Providing Access to Nitrate Screen Tests
Taylor E Burch, Graduate of L Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation at George Eastman Museum
This project revisits and expands documentation for nitrate screen tests from the David O. Selznick Donation, focusing on the casting of Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind. By capturing high-resolution frame stills and integrating them into updated catalog records, the project enhances access to historically significant nitrate materials that have not yet been preserved. The work combines hands-on film inspection, visual documentation, and production research to provide new insights into Selznick’s exhaustive casting process. It also highlights the contributions of overlooked actresses and technicians, and introduces a replicable workflow for linking visual and contextual metadata in collection management systems. The frame captures serve not only as tools for research and preservation advocacy, but also as a way to generate public interest in an under-utilized part of the archive. This presentation demonstrates how archival training and visual analysis can be combined to activate nitrate collections for modern access and discovery.
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2:00 PM – 3:00 PM
Sustaining Audiovisual Preservation Programs and How to Move Forward
Tre Berney, Cornell University
Alison Reppert Gerber, Library of Congress
Hannah Frost, Stanford
Ben Turkus, NYPL
Bryce Roe, NEDCC
Eric Dawson, Calvin M. McClung Historical Collection
Over the past decade, audiovisual preservation programs have been established across both the heritage sector and commercial industries. However, sustaining these programs presents a host of ongoing challenges. In addition to well-documented issues—such as technological obsolescence, limited funding, and insufficient institutional commitment —new complexities are emerging as we shift toward the near-term future. Effectively communicating continued value to decision makers, the fragility of digital preservation environments, the accelerating pace of technological change, and evolving intellectual property concerns demand that we rethink approaches we have developed over the last decade. Recontextualizing this work and developing sustainable operational models will be critical to ensuring the long-term viability of audiovisual preservation efforts. This panel will bring a breadth of perspectives on audiovisual preservation programs to discuss current challenges and ways to navigate the uncertainty.
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2:00 PM – 3:00 PM
Can the Sunburst Cure All? Lessons from the Smithsonian’s Audiovisual Media Preservation Initiative, 2022-2025
Brianna Toth, Smithsonian Libraries and Archives
Walter Forsberg, Smithsonian Libraries and Archives
Kira Sobers, Smithsonian Libraries and Archives
Kayla Henry-Griffin, Smithsonian Libraries and Archives
Felicia Boretzky, Smithsonian Libraries and Archives
How does the national museum preserve hundreds of thousands of audiovisual assets across 22 museums and research centers—amid shrinking budgets, shifting priorities, and limited staffing? This panel offers a behind-the-scenes look at the Smithsonian’s Audiovisual Media Preservation Initiative (AVMPI), a pan-institutional effort to unify and sustain audiovisual preservation across the world’s largest museum complex. Presenters will share how AVMPI has built digitization labs, developed scalable workflows, and fostered collaboration among units with varying resources and expertise. But the story isn’t just about success—it’s also about navigating political headwinds, institutional attrition, and the realities of working within a federal system. Join AVMPI staff as they share lessons learned, practical tools, and strategies for resilience in the face of instability. This session is ideal for anyone in the preservation field—from those just starting out to seasoned professionals—seeking insight into how to build sustainable, adaptable models in support of shared preservation goals.
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2:00 PM – 3:00 PM
Roundtable: AMIA Online: Taking it to the Next Level
Kelli Shay Hix, Community Archiving Workshop Collective
AMIA is excited to begin shaping our 2026 online education programming—and we’d love your input! Whether you’ve taken an AMIA online course before or are brand new to our programs, join Kelli Shay Hix, AMIA’s Online Education Manager, for an open roundtable conversation about the future of our knowledge and skill-sharing initiatives.We’ll explore what courses or training opportunities would be most valuable for you and your organization, and we also welcome ideas for topics you might want to teach or mentor. This discussion will help us identify gaps, respond to emerging needs, and spark ideas as we build next year’s online education calendar (and beyond!).
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2:30 PM – 3:00 PM
Discovering Lost Films in Fin de Siècle Flipbooks
Robert Byrne, San Francisco Film Preserve
From peep shows to gifs, moving images have proliferated as novelties inside and outside the movie theater since the invention of motion picture photography. The earliest flipbooks pre-date motion pictures by nearly thirty years and books derived from motion pictures came hand-in-hand with the advent of projected films. Thanks to the exhaustive research carried out by Thierry Lecointe and Pascal Fouché, we have confidently identified the image sources for many of the books to be lost early films of cinema magician Georges Méliès, as well as Gaumont, Skladanowsky, and Pathé. In this richly illustrated and presentation, Robert Byrne will share the methodology and research that resulted in conclusive identification of these lost motion pictures as well as presenting numerous reanimations, providing glimpses of films lost more than a century ago.
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3:15 PM – 4:15 PM
Reel to Real: Archiving the Monday/Wednesday/Friday Video Club
Chris Nicols, XFR Collective
Kelly Haydon, XFR Collective
Marie Lascu, XFR Collective
Brian Dunbar, XFR Collective
The NYC-based XFR Collective has completed its most ambitious project: digitizing Alan W. Moore’s Monday/Wednesday/Friday Video Club collection. Active from 1986-2000, this collection features works from Collaborative Projects, Inc. and Potato Wolf, many of which aired on Cable Channel D. After eight years, 179 tapes are now freely available online. This panel will detail the project’s journey, from identifying and stabilizing fragile video formats to technical digitization challenges, including equipment, workflows, file formats, and metadata. This panel will also discuss XFR Collective’s volunteer-driven model, its benefits and drawbacks, and lessons learned about maintaining continuity and communication in a DIY collective. The discussion will highlight the impact of online access via the Internet Archive and the collection’s long-term preservation at The Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, emphasizing its value for scholarship and understanding independent media history.
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3:15 PM – 4:15 PM
Restoring the Original Music Masters for The Wiz
Jen O’Leary Hashida, NBCUniversal
Cassandra Moore, NBCUniversal
Chase Schulte, NBCUniversal
The Wiz (1978) has become a cult classic and cultural touchstone in the almost 50 years since it was released. For the 2024 4K UHD restoration of The Wiz, the team at Universal Pictures knew they had something special, with music performed by Diana Ross and Michael Jackson, and with original songs written by Quincy Jones. This panel, with the Universal Pictures’ Mastering, Restoration and Archive Teams, will discuss the restoration process of this beloved classic. To create the modern Dolby ATMOS mix, the audio team located the original 2” and 1” music masters. 130 different reels of 35mm, 2”, 1” and ¼” audio were digitized, conformed, and mixed into the final mix session. This project faced challenges from locating specific cues within cartons of music elements, to baking tapes that had started to deteriorate, to editing and remixing the music, cue by cue, and lyric by lyric.
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3:15 PM – 4:15 PM
Archiving Radical Media in this Political Moment
JT Takagi, Third World Newsreel
Draye (Andreas) Wilson, Third World Newsreel
Screening two rarely seen films, Mayday Panther and Palestine Vaincra; recently digitized as part of a two year project to preserve Third World Newsreel’s 16mm library of late 1960s activist films. In this presentation, J.T. Takagi (TWN ED) and Draye Wilson (Archival Coordinator) will emphasize the importance, as well as the risks of preserving politically provocative films in this current moment. Since 1968, Third World Newsreel (TWN) has advanced movement storytelling and media arts for cultural and social justice. Starting as The Newsreel, a collective of activist filmmakers, it became TWN in the early 1970s, prioritizing media by and about diverse communities through educational distribution, exhibition, production, preservation and training. Its historic films cover the anti-Vietnam War,Black, Latinx, Indigenous and women’s movements and include “Black Panther” “El Pueblo Se Levanta (The People Are Rising),” “The Women’s Film,” and many more.
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3:15 PM – 4:15 PM
Roundtable: Sharing and Connecting Resources
Rebecca Gordon, Stanford University
Libby Hopfauf, Seattle Municipal Archives/MIPoPS
Given cuts to granting bodies such as the IMLS and NEH, and the cutting off of promised grants to projects-in-motion, staff at non-profit archival institutions and organizations are scrambling. That staff cannot rely on long-standing support streams, and must now do different research to find donors or private foundations, adding another task to long days. Others of us might not have funding to share, but are fortunate enough to have just enough bandwidth to help with that research or even know of donors interested in helping, either because of the sort of institution we work for or the particular project position we hold. This Round Table aims to bring together people in both situations for mutual aid: who needs what, for how long, and who can do what from their position, for whom, for how long?
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4:30 PM – 5:00 PM
Authenticity in the Generative AI Era: How Archivists Are Coping
Patricia Aufderheide, American University
Williams Cole, independent
Gabriel Ponniah, American University
Murphy Chen, American University
How are archivists facing the challenge of identifying and categorizing AI in the materials they take in and make available? Is C2PA an option? Can built-in labelling work? An American University-based research team interviewed archivists about their existing authentication practices, changes in the face of AI, and plans. Interim results based on 20 interviews suggest a complex landscape in which human curation is still central.
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4:30 PM – 5:30 PM
AMIA Pathways Fellowship: Meet the 2025 Fellows
Teague Schneiter
CK Ming, National Museum of African American History & Culture
Wilde Davis, Pathways Fellowship
Kaz Mendoza Rodriguez, Pathways Fellowship
Connie Li, Pathways Fellowship
Adelle Montes, Pathways Fellowship
Caitlin Scheil, Pathways Fellowship
The AMIA Fellowship supports paid internships in combination with mentorship and professional development training to forge pathways in the audiovisual preservation field for people from groups historically underrepresented in the profession. The Fellowship welcomed the 2025 cohort in June and this is an opportunity to meet the Fellows and hear a bit about their internship experiences.
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4:30 PM – 5:30 PM
Signed, Sealed, Delivered? Workflows for New and Existing Donor Agreements
Adrianne Lundy, UCLA Film & Television Archive
May Hong HaDuong, UCLA Film & Television Archive
Mark Quigley, UCLA Film & Television Archive
UCLA Film & Television Archive (FTVA) is the largest university-based moving image archive in the world, with a collection that has expanded to over 520,000 holdings since its founding in 1965. Throughout its history, the Archive has responded to critical, often 11th-hour calls to protect moving image resources or see them irretrievably lost. This has resulted in FTVA having a significant backlog of legacy paperwork, encompassing 4,000 paper records of unscanned, bespoke donor and depositor contracts. In August 2024, a project was launched to scan and input these files into a digital database in order to get a better understanding of restrictions encumbering access to holdings. The project has brought to the surface a bevy of rights issues that must now be untangled. This presentation will outline this project’s journey including initial development, common challenges, workflow/database creation, and wider applications of navigating an institution’s rights information.
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4:30 PM – 5:30 PM
To Denoise or Not to Denoise: Navigating Digitized Film Grain
Jeff McCarty, Paramount Pictures
Charlotte Barker, Paramount Pictures
As digital restoration evolves, the treatment of film grain has become a hot topic among archivists. This panel, “To Denoise or Not to Denoise,” examines how grain—once a subtle part of the film experience—can now appear exaggerated or artificial in 4K and HDR formats. While some argue for preserving grain as part of a film’s identity, others see selective denoising as a tool to restore the original viewing intent. This session will explore when grain reduction may be appropriate, especially in HDR, and when it risks over-processing or erasing history. Through case studies and technical analysis, the panel encourages thoughtful, context-driven approaches to grain management, rather than one-size-fits-all solutions.
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5:00 PM – 5:30 PM
Do Commercial AI Models Understand Film Restoration?: An Investigation Into Models and Datasets
Timothy Yim-Stueve, George Eastman Museum
Fabio Paul Bedoya Huerta, FilmWorkz
Using generative AI or upscaling tools in film restorations, due to biases in their training datasets, can result in ahistorical or anachronistic artifacts. Beyond the appearance of erroneous “hallucinations”, AI models categorically stray from the qualities of film. This is due to the fact that most commercial AI models are trained on massive amounts of digital content. This presentation will focus on the practical implications of applying generative AI and upscaling tools to film restorations by exploring results from some of the latest models, such as their efficacy at imitating chroma versus luma information. Exploring possible solutions to these currents issues, this presentation will also demonstrate the results from models trained on a local dataset of film scans as a way to create more accurate restorations using AI technology.
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5:30 PM – 6:30 PM
Grab a drink in the Pavilion!
Before you head out to explore Baltimore, grab a drink with the Pavilion exhibitors. Check your registration envelope for a drink ticket.
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7:30 PM – 9:30 PM
Trivia Night 2025
Test your skills, win prizes, and dethrone the reigning AMIA Trivia Champs! Do you know how old Edgar Allan Poe was when he published his first novel? Or what the state sport of Washington is? If not, maybe one of your teammates does. Play as a team or show up and we’ll assign one for you. Eight rounds – and prizes for Best Team Name, Best Team Cheer, and, of course, the champion team!
8:15 AM – 9:15 AM
AMIA 2025: Closing & Keynote
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9:00 AM – 2:00 PM
The Pavilion
Don’t miss an opportunity to visit the Pavilion! The Pavilion brings together exhibitors with demos, skill shares, and specialist spaces. Our goal is to create a hub for sharing information at the conference.
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9:45 AM – 10:00 AM
Reports from the Field: Advancing Digital Preservation Education in the U.S.: Results from DPOE-N
Kirk Mudle, Pratt Institute School of Information
Anthony Cocciolo, Pratt Institute School of Information
Juana Suárez, New York University
Anthony Cocciolo, Pratt Institute School of Information
The Digital Preservation Outreach & Education Network (DPOE-N) is a Mellon-funded joint initiative between Pratt Institute School of Information and New York University’s Moving Image Archiving and Preservation program. Since 2020, DPOE-N has made an impact on digital preservation training and education in the U.S. through its professional development and emergency hardware microgrant programs. We have awarded a total of $314,329 to 210 professionals representing 39 states and Puerto Rico, and hosted 20 free workshops. This session reports on the accomplishments and lessons learned from the first four years of DPOE-N, including reflections on what the demand for training indicates about the state of digital preservation in the U.S., and our plans for the future.
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9:45 AM – 10:15 AM
Moi-même and the Lee Breuer Collection: Filmmaking Across Generations
Andrea McCarty, Yale University Library
Mojo Lorwin, Filmmaker
The Lee Breuer Papers provide a fascinating glimpse of the life and work of avant-garde theatrical artist Lee Breuer. The collection includes a vast amount of audiovisual material, including 16 hours of b&w film footage shot by Breuer during a stay in Paris in 1968. Breuer abandoned the film project, but his son, Mojo Lorwin, resurrected and reimagined the film, titled Moi-même, in 2024. This presentation focuses on Breuer’s rediscovered footage, acquired by the Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library, and the collaboration between Lorwin and the Beinecke to preserve the Breuer collection and to produce a 4K scan of the film footage so Lorwin could finish his father’s film.
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9:45 AM – 10:45 AM
Altars, Archives, and A/V Futures: Plática on Latinx/é Media Preservation
Marisa Hicks, Memory Lab at the Urbana Makerspace
C Diáz, ENTRE Film Center & Regional Archive
Victoria Fajardo, BAVC Media
Guadalupe Martinez, California Revealed
Monica Sosa, ENTRE Film Center & Regional Archive
How are Latinx/é communities reshaping media preservation through culturally rooted, Do-It-Yourself/Together practices? This forum centers the voices of U.S.-based Latinx/é archivists, cultural workers, and community organizers who are expanding the archival mission beyond institutional walls. Panelists will share projects that merge everyday memory work, accessible digitization, and creative resistance—from preserving and screening home movies, to building Día de los muertos altars, remixing found film materials, and archiving land-based activism. Together, we’ll explore how practices rooted in relational care, guided by community-defined frameworks, challenge dominant preservation models and support communities in stewarding their own audiovisual heritage. Attendees will gain insight into the value of non-institutional approaches, learn about tools and workflows used in grassroots preservation, and reflect on how cultural memory work can thrive on community terms. This session welcomes practitioners, students, and scholars at all levels interested in liberatory approaches to audiovisual archiving.
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10:00 AM – 10:15 AM
Reports from the Field: Magnascope: Preserving the Ephemeral Presentation of Old Ironsides (1926)
Graham Marshall, Paramount Pictures
Old Ironsides, a silent Paramount feature film release in 1926, is notable for its use of the “Magnascope” process of its theatrical presentation. This involved the projectionist using a short focal length lens to substantially enlarge the 1.33:1 image during specified climactic sections of the film. The influence of this inherently ephemeral process is still apparent almost a century later in recent IMAX releases that use expanding aspect ratios for narrative effect. This presentation aims to describe the historical context of the Magnascope process and encourage discussion about how to preserve, recreate, and adapt ephemeral presentation formats.
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10:15 AM – 10:45 AM
“Lum Ed’ards Doin’ the Talkin’”: Chet Lauck Collection Highlights
Amanda McQueen, University of Arkansas at Little Rock Center for Arkansas History and Culture
Created by and starring Arkansans Chet Lauck and Norris Goff, LUM AND ABNER (1931-1954), a comedy about two old men running a general store, was one of the most popular programs of radio’s “Golden Age.” In the mid-1950s, Lauck began a second career in public relations and marketing, using his character of Lum Edwards (pronounced “Ed’ards”) to promote Continental Oil products, local businesses, politicians, and government initiatives. This paper presents highlights from the Chet Lauck Collection at the UA Little Rock Center for Arkansas History and Culture, with a focus on the advertisements and speeches in which Lauck adapted his well-known radio characters to alternative ventures. These materials produce a fascinating portrait of a regional celebrity, one that suggests an especially strong blurring of actor and character, as for most of Lauck’s professional life, Lum Edwards actually did most of the talking.
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10:15 AM – 10:45 AM
Preserving Local Broadcast History: Digitizing and Managing the WMAR-TV News Collection (1948-1993)
Fatemeh Rezaei, The University of Baltimore
What does it take to manage and preserve a massive, at-risk broadcast news collection as the only audiovisual archivist in a small team? This session shares the journey of stewarding the WMAR-TV News Collection (1948–1993), which includes over 2,000 magnetic videotapes, 4,000 reels of 16mm film, and hundreds of early-format reels. The speaker leads all aspects of this effort, from securing two CLIR Recordings at Risk grants to rehousing deteriorating film in archival containers, managing vendor digitization of U-matic and VHS tapes, and using AI tools to generate metadata and shot lists. The session addresses rights and copyright challenges, preservation planning, and workflows for integrating content into Internet Archive and ArchivesSpace. Attendees will gain practical insights into AV project management, grant strategy, and access planning, valuable for anyone responsible for preserving legacy media with limited institutional infrastructure or formal AV support.
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11:00 AM – 11:30 AM
The Wildlife Conservation Society’s Archive of Wildlife Films
Leopold Krist, Wildlife Conservation Society
This presentation reports on a two-year archiving and digitization project completed at the Wildlife Conservation Society. The archive is remarkable as it showcases field studies by the notable wildlife biologists: George Schaller, Jane Goodall, William Conway, F. Wayne King, Roger Payne, Carleton Ray, and others. This presentation will share practical findings from the project execution, preservation observations gleaned from extensive hands-on inspection, and recommendations for similar 16mm reversal film collections. Working with this relatively untouched collection of over 3,000 reels, all stored under similar environmental conditions, provided exceptional opportunities for comparative analysis of film preservation issues across decades of production. I was able to observe valuable insights into the archival characteristics of different film stocks throughout the twentieth century, documenting which physical properties demonstrated superior longevity and which film elements proved most susceptible to shrinkage, warpage, and curl.
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11:00 AM – 12:00 PM
Be Kind, Rewind: VHS Culture, Community, and the Archive
Elizabeth Hansen, Texas Archive of the Moving Image
Sara Chapman, Media Burn
Skip Elsheimer, A/V Geeks
Becca Zeiger, Texas Archive of the Moving Image
Gregg Turkington, Victorville Film Archive
Long after its commercial heyday, VHS refuses to disappear. This panel dives into the passionate subcultures keeping the format alive—from private collectors and nostalgia-driven video stores to online tape-trading communities. By bringing together archivists, collectors, and video store advocates, the session explores how these grassroots efforts function as informal archives and what they reveal about cultural memory, access, and preservation. What drives the continued appeal of this fragile, obsolete format—and what can institutional archivists learn from those who refuse to let it die? Panelists will discuss collaboration opportunities, preservation strategies, and the cultural value of community collections. Highlights include a prerecorded tour of the Victorville Film Archive by Gregg Turkington and case studies from A/V Geeks, Texas Archive of the Moving Image, and others. Join us to explore what happens when analog nostalgia becomes a preservation tool—and how we might rethink the boundaries of archival practice.
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11:00 AM – 12:00 PM
Presenting the Good Practice for TV Archives Management Grid
Alexis Scargill, Nebraska Public Media
Mia Cooper Ferm, Oregon Public Broadcasting
Molly Tighe, WQED Multimedia
Lance Watsky,
Effective archival management of television collections is essential to the long-term value, accessibility, and impact of broadcast media. Well-managed archives support programming, legal compliance, institutional memory, and public trust, helping avert the loss of irreplaceable materials. Over the last year, the AMIA News, Doc and TV committee has developed the Good Practice for TV Archives Management grid– a practical tool designed to help organizations assess the preservation status of their television collections and determine their next steps toward sustainable archival management. The grid provides a structured, adaptable framework for evaluating four key functional areas. This session will present the committee’s methodology and rationale for creating the grid and walk through how to apply the grid by offering a real-world use case.The session will also outline plans for broader distribution, and seek feedback and discussion from the AMIA community.
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11:00 AM – 12:00 PM
Roundtable: Documenting The Damages
Regina Longo, Archives in Motion
Amy Heller Doros, Milestone Films
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11:30 AM – 12:00 PM
Submerged Action: Underwater Filming Technologies of the Silent Era, as Represented in the Collection of San Francisco Film Preserve
Kathy Rose O’Regan, San Francisco Film Preserve
Underwater filming was surprisingly prolific during the early decades of cinema. In the collection of San Francisco Film Preserve alone, two features—Below the Surface and The White Heather—feature underwater sequences, including sunken wrecks and fights on the seafloor! This presentation will detail the technology used to capture these striking submerged scenes, while also exploring the ways in which the film industry marketed these technological feats, using Below the Surface and The White Heather as case studies.
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12:00 PM – 2:00 PM
Poster Session II
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12:30 PM – 1:30 PM
Lunchtime Screening: Flickers from CAVE: Experimental Art and Butoh Dance Archival Screening
Benja Thompson, Leimay
Ximena Garnica, LEIMAY
Flickers from CAVE: Experimental Art and Butoh Dance Archival Screening presents a curated selection from the LEIMAY archive’s audiovisual material. Based in Williamsburg, Brooklyn since 1996, LEIMAY continues to fight for art, artists, and art spaces. This program focuses on the CAVE Gallery and Guests Artists. The CAVE Gallery featured over 300 artists from 1996-2006, bringing together action painting, installation performance, and experimental music to aggressively combine all manner of media. Each happening was recorded by Shige Moriya, CAVE’s curator, and showcases a cascade of DIY artistic experimentation. The Guest Artists portion presents performances featuring world-class dancers steeped in the butoh tradition such as Ko Murobushi and Yuko Kaseki as part of the New York Butoh Festival and its successive incarnations. Created by immigrant artists, the LEIMAY archive reveals a significant chapter in the development of butoh and the New York City avant-garde.
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1:00 PM – 2:00 PM – Registration Required
Tour: John Waters Fells Point Walking Tour
Join us for a walking tour of historic Fells Point, the 300-year-old neighborhood and working waterfront that became Baltimore’s own Greenwich Village. See the bars and artist spaces frequented by John Waters and the Dreamlanders in the 1960s. The tour includes locations from “Multiple Maniacs”, Edith Massey’s thrift store, and more! The tour is a collaboration between MARMIA and Baltimore Heritage.
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2:00 PM – 2:30 PM
Sex Garage: Montreal Queer Archival Solidarity Through Activist Videotapes
Kim Kölle Valentine, University of California Santa Cruz
The 1990 police raid of a queer after-party known as Sex Garage catalyzed emerging political groups into public demonstrations that marked a transformational moment for the Montreal queer community. The events sparked a surge in activist video production that built upon the aesthetic and political strategies of AIDS activist media, exemplifying how queer communities used videotape as a medium of resistance to recirculate political urgency across time and geography. Drawing on oral histories, activist tapes and photos, this paper traces the development of emerging queer communities through transnational exchanges with groups such as Réaction SIDA, ACT UP NY, and Groupe Intervention Vidéo. This approach examines how the development of media practices helped generate enduring activist infrastructures and circuits of queer solidarity. Collaborations with activists, artists, and researchers can remediate these histories within, beyond and between these objects through community re-circulation, considering makers who evade traditional archival description and cataloging practices.
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2:00 PM – 3:00 PM
Beyond the Archive: Sustaining Archival Stewardship Through Public Engagement
Ari Negovschi Regalado, Texas Archive of the Moving Image
C. Diaz, ENTRE Film Center and Regional Archive
Monica Sosa, ENTRE Film Center and Regional Archive
Victoria Perez, Texas Archive of the Moving Image
Elizabeth Hansen, Texas Archive of the Moving Image
Beyond the Archive: Sustaining Archival Stewardship Through Public Engagement is a co-presentation between Texas Archive of the Moving Image (Austin, TX) and ENTRE Film Center and Regional Archive (Harlingen, TX) to discuss strategies undertaken to promote archival knowledge among the public. From library programming to youth workshops, this panel will reframe public engagement as an integral facet of archival preservation. At a time when the long-term sustainability of archives remains in purgatory due to funding cuts, enthusiasm from the communities we serve can transform into advocacy, retention of history, and the empowerment of community archivists. As organizations tasked with stewarding audiovisual collections in the second largest state in the nation, they will share multi-pronged approaches from the perspective of a mid-size archive serving the entire state (Texas Archive) and a regional community archive serving South Texas (ENTRE) to ensure the state’s audiovisual heritage is not lost.
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2:00 PM – 3:00 PM
Remixing the Past: Creative Re-use of Archival Moving Image
Janine Winfree, Tennessee Archive of Moving Image and Sound
Aparna Subramanian, Film and Television Institute of India
Ben Compton, Toronto Metropolitan University.
Timothy Yim-Stueve, George Eastman Museum
As moving image archives expand access to digital collections, new opportunities arise for atypical, creative use of archival materials. This panel explores how institutions can support archival “remixing,” or the transformation of an archival object by placing it into a new context, such as adding music, creating a narrative or essay, or manipulating the image through editing software. With representatives of artists, educators, and archivists, this panel will focus on building collaborative partnerships that encourage artistic expression while still respecting legal and ethical boundaries. Presenters will share examples of creative reuse of archival objects by students, artists, and institutions–including the repurposing of obsolete playback technology. This session aims to bridge the gap between creatives wanting to use archival materials and archives with materials available for creative reuse.
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2:30 PM – 3:00 PM
Successful Strategies to Preserve Legacy Metadata in a Media Archive
Alexandra Beddall, Solomon Edwards Group
Randal Luckow, Warner Brothers Discovery
As legacy databases become outdated, archives face the challenge of preserving access to critical historical data trapped in inaccessible systems. This session explores how the Warner Brothers Discovery Archive team revived data from two frozen platforms, Navision and Lotus Notes, by transforming it into interactive, searchable Tableau dashboards. The two presenters will discuss the challenges of restoring access to legacy systems and share practical strategies for extracting, normalizing, and restructuring legacy data while preserving integrity and usability. Attendees will gain insight into bridging digital preservation practices with business intelligence tools. The session highlights the intersection of metadata, visualization, and long-term data stewardship, providing guidance for archivists facing similar infrastructure challenges. Designed for an intermediate audience, this presentation offers both technical workflows and strategic context, demonstrating how archival professionals can adapt modern tools to rescue and repurpose at-risk data.
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3:15 PM – 3:45 PM
From Novices to Specialists: Building an In-house AV Workstation
Camila Zimmerman, University of North Texas
Bree’ya Brown, University of North Texas
Justin Lemons, University of North Texas
A Digital Archivist, a Musicologist, and an Audio Engineer walk into a coffee shop to tackle the daunting challenges associated with creating a workstation to offer efficient in-house patron services, while following best practices. The panelists combined their skillsets around the preservation and digitization of audiovisual materials creating a unique collaborative opportunity. Each panelist will reflect on their experiences and challenges in developing an in-house AV workstation for Special Collections, providing a high-level overview of digitization and licensing objectives; project funding; technical workflows that include cultural heritage collections; the establishment of a working relationship with IT; and problem-solving the interoperability of new and old technology with compatible software.
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3:15 PM – 4:15 PM
Unexpected Treasures From The Archives: Clips and Stories
Mitch Peyser, PressPlay2Entertain
Elizabeth Hansen, Texas Archive of the Moving Image
Mary K. Huelsbeck, Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, University of Wisconsin
Sarah V. Hartzell, The Ohio State University Libraries
Hidden deep within our archives lie unexpected gems—rare, forgotten, or long-buried clips that have recently been rediscovered and brought back to life. This fun and entertaining presentation will showcase a curated selection of these archival finds, each paired with the fascinating stories behind them. Highlights include: – A teenage Dom DeLuise, Edith Piaf, Salvador Dali and more on the first late night TV talk show, The Faye Emerson Show – Rare footage of Janis Joplin at the Texas International Pop Festival – A hilarious gag reel from the TV series Dallas – Excerpts from a 1952 Vienna production of Porgy and Bess starring Cab Calloway, restored from 35mm film – The very first Peanuts cartoons from 1961 …and much more! Expect a lively, fun, and informative session designed for all AMIA attendees, whether you’re a seasoned archivist or a curious newcomer.
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3:15 PM – 4:15 PM
Vrecord: The Community Speaks
Morgan Morel, Library of Congress
Dave Rice, CUNY TV
Libby Hopfauf, Seattle Municipal Archives/MIPoPS
Benjamin Turkus, NYPL
Blake McDowell, Smithsonian
vrecord is an open source video preservation tool used by archives and preservation labs across the globe. The tool has humble origins; the first iteration was created at the 2014 AMIA Hackday in Savannah, GA. vrecord has changed dramatically since these early days, as a variety of features and tools such as closed captioning and QC views have been added. These enhancements have been funded by various institutions, and many members of our community have provided the development, testing, and issue tracking that have made the tool what it is today. During this lightning talk you’ll hear from the developers and users that have been a part of this journey as they discuss how they interact with vrecord, the features they use, and how they see the tool improving to meet the needs of the audiovisual archiving community.
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3:45 PM – 4:15 PM
Transcribing a Broken Record: Benchmarking STT for Historical Audio
Arthur Cho, Independent Researcher
How well do modern speech-to-text models perform on old radio and cassette recordings? This presentation compares open-source STT models like Whisper and Wav2Vec2 on historical audio digitized from analog sources. The session evaluates word error rate (WER) and robustness to distortion, and includes targeted fine-tuning experiments to explore how models adapt to noisy or degraded conditions. This project offers practical insights for archivists, audio specialists, and digital preservationists interested in improving access and discoverability of historical spoken content.
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4:30 PM – 5:00 PM
From Clippings to Cinema: A Hybrid Restoration Case
Xihao Xing, Graduate of the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation, George Eastman Museum
This session presents the 2025 Joye-Turconi Project, a distinctive collaboration between the George Eastman Museum and the British Film Institute, centered on the digital restoration of Lieutenant Rose and the Chinese Pirates (1910), a British Empire film that survives only through a German print and scattered nitrate clippings. The project stands out for its hybrid workflow, in which the film was reconstructed using nitrate clippings from the Turconi Collection at the George Eastman Museum and a 4K DPX scan provided by BFI, with a total of 137 missing frames were reintegrated. Through three phases: frame capture, digital reconstruction, and digital restoration, this session offers an inside look at reconstructing an early silent short film through hybrid workflows that are as much curatorial as they are technical. Alongside technical insight, the session reflects on the racialized imagery of early colonial cinema as well as curatorial concerns that it brings.
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4:30 PM – 5:30 PM
We Need to Talk: Critical Interventions for the Profession
Siobhan Hagan, Mid-Atlantic Regional Moving Image Archive (MARMIA)
Marie Lascu, Community Archiving Workshop (CAW) Collective
Chris Nichols, AARP
C Diáz, ENTRE Film Center & Regional Archive
Andy Uhrich, University of Colorado Boulder
Monica Sosa, ENTRE Film Center and Regional Archive
This forum will discuss topics the profession needs to confront before it’s too late to evolve. There are conversations happening outside of the conference of leaders in our field who are considering moves to completely different industries in order to have not just a higher quality of life, but a decent quality of life. With turbocharged targeting of the arts and humanities, we’ve been pushed over the edge. Let’s bring these private conversations out into the public space, face our long-known issues, face additional problems that have mounted in the last year, and identify what we can do now to recreate together. Let’s advocate for and implement a foundation that takes care of the people who work in our field so that then we can go and take care of the collections we’re so passionate about stewarding and the communities we’re passionate about serving, without having our passion extinguished.
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4:30 PM – 5:30 PM
Media Player Solutions and Challenges: Four Organizations Reveal All
Crystal Sanchez, Smithsonian Institution
Blake McDowell, Smithsonian Institution
Dave Rice, The City University of New York (CUNY)
Genevieve Havemeyer-King, The Library of Congress
Megan Cromwell, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Ocean Service
This panel brings together a variety of organizations at different levels of implementation in building online streaming solutions for their audiovisual collections. The Smithsonian Institution, The City University of New York, The Library of Congress, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will briefly share their organization’s current state in support of streaming media online and the choices they have made in selecting media player components, in addition to gaps and challenges they continue to face. The panel will address media player research, technical implementation details, file format derivative standards, workflows, accessibility needs, requirements, challenges, and more. A conversation among and with panel participants will wrap up the session.
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5:00 PM – 5:30 PM
“Too Fragile to Scan?” – Collaborative Innovations Addressing the Physical Challenges of Film
Michael Schneider, Digital Film Technology GmbH
This presentation by Digital Film Technology (DFT) is intended for archivists, film restoration specialists, and professionals preserving historically significant and physically compromised film collections. It addresses the challenges of digitizing fragile film materials—such as shrinkage, warping, and degraded perforations—and examines how technological developments are enabling safer and more accurate digitization of films once considered too fragile to scan. Key developments include optical registration systems capable of compensating for damaged or missing perforations and film transport mechanisms that provide greater flexibility and adaptability than earlier static designs. Drawing on archival case studies, the presentation shows how insights from archives have shaped the evolution of scanning methodologies. Advanced technologies support archival workflows by reducing the preparatory work required before the scanning stage. The presentation seeks to offer an overview of new technologies in archival film digitization, emphasizing the critical role of continued collaboration between technology developers and archival professionals.
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5:30 PM – 6:30 PM
AMIA 2025 Closing Night
A chance to say goodbye to colleagues and grab a drink before heading out to enjoy your last night in Baltimore.
10:00 AM – 5:00 PM
Community Archiving Workshop
Pamela Vadakan, CAW Collective
Grace Lile, Independent
Crystal Rangel, New York Public Library
Kaitlyn Palone, University of Central Oklahoma
Justin Lemons, University of North Texas
Emily Pojman, University of North Texas
Community Archiving Workshop (CAW) provides moving image archivists the opportunity to serve the community of Baltimore and work with local volunteers to help an organization gain intellectual and physical control over an endangered audiovisual collection. The workshop provides a space for conference attendees to partner with local volunteers to conduct basic processing, cataloging and inspection and, by doing so, will learn how to identify risk factors and make preservation recommendations. Attendees will gain experience in working with and training non-archivists to care for their collections. In the process, they will engage in hands-on processing, inspecting, and cataloging audiovisual media. Most importantly, they will build relationships and connections with the Baltimore community and learn about local history.