Keynote Speakers
To celebrate the 30th anniversary of AMIA, the Conference will feature four incredible keynote speakers this year ….
Tuesday November 17
8:30 AM – 9:45 AM
AMIA 2020 Welcome & Keynote Conversation with Margaret Bodde
Join us as we officially open AMIA’s first virtual conference! As we open the conference we are excited to present the 2020 Silver Light Award to Mona Jimenez, followed by a Keynote Conversation with Margaret Bodde, Executive Director of The Film Foundation.
The Keynote is a conversation with Margaret Bodde, Executive Director of The Film Foundation since 1991, and Cecilia Cenciarelli, a director of the Il Cinema Ritrovato Festival in Bologna and in charge of research and special projects at the Cineteca di Bologna since 2000. The Film Foundation, celebrating its 30th anniversary, is dedicated to protecting and preserving motion picture history. By working in partnership with archives and studios, the foundation has helped to restore over 850 films, which are made accessible to the public through programming at festivals, museums, and educational institutions around the world. The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project has restored 42 films from 25 different countries representing the rich diversity of world cinema. The foundation’s free educational curriculum, The Story of Movies, teaches young people – over 10 million to date – about film language and history. In 2017, the African Film Heritage Project was launched to identify, preserve and disseminate 50 significant African films, working in partnership with the Pan-African Federation of Filmmakers (FEPACI) and UNESCO. Margaret Bodde has also produced many of Scorsese’s documentary films, including Rolling Thunder Revue (2019), The 50 Year Argument (2014), George Harrison: Living in the Material World (2011), Public Speaking (2010), No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (2005), and the PBS series The Blues (2003). Prior to joining Scorsese, Bodde worked in marketing and distribution at Miramax Films and as a preservation officer at the Library of Congress.
Wednesday, November 18
9:00 AM – 9:45 AM
Welcome & Keynote Conversation with Allison Anders
Wednesday opens with the presentation of the 2020 Ray Edmondson Advocacy Award to Dwight Swanson. Immediately following is a Keynote Conversation with Allison Anders.
Allison Anders is a trailblazing, award-winning screenwriter and film and TV director whose work includes Gas Food Lodging, Mi Vida Loca, Grace Of My Heart and Things Behind The Sun. She’s directed countless episodes of TV which include Sex And The City, Orange Is The New Black, Southland, Murder In The First, Mayans, Riverdale, and The Affair. She was nominated for an Emmy for Best Director for the TV movie Ring Of Fire. She’s a MacArthur Fellow, a Peabody Award Winner and a Distinguished Professor of Film And Media at UC Santa Barbara. Anders will be in conversation with Maya Montañez Smukler who heads the UCLA Film & Television Archive Research and Study Center. Since 2015, she has conducted interviews for the Visual History Program at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science. Her recent book, Liberating Hollywood: Women Directors & the Feminist Reform of 1970s American Cinema, available from Rutgers University Press, was the 2018 recipient of the Theatre Library Association’s Richard Wall Memorial Award. Maya’s first real job was as assistant to director Allison Anders on the film Grace of My Heart.
Thursday, November 19
9:00 AM – 9:45 AM
Welcome & Keynote: Erica Titkemeyer
Starting out Thursday with the presentation of the 2020 William S. O’Farrell Volunteer Award to Wendy Shay. Immediately following is a Keynote Conversation with Erica Titkemeyer.
Since 2014, Erica Titkemeyer has been the Project Director and AV Conservator for the Southern Folklife Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH). In this position they coordinate a $1.75 million grant-funded initiative to preserve audiovisual materials for UNC-CH and partner institutions across the state of North Carolina. From 2013-2014 they were a Library of Congress National Digital Stewardship Resident at the Smithsonian Institution Archives, working to produce best practices and recommendations for museums collecting digital media artworks. Erica is also a consultant for Myriad Consulting and Training, specializing in AV preservation, grant writing, copyright, digital preservation, and digital technologies and tools. Their keynote address will be “Practicing gratitude while wanting more from the AV preservation field.”
Friday, November 20
Closing Day Welcome & Keynote: Zackary Drucker
The final morning of the conference starts with the presentation of the Alan Stark Award to Alison Reppert Gerber, followed by a Keynote from Zackary Drucker.
Zackary Drucker is an independent artist, cultural producer, and trans woman who breaks down the way we think about gender, sexuality, and seeing. She has performed and exhibited her work internationally in museums, galleries, and film festivals including the Whitney Biennial 2014, MoMA PS1, Hammer Museum, Art Gallery of Ontario, MCA San Diego, and SF MoMA, among others. Drucker is an Emmy-nominated Producer for the docu-series This Is Me, as well as a Producer on Golden Globe and Emmy-winning Transparent. She is currently directing The Lady and the Dale, on the life of Liz Carmichael, one of the first public figures outed as transgender, whose promotion of a three-wheeled car was either revolutionary or a giant con. It will appear on HBO in early 2021.