Film preservation specialist Deborah Stoiber to give annual 2018 Brodsky Lecture in Bird Library
Deborah Stoiber, collection manager of the Moving Image Department at the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, will give the lecture Conserving cinema’s legacy at George Eastman Museum on Thursday, March 22, 2018 from 1:30–3 p.m. in the Peter Graham Scholarly Commons, 114 Bird Library. The lecture will be preceded by a hands-on workshop, Film Inspection and Identification, from 9:30–11:30 a.m. also in Bird Library. The lecture is open to the public, however there is limited space available for the workshop; please RSVP to jschambe@syr.edu.
The event is the 2018 offering in the annual Brodsky Series for the Advancement of Library Conservation. The series is endowed through a generous gift by William J. ’65, G’ 68 and Joan Brodsky ’67, G’68 of Chicago. Beginning in 2004, the endowment has been used to sponsor programs that promote and advance knowledge of library conservation theory, practice, and application among wide audiences, both on campus and in the region. Programs will typically include lectures and workshops by prominent library conservators.
Stoiber’s lecture will provide an introduction to the George Eastman Museum’s moving image holdings. Founded by the museum’s first curator of film, James Card (1915–2000), the collection now consists of more than 28,000 titles spanning the entire history of cinema, from the early experiments of the Lumière brothers to the cinema of today. Her presentation will encompass the definitions of conservation, preservation, reconstruction, and duplication in the moving image world, and will focus on case studies on conservation practices and their application for both digital and analog media.
The interactive workshop will cover the basics of film handling, including the identification of nitrate and safety film bases, formats, and stages of decomposition. Students will be encouraged to take photos and ask questions as they view films on workbenches.
Deborah Stoiber has worked for the George Eastman Museum for close to 20 years. She oversees 100,000 nitrate and safety motion picture reels, a large variety of video formats, along with 2,000 Technicolor dye bottles in three facilities located in and around the city of Rochester. Her responsibilities include inspecting, accessioning, and cataloging collection material, making recommendations for de-accessioning collections, and new acquisitions. Recent donations to the museum include an acquisition of South Asian Cinema that has created the largest collection of Indian Cinema outside of India. She is an instructor in The L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation, and is the technical director of the Nitrate Picture Show, the first film festival dedicated to the conservation of 35mm film.
Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) will be available for this event. For more information, or if you need an accommodation in order to fully participate in this event, please contact Julia Chambers at jschambe@syr.edu by March 15.