The independent filmmaking community is up in arms over the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences’ recent decision to gut its archive and library, with some calling the cutbacks “a huge step backwards” and “disastrous” as they put pressure on the Academy to reconsider its decision.
On Oct. 30, AMPAS laid off 16 employees, roughly 2% of its total workforce. They were from the Academy Film Archive, which is responsible for the preservation, restoration and documentation of motion pictures, and the Margaret Herrick Library, home to millions of pieces of film history, from books to photographs to concept art to Oscar facts and more. The affected employees included archive director Mike Pogorzelski, preservation officer Josef Lindner and head of cataloguing Mike Brostoff, among others — many of whom have worked there for decades.
At the time of the layoffs, Academy CEO Bill Kramer characterized the staff cuts as part of a larger organizational restructuring. On Nov. 5, he sent another internal memo, obtained by TheWrap, addressing “concerns” over the Academy’s decision in an attempt to assuage members that “this is not happening to send more money to the Museum or to harm our incredible collection,” but to streamline teams “with shared priorities.” Matt Severson, who is head of the library, now has an expanded role to include oversight of the archive.
The Academy declined to comment.
In response to the layoffs, film preservationists are fighting back and voicing their concerns over the implications the gutting of the Academy’s archive and library will have on maintaining the history of filmmaking and movies.
“AMPAS choosing to reduce investment in the Academy Film Archive at this time is a huge step backwards for those of us struggling to preserve indie film legacies,” Sandra Schulberg, president of film preservation organization IndieCollect, wrote in a Nov. 4 letter sent to documentary filmmakers that was obtained by TheWrap. IndieCollect’s main purpose is to preserve American independent movies and has been a longtime partner of the Academy Film Archive, where it has placed numerous films.
“But it’s also a fact that all the American archives who care about indie film are under-resourced,” she continued in the letter. “None of our collaborating archives has sufficient capacity or staff, yet there are thousands of indie film elements that still have no home.”
In an email exchange with TheWrap, Schulberg said that she and Porgorzelski had been “concerned for years about…the ‘deluge’ of films out there — unhoused — that desperately need a permanent archive berth,” which is why the Academy’s rollback of archive staff and resources is worrisome. She cited a negative for the 1948 Fred Zinneman movie “The Search” and the Pennebaker/Hegedus collection among the thousands of pieces of film history in search of a home.
Still, Schulberg expressed support of Severson’s expanded role, asking the Academy “that these cuts not diminish his purview to achieve, preserve and restored indie films.”
Thom Powers, co-founder of Doc NYC Festival and a documentary curator, told TheWrap that the layoffs are “a disastrous decision” on the part of the Academy, noting that “dozens of filmmakers have been responding with a real sense of alarm.”
“The archive community is not the most visible group of people, so it’s easy for this issue to go overlooked. But for those of us who have interacted with members of that team, our experiences have been that they have an uncommon knowledge of this field,” he said.
“It’s alarming to me when the Academy’s official statements describe this like it’s a routine shuffling of personnel because it’s not that at all. It would be like if a movie studio had lost Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino. These are major losses to the institution.”
A Change.org petition started by Amy Heller and Dennis Doros, co-presidents of the ad hoc group of film professionals Missing Movies, is calling on Academy leadership, including president Janet Yang and Kramer, to rehire the 16 employees who were “summarily fired.”
“Our goal is that our concerns will reach the members of the Academy who will be able to work with the Board of Governors to rectify this injustice,” Heller and Doros told TheWrap via email. At the time of publication, the petition — which was posted Nov. 5 — has more than 2,500 signatures.
Heller and Doros said the layoffs meant a loss of decades of “leadership and institutional knowledge,” as well as “deep ties to the film community, membership of the Academy, collectors, archivists, distributors and academics.”
“The Academy did not give those let go the opportunity to train and assist in a transition,” they said. “The short-term impact will be the lost relationships with possible donors and filmmakers. The long-term impact will be a smaller staff unable to maintain the collection properly or to commit to large-scale restoration projects as they have done in the past.”
Schulberg plans to hold a tribute to the archive team during IndieCollect’s inaugural Rescue Fest on Sunday, Dec. 6 at the Laemmle Monica Film Center in Santa Monica, the same evening it will premiere the restoration of the 1991 Lily Tomlin movie, “The Search of Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe.” The film was restored after Academy Film Archive documentary curator Ed Carter, who was among the employees affected by the cuts, discovered it among discarded film negatives. The festival, which runs though Dec. 9, will showcase other movies that the organization has saved and restored.
“Rescue Fest is IndieCollect’s next démarche in our quest to make headlines about this crisis,” Schulberg said. “As Jane Fonda said at the 2018 Restoration Summit, hosted by what is now the Golden Globe Foundation, ‘We need to be investing as much money in saving films as we invest in making films.’”
