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Eileen Bowser

(1928-2019)
Introduction

A distinguished film archivist and historian, and one of the key FIAF personalities from the late 1960s onwards, Eileen Bowser had a long and distinguished career at New York's Museum of Modern Art, which she joined in 1955. She retired from the Film Department in January 1993, having been its Film Curator for over twenty years. She then continued to teach at New York University and work on her own research and writing for a number of years.

She served FIAF in many capacities over four decades. She was a continuous FIAF Executive Committee member from 1968 to 1991, and FIAF's Vice-President from 1977-85. She joined the FIAF Documentation Commission when it was created in 1969 and was its President (as that position was then called) from 1972 to 1981. She also took a key part in the organization of various FIAF historical symposia in the 1970s and 80s (including the famous 1978 Brighton Symposium on “Cinema 1900-1906” and the Slapstick Symposium in 1985 in New York), and co-edited A Handbook for Film Archives with John Kuiper (FIAF, 1980 and Garland, 1991). She was a member of the Editorial Board of the FIAF Bulletin/Journal of Film Preservation from its very beginning in the early 1970s to her death nearly 50 years later, and wrote many articles for it over the years (her last one was John Kuiper's obituary in 2017). She was elected FIAF Honorary Member on 31 May 1993, during the last FIAF Congress she ever attended, in Montevideo. Since 1968, she had only missed one - the 1989 Lisbon Congress - because she broke her arm on her way to the airport. She remained in close contact with the FIAF office until her passing in 2019.

Read More

Ronald S. Magliozzi,. Jon Gartenberg, Robert Daudelin, “Eileen Bowser (1928-2019)”, in Journal of Film Preservation, Issue 102, April 2020, pp.10-19.

Paolo Cherchi Usai; Tom Gunning, "Eileen Bowser (1928-2019)", in The Moving Image, Vol. XX, N° 1-2, Spring-Fall, 2020, pp.303-304.

Christian Dimitriu, “Eileen Bowser – a life between film history, MoMA and FIAF”, in Journal of Film Preservation, Issue 81, November 2009, pp.25-46.

Ronald S. Magliozzi, "Film archiving as a Profession: An Interview with Eileen Bowser", in The Moving Image, Vol. III, N° 1, Spring 2003, pp.132-146.

Eileen Bowser; John Kuyper (eds), A Handbook for Film Archives, FIAF, 1980 (first edition), Garland, 1991 (second edition).