Roger Smither

Roger Smither worked at Imperial War Museums for 40 years, retiring as Keeper of the Film and Photograph Archives in August 2010 (although he still worked there as a consultant for a number of years after that). He was an active member of the FIAF community for well over twenty years. In the 1980s, as a member of the Cataloguing Commission, he wrote several studies on the usage of computers for film cataloguing, and contributed to The FIAF Cataloguing Rules for Film Archives (1991). He then sat on the FIAF Executive Committee from 1993-2003. As FIAF Secretary General (1995-2001), he played a key role in the drafting of the FIAF Code of Ethics and the updating of the FIAF Statutes and Rules, and oversaw the admission of many new FIAF affiliates in the late 1990s-early 2000s. He edited FIAF's seminal book This Film Is Dangerous (2002), a towering testimony to the work of film archives and museums all over the world and still a best-seller of FIAF's catalogue today. He was elected FIAF Honorary Member in April 2018, and celebrated by the FIAF community during the FIAF Congress in Lausanne the following year.