Robert Rosen (1940-2024)

Robert Rosen at the 1979 FIAF Congress in Lausanne. Photo: Eva Orbanz/FIAF.

It is with great sadness that we learned of the passing on 2 October 2024 of our colleague Robert Rosen, retired founding Director of the UCLA Film & Television Archive and former Dean of the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television in Los Angeles, and a much-respected figure of the FIAF community from the 1970s to the 2010s. He was a member of FIAF's Executive Committee from 1987 to 1993 and he attended many FIAF Congresses between 1976 and 2017. Under his leadership, the UCLA Film & Television Archive co-hosted in April 1995 the FIAF Congress in Los Angeles.

Robert Rosen also served as Chair of the Archivists Advisory Council of The Film Foundation, an organization that he helped establish with Martin Scorsese in 1990, and was a member of the National Film Preservation Board of the Library of Congress from its inception in 1992. You can read the published version of the interview he gave to Christian Dimitriu in 2012 as part of the FIAF Oral History Project HERE.

Robert Rosen at the 1984 FIAF Congress in Vienna (photo: Eva Orbanz/FIAF)

Martin Scorsese, Eva Orbanz and Robert Rosen at the 1995 FIAF Congress in Los Angeles (photo: FIAF)

Robert Rosen at the 2017 FIAF Congress in Los Angeles (photo: Mikko Kuutti)