FIAF Patrons
FIAF is proud to receive generous endowments from two dear departed pioneers of the film preservation movement, Jan de Vaal and Eileen Bowser, who were key figures in the FIAF community during their lifetimes. You can learn more about these patrons and their respective legacy funds below.
The Jan de Vaal Fund was founded on 12 November 2018 by Tineke de Vaal to help fulfil the aim of facilitating the exchange and production of knowledge about the history of FIAF, and honour her late husband's memory.
Jan de Vaal (1922-2001) was for 40 years – between 1946 and 1987 – the director of the Netherlands Filmmuseum in Amsterdam, for 23 years a member of the Executive Committee of FIAF, and he was elected Honorary Member of FIAF in 1988. Next to establishing a national film archive from scratch in The Netherlands, for which in his view the international collaboration between FIAF members was quintessential, his main interest was the improvement of the global exchange of films, knowledge, and expertise in film history between national film archives affiliated to FIAF. For this purpose he started the FIAF Members’ Film Service, a circulating pool of prints for programming purposes, and the FIAF Bulletin together with Robert Daudelin and Eileen Bowser (later Journal of Film Preservation). One of the pioneers of the film archive movement, Jan de Vaal was a central figure in the FIAF community for over four decades, and understood the need and importance of a global network of film archives. The FIAF community was thus very close to his heart. In 1988 he was commissioned to create a so-called "Golden Book" of FIAF's history.
It is in this spirit that the Fund is currently supporting a new FIAF History Project, launched by FIAF in September 2019 in Lisbon and co-led by Christophe Dupin (FIAF) and André Stufkens (European Foundation Joris Ivens) with the assistance of a streering group of experts consisting of José Manuel Costa, Robert Daudelin, Eva Orbanz, Donata Pesenti Compagnoni, Tiago Baptista, and Laurent Le Forestier). One of the first expected outcomes of this longterm project is a book about the first 50 years of FIAF.
Eileen Bowser Fund
A distinguished film archivist and historian, and a key FIAF personality from the early 1970s, Eileen Bowser (1928-2019) was Film Curator at New York's Museum of Modern Art for over twenty years. She retired from this post in 1992, but continued to teaching at New York University and continued 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 1971 to 1991 (and FIAF Vice-President from 1977-85), and Head of the FIAF Documentation Commission for many years. She took a key part in the organization of many FIAF historical symposia in the 1970s and 80s (in particular the legendary Brighton Symposium on early cinema in 1978, and the "Slapstick Symposium" in New York in 1985). In 1980 she co-edited for FIAF, with John Kuiper, A Handbook for Film Archives. She joined the Editorial Board of the FIAF Bulletin (now Journal of Film Preservation) at the beginning of the review in the early 1970s, and was still on it at the time of her passing nearly 50 years later. She was elected FIAF Honorary Member in 1993.
Eileen Bowser generously named FIAF as one of the beneficiaries in her will. During her many years of involvement in FIAF, she tirelessly supported projects that generated new essential resources for the field. With this in mind, the Eileen Bowser Fund has contributed to the production of numerous FIAF publications and online resources since its creation, such as Film Atlas, Share That Knowledge!, the FIAF Disaster Handbook, and the forthcoming Home Movies Handbook.
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