Robert P. Mitchell, a spokesperson for Kirby, has declined to answer questions about the film archive’s budget.
Perry and Gunning said they feared that the change in management signalled an end to what they characterized as a recent period of good relations between the archive and the Harvard administration.
“They had a terrible time attracting anyone [to replace Jenkins’ predecessor], because it didn’t seem that Harvard was willing to support the archive enough,” Perry said.
Gunning said Jenkins’ arrival at Harvard five years ago had been a major milestone in the struggle to get the archive adequate attention and funding—and worried that his departure from the HFA boded ill for film studies at Harvard.
“They understood it and did this great job with it, of hiring a top person and making the archive really special and increasing the collection,” he said. “My heart sinks that we’re kind of back at square one again.”
In the absence of Jenkins, a professional archivist, Gunning’s letter questioned whether Harvard College Library has the appropriate expertise to maintain the HFA’s collection.
“The preservation techniques in the preserving of texts is unrelated to the incredibly complex preservation of film,” Gunning told The Crimson. “It would be like saying, ‘Well, we can merge the Metropolitan Museum of Art into the New York Library system.’”
In his announcement of the move last month, Kirby wrote that “the Library already possesses the critical skills and services needed to manage this collection successfully.”
Mitchell wrote in an e-mail yesterday that the HFA will continue to have a curator and professional staff.
The HFA employee also cited fears among colleagues that the film archive would be forced to cut back on its extensive schedule of screenings.
Mitchell said that “all scheduled film presentations will continue as planned.”
But the employee said that cost cutting might prevent a full slate of future screenings from being added to the calendar after the current schedule ends.
Gunning also suggested that the move might jeopardize the HFA’s observer status with the International Federation of Film Archives, an organization which he said made it possible for the Archive to share films with other institutions.
The HFA employee said a change in status was unlikely.
Perry, who also said that Harvard might lose its status, said that even if it did not he worried that the move could have ramifications well beyond Harvard.
“If Harvard’s not taking film seriously, that makes it more difficult for second-class institutions who are trying to establish film programs,” he said. “It’s so easy to say, ‘Well, Harvard doesn’t do it.’”
—Staff writer Simon W. Vozick-Levinson can be reached at vozick@fas.harvard.edu.