Archives in the News: Film Archivist Thanked at the 98th Academy Awards
- Samantha Cross
- 2 minutes ago
- 3 min read
Yes, I know, it's been a week since the Oscars, but there's only so many hours in the day and sometimes I'm very lazy. Okay, I'm very lazy a lot of the time but I'm doing my best!
Anyway, this may not be incredibly new news to those in the archival community, but not everyone is invested in awards season, so it's still worth telling those in and outside of our niche profession when one of us makes it into the limelight, if only for a few precious, but important, seconds.
During the broadcast of the 98th Academy Awards, Andy Jurgensen won the Oscar for Best Film Editing for One Battle After Another, his fourth collaboration with Director Paul Thomas Anderson. Full disclosure, I haven't seen the movie, so I have no opinions on the merit of his win. It's also not the purpose behind this article. What is important is his acceptance speech, specifically the end of it:
And lastly, I would like to dedicate this to my aunt, Barbara Hall, who was a film archivist for the Academy for over 25 years. She loved her job and she loved showing me old movies and teaching me about film history and I miss her every day. And I would not be up here if it wasn't for her and my Uncle Val. So, thank you very much.
Firstly, this is a reminder to never dismiss the role aunts and uncles play in shaping a child's life. Secondly, it's just nice to hear applause associated with an archivist on a national stage. It's so rare to have archivists acknowledged in this way because, quite frankly, most people either don't know we exist or wave us off like our work isn't important enough to warrant attention. Media archives are especially important because as more media becomes obsolete under the false belief that digital automatically means better created, kept, and preserved, we run the risk of losing historically and culturally significant pieces of art. Hell, it's already happened when we look at news about unreleased but completed movies being deleted, with no backups created, for a tax write-off. And yet reels of film or negatives for decades-old movies are still being discovered in unlikely places as recently as 2025!
Yes, I'm still salty about the Batgirl movie! Fuck you, David Zaslav!
The point, because there is one, is that Barbara Hall was able to share not just her love of film but her passion for her job with her nephew. That love and care stuck with him and led him to winning an Oscar where he could thank her in front of almost 18 million viewers. It doesn't seem like much in the grand scheme of the Oscars broadcast, but we have no idea how impactful Andy Jurgensen's speech could be to people with the same passions as him or his aunt.
It is also worth noting, as many in the archival community have, that it was only two years ago that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences laid off 16 employees across the library, archives, and museum staffs, including the Film Archives Director of 24 years. According to the Variety article, the layoffs came about during the course of a restructuring initiative, putting the archives, library, and collection units under the newly formed Academy Collection and Preservation department. As a means of trying to soften the optics of the layoffs, the Academy CEO Bill Kramer claimed it was only 2% of their workforce.
Sure, 2% doesn't sound like a lot, but archives aren't famously known for having a large staff of people or adequate funding or visibility in the face of institutional directives that downplay the importance of the work provided by a fully funded and fully staffed department. So 2% actually means a lot within the context of the labor that will be foisted upon those still under gainful employment because I'm sure the Academy paid the remaining staff appropriately, right? This isn't just a way for Bill Kramer to pad his salary, right? That would be silly.
Sadly, Barbara Hall passed away in 2025, but if you'd like to learn about her and her work, you can check out the book she co-authored with Rocky Lang, Letters from Hollywood: Inside the Private World of Classic American Moviemaking. You can also listen to an interview with her on the StoryBeat podcast from 2019.
