Andreas Wilson, Summer 2018

Andreas Wilson, Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater, UW-Madison, Summer 2018, NEH

I worked as an intern at both the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theatre Research and the University of Wisconsin-Madison Archives. I was supervised by Amy Sloper, Head Film Archivist at WCFTR, and Cat Phan, Digital Media Archivist at UW-Archives respectively. During my internship I worked on two separate projects. At the WCFTR I worked on a collections assessment of the Third World Newsreel collection. This entailed to an item-level inventory of 81 boxes of pre-print materials that were deposited at WCFTR in the late 80's but had not yet been officially processed. At the UW-Archives I did a similar project; I conducted a inventory and collections assessment of the archive's film collection. There were almost 4,000 items, mostly 16mm materials. I had a wonderful experience at both of these institution, and I feel like gained a lot of valuable archival knowledge and experience over the course of my internship. Having the tandem internships at both WCFTR and UW-Archives was very effective. Amy Sloper is a brilliant mentor. Not only is she incredibly knowledgable, she is very good at guiding you through the experience, giving you greater context about the responsibilities of a film archivist while also imparting hands-on practical skills. At the UW-Archives, I was much more on my own. This allowed me to apply the skills and knowledge I had received from Amy in a real archival environment. I feel that this helped to solidify all that I had learned. On top of that, both Amy and Cat were incredibly friendly and an absolute pleasure to work with. I would strongly recommend this internship for those interested in gaining experience with film-handling and collections management.