Riverboat Houses Cairo, Egypt (2010)

About 

David Rowntree, Certified Archivist


David has over 10 years of audiovisual archiving experience in a wide variety of libraries, archives, and broadcasting stations. 

He began his career as a documentary filmmaker after graduating in Political Science from the American University in Cairo, Egypt. He was co-owner of Felucca Films, a production company that focussed on stories in the Middle East. The one-hour Up At Dawn: The Working Children of Egypt received national broadcast and international screenings including the Amsterdam Documentary Festival, Sundance Institute, Harvard Film Archive, and Beirut Film Festival.

His first archival position was Head of the Film & Media Archive at Washington University. There he oversaw the creation of the new Archive and all aspects of its operations including: acquisitions, cataloging,  arrangement and description, user services, digitization, copyright, exhibition, disaster planning, and preservation. 

The Archive included prominent collections such as the Henry Hampton/ Blackside Collection (Eyes on the Prize) & William Miles Collection (I Remember Harlem).

While at Washington University he taught an undergraduate class in Film Studies on documentary filmmaking and preservation. He also taught Rebel Music: The History and Influence of Jamaican Reggae.

After producing a detailed report outlining the creation a new audiovisual archive at the University of Hawaii, David was hired as the Project Manager to initiate the recommendations. He helped lay the foundations for the establishment of the Henry Ku'ualoha Giugni Archives and initiated a number of acquisition and preservation projects. 

 
  

Selected Publications and Presentations

Out of the Archive: Challenges and Opportunities for New Scholarly Access from Old Media Collections, Black Camera: An International Film Journal, Indiana University Press, Winter 2009

Preservation Challenges in Hawaii, 2010 Hawaiian International Conference on Arts and Humanities

Archival Considerations for Film & Video Preservation, American Archive Pilot Project Workshop, Portland 2009

Survey of Hawaiian Moving Image Preservation, University of Hawaii, 2009

The Virtual World of Second Life: A New Vision for Archives, Midwest Archives Conference, St. Louis, 2009

Harlem on Film: A Workshop, Columbia University's Center for New Media Teaching and Learning (2008)

The Henry Hampton Collection as a Teaching Resource, Teaching and Technology Symposium at Washington University (2008)

Documentary Outtakes: Challenges for Acquiring, Processing and Providing Access, AMIA Conference, Rochester (2008)

New Opportunities for Research in the Midwest, Society for Cinema and Media Studies, Chicago (2008)

Living St. Louis, Henry Hampton, KETC, Channel 9 (PBS)   (2007)