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Please join us in welcoming Jillian Borders! Jillian is the new
head of Preservation at the UCLA Film & Television Archive.
In order to introduce you, we asked her a few questions:
What goals do you have for this year in your new role?
As head of preservation, I look forward to continuing our collaborations with archival and industry partners as well as developing and fostering new community connections. It is important to me that we work on a broad range of titles that includes classic Hollywood as well as more diverse titles that have the potential to become new “classics.” Other goals for this year include expanding our base of laboratory vendors and surveying the at-risk or deteriorating titles within our collection.
How has your prior experience prepared you for this role at the UCLA Library?
I have spent the last 17 years in various roles at the UCLA Film & Television Archive, first as a film prep technician in the film lab, and then as a film preservationist and senior preservationist. I am coming into this new position with a large amount of institutional and departmental knowledge. The Archive has a long, rich history of film preservation and I’ve had the privilege to have participated in one way or another in many of the Archive’s restorations.
What projects will you be tackling first?
The preservation department has a lot of exciting upcoming projects, the digital restoration of a number of Fleischer Studios animated shorts, including Betty Boop and Color Classics titles; a large-scale preservation of Vitaphone shorts; two UCLA student films that have recently been named to the National Film Registry: Requiem-29 (1970) and Chicana (1979); and our ongoing newsreel digitization project. We are fortunate to have such a wide variety of projects and I’m so grateful for all of our generous donors who allow us to do this work!
What do you like to do outside of work? And/or What are you currently reading/watching/listening to?
I spend much of my free time with my family and young daughter, going to parks and playgrounds, cooking and reading. I also teach Jazzercise and do fiber arts like knitting and spinning. I have recently been into exploring curated films and shorts on the Mubi platform. There are a lot of interesting foreign titles on there and with them rotating frequently, it’s less overwhelming than other sites. But I also have many T.V. and movie guilty pleasures including 90’s thrillers and procedurals of all kinds.
What is your preferred name and what are your preferred pronouns?
I generally use Jillian professionally, but most people call me Jill (she/her).
We are delighted to have Jillian on our team! You can contact her at jborders@cinema.ucla.edu(opens in a new tab).
