About Us

STAFF

Elizabeth Barret (archive@appalshop.org)
A native Kentuckian, Barret is the acting Director of the Appalshop Archive and a community-based artist whose work pursues an abiding interest in the history, culture and social issues of Appalachia.  Archival material has been integral to many of her media productions, most recently STRANGER WITH A CAMERA and the in-progress SURFACE OF THE VISIBLE WORLD: The Photographic Legacy of William Gedney (1932-89).  Her documentaries have been screened at film festivals and venues worldwide as well as broadcast nationally on PBS.  Barret is a recipient of a Kentucky Arts Council Fellowship in Media Arts, NEA Southeast Media Fellowship, and Rockefeller Foundation Film/Video/ Multimedia Fellowship. She serves on the advisory committee to Folkstreams.net and as a member of the Board of Directors of Appalshop, Inc.

Chad Hunter (chunter@appalshop.org)
In addition to his position with the WITNESS Media Archive in New York, Hunter is an active member of the Appalshop Archive staff. Previous to Appalshop he spent seven years as an archivist and Preservation Officer at George Eastman House in Rochester, NY. There, he supervised the preservation of more than 100 films, including the home movies of Martin Scorsese; the collection of independent filmmaker Peter Hutton; unique films of Harold Lloyd and Raoul Walsh; and dozens of 28mm actuality and dramatic films from the silent period. He has served as an instructor and lecturer at the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation in Rochester, a guest lecturer at the Cinemateca Brasileira in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and a visiting archivist at the Danish Film Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark.  Chad is a co-founder of Home Movie Day, the international grassroots film preservation event, as well as a founding board member of the Center for Home Movies.  He is Co-Chair of the Association of Moving Image Archivist's Small Gauge and Amateur Film Interest Group.

Caroline Rubens (crubens@appalshop.org)
Rubens holds a master’s degree in Moving Image Archiving and Preservation from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.   Since graduating from the MIAP program she has worked as project manager or their NEH-funded curriculum development project.   Recently she served as Film Archivist at the Rhode Island Historical Society, and has worked as a researcher on the Library of Congress’ NDIIPP initiative (National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Project).   Her special interests include the preservation of obsolete video formats, local television and community media.   She is a member of the Association of Moving Image Archivists, the American Library Association and the Society of American Archivists.   She holds a bachelor’s in English Literature from Columbia University.


Dwight Swanson (dswanson@appalshop.org)
Swanson did several short-term contracts for Appalshop before joining the new Archives project in 2005, overseeing media collections. He has a Bachelor of Arts in history from the University of Colorado and a Master of Arts in American studies with an emphasis on popular and material culture from the University of Maryland. His initial training was in photographic history and museum studies. Since graduating from the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation at the George Eastman House, he has served as the archivist for regional film and video collections at the Alaska MovingImage Preservation Association and Northeast Historic Film, as well as the Smithsonian Institution. He is anexpert in amateur film and regional film production and has lectured and written extensively on home movies.  He is one of the co-founders of Home Movie Day and the Center for Home Movies and is a member of the National Film Preservation Board.