Arts & culture, Campus & community, Events at Berkeley, Film

Visit to the vault: UC Berkeley’s film collection is vast and rare

The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive's film vault contains one of the Bay Area's largest and most extensive film collections

By Gretchen Kell

Jon Shibata stands at BAMPFA's Richmond Field Station film vault with rows of colorful film cans on either side of him. He is looking straight at the camera. — Jon Shibata is BAMPFA's film archivist and co-creator of the "Out of the Vault: Everything's Ephemeral" series. (UC Berkeley photo by Neil Freese)

February 3, 2023

Rows of colorful metal cans of film line the shelving in the football field-sized vault in the Richmond Field Station that belongs to the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.

The BAMPFA vault contains countless reels including Japanese, Soviet silent, West Coast independent and avant-garde films, rare animation, Eastern European and Central Asian productions and international classics. (UC Berkeley photo by Neil Freese)

Vaults often store valuables, and that’s especially true of the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive’s massive vault in Richmond. Hidden within an industrial complex, the climate-controlled facility, which looks the size of a football field, contains more than 18,000 films and videos from around the world, many of them rare and most of them donated, as well as recorded interviews with filmmakers, screenplays, posters and other ephemera related to the history of film. The vast archival collection is one of the largest of its kind in the Bay Area.

The BAMPFA film vault is a large industrial space that's likely the size of a football field, with rows of shelving and thousands of film cans. — The BAMPFA film vault is in an expansive warehouse space in a Richmond facility owned by the university. It contains more than 18,000 films and videos from around the world. (UC Berkeley photo by Gretchen Kell)

Stacks of 35mm films are stored in steel film cans; the 16 mm ones in the vault often are in colorful film cans. — Stacks of 35mm films, which run up to 20 minutes per reel, are stored in plain metal film cans. (UC Berkeley photo by Neil Freese)

Jason Sanders, BAMPFA's film research specialist, examines a 35mm film stored in one of thousands of metal film cans at the archive's vault at the Richmond Field Station. — Jason Sanders, BAMPFA's film librarian, examines a 35mm film stored in one of thousands of metal film containers. (UC Berkeley photo by Neil Freese)

Reels stored in colorful film cans at the BAMPFA film vault are for films from the 1960s and '70s, a more vibrant time. — Film cans for 16 mm films, which run up to 45 minutes per reel, are often vibrantly colored and reflect the flair of the 1960s and '70s, when many of these film prints were made. (UC Berkeley photo by Neil Freese)

A woman leans against a stack of hay in an image from a short film being shown at the BAMPFA's Out of the Vault film series. — The current "Out of the Vault" showings — the next is Feb. 5, then Feb. 16 — "are ephemeral films of humble brilliance that need to be seen now, films that may otherwise never feel the warmth of the projector lamp," the curators said. " ... They are personal works intended for an intimate audience," and many were made to inspire children. This image is from a 1955 Scottish film by Margaret Tait called "The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo." It will be shown on Feb. 5. (Image courtesy of BAMPFA)

A girl jumps rope in this image taken from a home movie called — This still photograph was taken from a scene in "Jump Rope," a short film shot in 1971 that's part of the Feb. 16 showing in the "Out of the Vault" film series at BAMPFA. This film likely has rarely been screened, says Shibata. (Image courtesy of BAMPFA)

Posters of Japanese films are among the Japanese film memorabilia that the PFA vault contains. — These large framed posters are from the films of Wayne Wang, a Chinese American director who donated many of his films and posters to BAMPFA. (UC Berkeley photo by Neil Freese)

Jason Sanders, the Pacific Film Archive's film research specialist, looks at Asian posters that promote films. — Here, Sanders looks at some of the posters in BAMPFA's large collection of Japanese films, posters and other memorabilia. The archive received most of its Japanese collection from Japanese studios that had exhibited the films in Japanese American film theaters across the Western U.S. and Hawaii. (UC Berkeley photo by Neil Freese)

A film exhibitor's manual from the 1963 movie — An exhibitor manual from the 1963 film Cleopatra, starring Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Rex Harrison and other stars. The film archive's distinctive collection comprises more than 125,000 files on individual films and filmmakers that contain newspaper reviews, journal articles, film festival program notes and other documents. (UC Berkeley photo by Neil Freese)

Video cassettes on shelving at the PFA's Richmond Field Station vault contain interviews with filmmakers who visited the archive. — Video cassettes also are part of the archive. Much of the work made on video is from the 1970s and includes pieces by Bay Area video collectives, experimental TV pioneers and more. (UC Berkeley photo by Neil Freese)

The BAMPFA vault also includes binders of yellowed newspaper clippings of ads for movies such as — The BAMPFA vault also includes newspaper clippings of ads for movies such as "The Graduate," "The Godfather" and "One Hundred and One Dalmatians." (UC Berkeley photo by Neil Freese)

This is one of thousands of scripts stored at the Pacific Film Archive's vault in the Richmond Field Station — Among the ephemera at the vault are hundreds of unpublished scripts, both American and international, most of them dating from the 1970s and '80s. (UC Berkeley photo by Neil Freese)

A film script for Robocop is in the BAMPFA film vault. — There are working drafts for films by Bay Area greats such as Francis Ford Coppola and Wayne Wang, and shooting scripts for "RoboCop," "Casablanca," "Back to the Future" and other films. (UC Berkeley photo by Neil Freese)

The door leading to the cold storage room at the BAMPFA's film vault. The door is while with metal handles. — This is the entrance to the cold storage room at BAMPFA's film vault. The 560-square-foot unit keeps the archive's original films, preservation masters and most precious film prints at 45 degrees Fahrenheit and 30% relative humidity. (Photo by Jon Shibata)

A worker cranks open shelving in the cold storage unit of BAMPFA's film vault in the Richmond Field Station. The vault is where originals and negative are stored at 35 degrees F. — The cold storage room's compact shelving units hold one of the few remaining prints in existence of the 1989 dark comedy, "Heathers." Also in the room is the 2011 "Melancholia," a popular apocalyptic dark drama film. (Photo by Jon Shibata)

Reels of film in metal cans contain seven hours' worth of a Hungarian film called Sátántangó. — "Sátántangó" ("Satan's Tango"), also in the cold storage unit, is a rare, 26-reel, black-and-white, Hungarian film directed by Béla Tarr that is considered one of the most prized items in the collection. Released in 1994, it runs more than seven hours — hence the large quantity of film cans — and tells a story about the effects of the fall of communism on a small Hungarian village. (UC Berkeley photo by Neil Freese)

Some of the vault’s rarely-viewed reels, stored among thousands of stacked metal cans on endless rows of shelving, are being shown this winter at BAMPFA as part of its ongoing Out of the Vault: Everything’s Ephemeral film series. The series, curated by Jon Shibata, Adrianne Finelli and Pamela Vadakan, and partially funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, features non-commercial 16 mm films that are mostly 12 minutes long and are ephemeral — such as home movies, amateur and educational films, orphan films, unidentified film fragments and other oddities. The trio researched BAMPFA’s film catalog, scoured the stacks, previewed films and slotted their favorites into the series’ three themes: inner and outer landscapes, poetry/rhythm/movement, and play. The series serendipitously coincides with the 100th anniversary of 16 mm film.

These films cans stacked on top of each other contain short films being shown at the BAMPFA's "Out of the Vault" series this winter.

Here are some of the films being shown in the “Out of the Vault” series at BAMPFA this winter. BAMPFA offers some 450 film screenings a year from every film-producing country in the world. (UC Berkeley photo by Neil Freese)

This Sunday, Feb. 5, nine short films will be shown at the Barbro Osher Theater — within the BAMPFA at 2155 Center St. in Berkeley — in a program called Your eyes dance hello and, says Vadakan, director of California Revealed, these gems “greet us with percussive joys, expansive wonders, and surprises.” A 10-film collection, Play is the work of life, will be shown at BAMPFA on Thursday, Feb. 16. That program, says Shibata, BAMPFA’s film archivist, “is an attempt to attune, to reconnect to that essential call to play within us all.”