While the Pacific Film Archive is well known for the hundreds of screenings we present each year, the organization has a less visible but equally vital side: the film and video archive that puts the “A” in PFA. The works we show at the PFA Theater are drawn from distributors, studios, archives, artists, and private collectors the world over; on average, less than ten percent of the films we present are from our own collection. But the role of the PFA collection has been central to our institution's mandate since its inception, in 1971. Each year, our archivists, catalogers, and technicians oversee many acquisitions and attend to preservation projects in an effort to protect the unique works in our care.
This year represents an exciting moment in the history of the PFA collection. After many months of planning and preparation, the archive's collection of nearly ten thousand films and over five thousand videos has been relocated to a new storage facility with improved climate control conditions. To honor this important milestone, we plan to showcase works from the collection in several programs in the coming year. For starters, we present this sampling of recent acquisitions, which demonstrates the breadth of our holdings, from international classics to contemporary documentaries, anime, and even action films. We invite you to come out and enjoy some of the films we are proud to hold in the collection of the Pacific Film Archive.