Camille Blot-Wellens, 1976–

Biography

Camille Blot-Wallens is an independent film historian, researcher, and archivist. She studied History at University Paris 1 and Film Archives at University Paris 8 and the European program Archimedia. She started collaborating with Filmoteca Española in 2000 as independent researcher, and more specifically on the identification and analysis the Sagarmínaga Collection (1895-1906) together with Encarni Rus Aguilar and the Joly-Normandin films of the Sagarmínaga collection and Anacleto Rodrigues Collection from Cinemateca Portuguesa. Alongside, she obtained the grant Lavoisier from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2001) to assist Luciano Berriatúa on the restoration of Der letzte Mann (F. W. Murnau, 1925) and continued working with him on other Murnau’s films for the Murnau-Stiftung. In 2007, she joined the Cinémathèque française as Head of the Films Collections. Since 2012, she has been an independent researcher and historian residing in Stockholm, where she works on restoration and research projects for European and International archives. Member of the FIAF Technical Commission since 2012, she takes part to numerous trainings for archivists, and she recently edited a new, enriched edition of Harold Brown’s Physical Characteristics of Early Films as Aids to Identification for FIAF (2020). Camille is also associate professor at the University Paris 8 Vincennes – St-Denis, where she is co-responsible of the Master in Film Studies, Specialisation Film Heritage, and she is also a lecturer at University of Lausanne where she runs a workshop on conservation and restoration as part of the Cinema Network (Réseau Cinéma CH). In 2018, she was recipient of the Jean Mitry Award (Giornate del cinema muto, Pordenone – Italy) and of the The Outstanding Achievement Award for Film Preservation (Film Heritage Foundation, Mumbai – India). In 2019, she was invited to honour Film Preservationist Harold Brown giving the Jonathan Dennis Memorial Lecture during Il Giornate del cinema muto and the Ernest Lindgren Lecture at the British Film Institute.​​​​​​​