Criss Austin

Biography

Criss Austin is the supervisor of the Motion Picture Preservation Lab at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).  Over the course of her career she has overseen preservation and digital restoration projects including Nine From Little Rock, A Year Toward Tomorrow, With the Marines at Tarawa, The Negro Soldier, Let There Be Light, and The March.  She conducted forensic scanning of the Iwo Jima flag raising footage to assist in determining the identity of the Marines, and completed digital restoration of Eva Braun’s home movies. She has moved the Lab from a purely photochemical operation to a state-of-the-art digitization facility while maintaining traditional film to film preservation capabilities.  She is an active participant with the Association of Moving Image Archivists, The Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines Initiative, and is a participant on the International Federation of Film Archives Technical Committee.  She holds a degree from Oberlin College in History, from The Nottingham Trent University in Cinema Studies, and received certification from The L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation in 2002.