










































Creating a Digital Film Archive


Listen and Learn sessions  197

Creating a Digital Film Archive
Colleen Bradley-Sanders, Head of Archives and Special Collections, Brooklyn 
College

ABSTRACT Hasidic Jews came to the United States in significant numbers 
after the Holocaust, and a large percentage of them settled in Brooklyn, 
New York. The Hasidim are distinct from other New Yorkers, and from other 
Jews, in their old-world manner of dress, their customs, and lifestyle. Film-
makers Oren Rudavsky and Menachem Daum were granted extraordinary 
access to this community, to document their lives and share who they are 
with the world. From this access came the landmark documentary A Life 
Apart: Hasidism in America. The unused footage from the filming, a poten-
tially rich resource for scholars, was inaccessible due to formats and lack 
of organization until Brooklyn College obtained an NHPRC grant to digitize 
and make it available to the public. The footage was opened to the public 
at the end of November 2022. 

This paper will illustrate how the Archives at Brooklyn College re-
solved the problem of providing patron access to an undigitized film 
collection when we had no equipment for viewing, and neither ex-
pertise nor institutional funds for digitization. Before I discuss the 
project, a little background information will be useful. 

In 1996, filmmakers Menachem Daum (whose father was a mem-
ber of the Hasidic community) and Oren Rudavsky released their 
NEH-funded documentary, A Life Apart: Hasidism in America (see 
image 1). Approximately 97 minutes long, the film examines the lives 
and culture of America’s Hasidic Jews, the majority of whom live in 
Brooklyn, New York. Although their decades of living in New York 
after surviving the Holocaust has changed their community to some 
extent, the Hasidim do live largely apart from mainstream America, 
not least through their mode of dress, language, and customs. 



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IMAGE 1 Cover for DVD version of A Life Apart: Hasidism in America. Photo by Yale 
Strom. Poster design Joe Sweet. Courtesy of Menemsha Films.

The film, as well as the archive of more extensive and widely 
varied footage that did not make it into the final cut, explores the 
Hasidim sense of self and their interactions with ever-expanding 



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circles of larger communities and spheres, including their families; 
their courts, the community of all Hasidic courts; other American 
Jews; and their non-Jewish neighbors, politics, and the economy 
(see image 2).

IMAGE 2 Young Hasidic boy learning the aleph-beit. Photo by Oren Rudavsky.

The film footage and sound recordings, in a variety of formats, 
were donated by the filmmakers to Brooklyn College in 2012. In early 
2020, not long before Brooklyn College shut down due to COVID, Ru-
davsky and Daum contacted me to discuss the possibility of digitizing 
the materials and making them available to the public. 

The materials in this particular collection included ¾-inch tapes 
(which hold the audio tracks with low resolution images) and 16mm 
film reels.  Because it consisted of formats to which we could not pro-
vide access, it was unprocessed. Labels were sometimes incomplete 
and confusing. Getting outside funding for the digitization project 
was the only way this collection could be opened to the public. 

Fortunately, the producers were deeply involved in the project. 
They were invaluable not only for their knowledge and ability to be 
a liaison with the vendor, and consultants for the project archivist, 
but also for making sense of the physical collection in the Archives 
and determining exactly which materials were required for the digi-
tization project. 

Our first grant application, to the National Film Preservation 
Foundation, was unsuccessful, largely because their guidelines for 



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what a grant would pay for were misleading, and our proposal did 
not actually qualify.

Over the course of the next year and a half, primarily working 
remotely, we also sought money from the NEH, and from the NEA 
(twice). All the applications were unsuccessful. The NEH applica-
tion was the most challenging and frustrating, even with the help of 
a woman who’d both written and reviewed NEH grant proposals. I 
think our plans were perhaps too ambitious and not as well thought-
out as they should have been. 

I should add here that the various applications were not identical 
projects, largely due to varying amounts of funding available from 
the different granting entities. We wanted to get the funding any way 
we could, whether that meant a single grant or multiple grants and 
a project done in stages.

In the end, we were successful with a grant application to the Na-
tional Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC), 
and in 2021 we were granted $150,000 for our one-year project. 
With some aspects of the project slowed down by the COVID-19 pan-
demic (e.g., campus access, people getting sick, etc.), we requested 
a three-month extension, and made the project public at the end of 
November 2022.

WHAT WAS THE PROJECT?

Our proposal to the NHPRC was to digitize just over 69 hours of foot-
age that was not included in the documentary, hire a project archivist 
to organize the digitized film segments, and create metadata records 
for each of them. Why do it at this time, over 20 years after the film 
debuted, and what made it worthy of a grant? 

Mr. Rudavsky and Mr. Daum felt strongly that the unused foot-
age contained material that would be of interest to researchers. In 
our grant application, we noted that there is interest in the Hasidim, 
demonstrated by the popularity of memoirs from young former 
Hasidim who chose to leave their communities, such as Deborah 
Feldman’s 2012 memoir, Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of 
My Hasidic Roots, which was the basis for a four-part miniseries on 
Netflix in 2020. 

Digitizing the footage made it available to the public for the first 
time, and no comparable audio-visual collection on the Hasidim ex-
ists.



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The archive contains original primary sources for scholars and 
the general public, including:

1. Oral histories with members of the Hasidic community, 
including two former Hasidim who have opted out of the 
community.

2. Community scenes with leaders of six Brooklyn Hasidic 
dynasties: Bobov, Ger, Munkac, Satmar, Lubavitch, and 
Viznitz.

3. Intimate scenes of Hasidic family life.
4. Events such as weddings, holiday celebrations, Holocaust 

commemorations, and more.
5. Post-Soviet spiritual pilgrimages by Hasidim to venerated 

sites in Eastern Europe, as well as Hasidic missionary activi-
ties among Jewish communities in former Soviet countries.

6. Interactions between Hasidim and other residents of 
Brooklyn,in Prospect Park and elsewhere.

7. Interviews with scholars, including Arthur Herzberg, Yaffa 
Eliach, Samuel Heilman, Martin Marty, Anne Braude, Rabbi 
Zalman Schacter-Shalomi, and David Fishman.

Brooklyn College currently uses Illumira for hosting its digital 
content. I said “currently uses,” because for the past year, I’ve been 
told that the college is moving to a new platform called Yuja. I have 
not yet had a single conversation about the migration of our existing 
digital collections, nor any training on the new platform. In addition, 
the College has had access to JSTOR Forum for a while, and I recently 
learned there is a new partnership with ITHAKA which will allow 
us to not only publish and manage our digital collections on JSTOR 
but will also add the digital preservation of collections through a 
service called Portico. In addition, JSTOR is apparently working on 
giving users the capability of posting audio and video collections. It 
would certainly make our life easier to have all our digital materi-
als in one place, rather than split between Yuja and JSTOR. I believe 
our agreement officially begins in September, so I haven’t explored 
any of this yet.

In July 2021, we transferred all the materials to be digitized to the 
vendor, who was located in New York City and happened to be the 
firm that worked on the production of the original documentary. The 
grant was supposed to officially start on September 1. On August 25, 
the vendor sent out a press announcement about the closure of its 



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media services operations and its plans to focus on their real estate 
holdings. They did not contact us, we had to reach out to them to con-
firm the closure and their inability to do the work they’d agreed to do. 

We had to scramble to find another vendor on very short notice. 
Fortunately, as part of the grant application process, we had re-
searched a couple of other vendors, one in Los Angeles, California, 
and one in Boston, Massachusetts.  We didn’t choose the one in Los 
Angeles because it couldn’t do everything that we wanted, and the 
Boston firm initially didn’t respond to our request for a quote. When 
we had to scramble after our first choice backed out, we contacted the 
Massachusetts firm again.  Mr. Rudavsky had worked with Gamma 
Ray Digital in the past, and when we were desperate for a vendor in 
August 2021, they responded, and we could not have been happier 
with their work and customer service.  In addition to digitizing all 
the outtakes, Gamma Ray Digital also provided the Archives with a 
new digital and color-corrected copy of the documentary.

The digitization alone would have cost us almost $146,000 of 
our $150,000 grant, if the vendor had not given us a significant dis-
count that enabled us to stay within the limits of the grant and have 
money for the project archivist, among other things. The discount, 
along with in-kind contributions of time and expertise from the film-
makers, helped cover about half of the cost-share requirement.  The 
NHPRC requires a 25% cost share with their grants.  Table 1 shows 
part of the project quote from Gamma Ray Digital and is shown pri-
marily to demonstrate that there were many steps to the process.

DESCRIPTION QTY RATE COST

Evaluate & Prepare (if necessary) 168 lab rolls of 16mm color 
negative, estimated at 800 feet each 40 $35.00 $1,400.00

Clean S16mm color negative 141,312 $0.10 $14,131.20

Scan S16mm color negative outtakes and A/B roll feature film 
at 2K to flat ProRes 4444 files. Includes ProRes Proxy files with 
KeyKode Burn-in. Color correction of feature film

141,312 $0.58 $81,960.96

Upload review files to Frame.io for approval 168 $32.00 $5,376.00

Clean and Bake ¾” tapes (30 minute cassettes) 180 $10.00 $1,800.00

Digitize ¾” tapes (30 minute cassettes) to mov files 180 $90.00 $16,200.00

Pull up Digitized audio to 24fps Sync 75 hours of Audio to 62 
hours Picture mov files 150 $60.00 $9,000.00

Create 2k ProRes with sync sound for each lab roll 168 $30.00 $5,040.00

Create mp4 from 2K ProRes 168 $30.00 $5,040.00



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DESCRIPTION QTY RATE COST

Archive Synced ProRes files, MP4 files for archive to LTO-8 2 sets. 
Price includes data prep (Checksum verification to Library of 
Congress Bagit spec), human- readable PDF manifest, tape stock 
and tape writing/verification

4 $550.00 $2,200.00

8 TB External Hard Drive for Pro Res and MP4 files 2 $450.00 $900.00

Freight Shipping (NYC->BOS) 2 $650.00 $1,300.00

Freight Shipping (BOS->NYC) 2 $750.00 $1,500.00

SUBTOTAL $145,848.16

Cost Sharing/Discount 1 $26,000.00 $26,000.00

TOTAL $119,848.16

TABLE 1 Partial image of vendor quote for project. Gamma Ray Digital (www.
gammaraydigital.com)

I was extremely grateful to have the two producers working with 
me on this project, as I have almost no knowledge of filmmaking and 
the various steps that were part of the digitization process, especially 
the preparation.  It would have been significantly more challenging 
to do without them, and I’m not sure I would have undertaken the 
project without their involvement.

Mr. Rudavsky worked closely with the vendor to ensure the work 
was done to our satisfaction, and actually handled the first step of 
the project himself, evaluating and preparing the 168 rolls of 16mm 
film negative, with the help of two assistants. The collection sat on 
the shelves in the archives from 2012 -2021, completely unorganized, 
exactly as the filmmakers had boxed it up for us.  

This meant that before any digitization could take place, Mr. Ru-
davsky and his assistants had to sort through the disorder of the 
collection and splice film where sections had been removed for the 
documentary. The 16mm film had to match the ¾-inch tapes which 
had the audio but only low resolution non-archival quality images. 
But, before the ¾-inch tapes could digitized, they needed to be baked. 
That term confused me at first but some of you may be familiar with 
the phrase “sticky shed syndrome,” which is the deterioration of mag-
netic tape. Literally baking the tapes makes them playable again, at 
least long enough to get them digitized.

Some of the ¾-inch audio tapes were missing, but fortunately 
Mr. Daum had a Hi8 backup and some DAT tapes, which covered 
the missing audio. 

http://www.gammaraydigital.com
http://www.gammaraydigital.com


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The original film was digitized, and digital shots from this 16mm 
film were then replaced in the dailies from which they were origi-
nally taken. A 2K version of each of the 168 negative rolls was made, 
digitized, and synched with the audio. An MP4 version of each roll 
was then created for us to upload to Illumira, and a high resolution 
4K version of the documentary was created and color-corrected.

Once the film was cleaned, repaired, digitized, and synched with 
the audio, we needed to organize those 69 hours of film. Our project 
archivist, Roberta Newman, had worked with the producers as a 
researcher during the making of the film, and so was familiar with 
the footage. She also served as the Director of Digital Initiatives for 
the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research from 2013-2019, and so was 
well-qualified to do this work.

Ms. Newman worked over 300 hours to organize and catalog the 
film segments, creating metadata records for each one. She worked 
entirely remotely, using a collaboration software called frame.io. 
The vendor introduced us to frame.io, which provided a way for 
Mr. Rudavsky to check on the work being done, including color cor-
rection, audio synching, and noting any problems, such as gaps. At 
least once during the project he realized we were missing a tape and 
we searched through the archives to find it, and fortunately we did. 
Gamma Ray Digital uploaded low-resolution footage to frame.io, and 
using an individual account that Mr. Rudavsky opened (for low cost, 
maybe $20/month), Ms. Newman was able to organize the digitized 
film segments into series with varying numbers of individual seg-
ments. Frame.io allows users to make notes that are automatically 
time-coded to the footage and saved in a downloadable text file. The 
information in the text file was then easily transferred to an Excel 
spreadsheet Ms. Newman created for the metadata.  She used this 
spreadsheet, which also included appropriate subject terms (using 
primarily Library of Congress Subject Headings), to create the re-
cords in Illumira. While Illumira was a pretty stable platform, she 
found it to be not very advanced for an image database, and also not 
very flexible. And this is one example of why we’re looking forward 
to moving to JSTOR Forum with our digital collections.

After Ms. Newman created the Illumira records, I uploaded the 
video files from the hard drive containing the MP4 files. Once this 
was done I checked each record to ensure all the necessary informa-
tion was in place, and then made the records public. This is the Illu-



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mira site that hosts our digital collections: https://brooklyn.illumira.
net/showcollection.php?pid=njcore:169222.

The collection is divided into a number of series (called sub-col-
lections on Illumira).  There are 18 altogether, and each series has 
varying numbers of film segments in it. The Schiller family has only 
five segments, while the Gold family has 18, and there are 17 scholar 
interview segments. There are 185 segments in total.  

We had some extra money: digitization was slightly less than we 
expected, and we ended up not needing to pay for digital storage. The 
NHPRC allowed us to repurpose the money by adding a new perfor-
mance objective to our original list of objectives, which was the cre-
ation of several short, edited segments that could be used by educa-
tors, scholars, etc. Oren Rudavsky took on the task of creating these 
short segments. One segment shows men baking matzoh (https://
brooklyn.illumira.net/show.php?pid=njcore:197781), while another, 
which Mr. Rudavsky just recently shared, shows the dedication of a 
yeshiva (https://brooklyn.illumira.net/show.php?pid=njcore:199693).

You can see on the list of sub-collections one titled Ger Yeshiva 
in Brooklyn. Within this series are 11 film segments about the Ger 
Yeshiva. When we click on one of the segments, you can see the ab-
stract, which shows how the project archivist used time codes to in-
dicate changes in scene or action within the segment.

PROMOTING THE COLLECTION

Once you’ve created a digital collection, you want people to see it 
and use it.  To that end, we sent the metadata to Atla, and the collec-
tion was added to the Atla Digital Library and is available at https://
dl.atla.com/collections/a-life-apart-hasidism-in-america?locale=en.

We have been putting our finding aids into ArchivesSpace for a 
few years, and we created one for this collection.  Our ArchivesSpace 
instance, which is hosted by Lyrasis, can be reached from both the 
Archives website and the CUNY Catalog, which automatically pulls 
our records from ArchivesSpace (https://archives.brooklyn.cuny.edu/
repositories/2/resources/62).

Clicking on a series title reveals all the segments within a series, 
and once you click on an individual segment, you can connect to the 
actual video by clicking on the link under the Scope and Contents 
label on the left. Our page for digital collections offers links to the 

https://brooklyn.illumira.net/showcollection.php?pid=njcore:169222
https://brooklyn.illumira.net/showcollection.php?pid=njcore:169222
https://brooklyn.illumira.net/show.php?pid=njcore:197781
https://brooklyn.illumira.net/show.php?pid=njcore:197781
https://brooklyn.illumira.net/show.php?pid=njcore:199693
https://dl.atla.com/collections/a-life-apart-hasidism-in-america?locale=en
https://dl.atla.com/collections/a-life-apart-hasidism-in-america?locale=en
https://archives.brooklyn.cuny.edu/repositories/2/resources/62
https://archives.brooklyn.cuny.edu/repositories/2/resources/62


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full collection on lllumira, and also the finding aid on ArchivesSpace 
(https://libguides.brooklyn.cuny.edu/c.php?g=1135687).

I mentioned the college’s new agreement for the use of JSTOR 
Forum. When telling people about the collection we try and direct 
them to our Archives page about the collection rather than directly 
to Illumira, since we’ve been told for over a year that we’re moving 
to a new platform, and we didn’t want to give people links that will 
become invalid.  

The New York Jewish Film Festival is an annual multi-day event 
held at Lincoln Center every year in January, and the documentary 
originally premiered here, and this year the producers were able to 
get a screening of the newly digitized film on the schedule.  In addi-
tion to talking about the archive in the post-screening panel discus-
sion, we created a flyer for attendees, to let them know where they 
could find the archive.

IMAGE 3 Flyer created for the 2023 New York Jewish Film Festival screening of the 
documentary

https://libguides.brooklyn.cuny.edu/c.php?g=1135687


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Since the screening, and promotion of the collection on H-net and 
Facebook, we’ve also heard about members of the Jewish community 
learning about the archive on Twitter.  I’m not a Twitter user, but one 
of the producers mentioned in April that while at synagogue some-
one mentioned to him how grateful he and his friends were that the 
outtakes had been put online. Mr. Daum asked where the person had 
learned about the archive, and they responded, “from Twitter.” Ap-
parently, there is at least one group on Twitter interested in Jewish-
related topics, and word of our digital archive has appeared there.

NEXT STEPS

Our next big task will be moving the digital archive from Illumira 
to JSTOR Forum, if their AV capability will be available reasonably 
soon, or to the other content host selected by the College library ad-
ministration, Yuja.  

For future outreach efforts, we plan to work with our new user 
experience librarian to come up with ways to promote the use of 
the collection inside and outside the college.  Of course, it could be 
in use already, and we wouldn’t know since the platform is open to 
the public.

Longer term plans include Mr. Rudavsky creating some of those 
short segments from the scholar interviews that were unused in the 
documentary, and the filmmakers would like to hold a forum to show 
the material to the academic community and the public.


