Brian Meacham, a renowned expert in film preservation, holds a Master's degree in Library and Information Science with a concentration in Archives Management from Simmons College. He began his career as the Archive Coordinator at the Harvard Film Archive in 2002, where he was responsible for managing the archive's collections and providing access to the public, scholars, and commercial entities.
In 2006, Meacham received a Certificate in Film Preservation from the L. Jeffery Selznick School of Film Preservation at George Eastman House in Rochester, New York. This certification further solidified his expertise in film preservation and conservation.
As the Public Access Coordinator at the Academy Film Archive from 2006 to 2008, Meacham oversaw public, scholarly, and commercial access to the archive's holdings. He arranged print loans to theaters, archives, and museums around the world, and screened unique holdings on site for researchers and filmmakers.
From 2008 to 2013, Meacham served as the Short Film Preservationist at the Academy Film Archive, where he curated a collection of live-action and animated short films spanning over 100 years of cinema history. During his tenure, he worked to preserve dozens of short films, including one-of-a-kind silent comedies and independent animated films from the 1970s.
Meacham also played a key role in a collaborative effort between the National Film Preservation Foundation and five film archives in the United States to repatriate and preserve hundreds of American silent films found in the New Zealand Film Archive. This project led to the discovery and preservation of several unique films, including Upstream, a lost feature film directed by John Ford, and The White Shadow, the earliest surviving film to feature a screen credit for Alfred Hitchcock.
Since 2013, Meacham has been the Film Archivist at the Yale Film Archive, formerly the Yale Film Study Center. In this role, he oversees the acquisition, inspection, cataloging, and preservation of the archive's collection, which includes print and pre-print elements acquired by the university over the last 50 years.
Meacham has also been instrumental in the preservation of several films in the collection, thanks to grants from the National Film Preservation Foundation. He has also helped launch and program the ongoing 35mm screening series, "Treasures from the Yale Film Archive."
In addition to his work at the Yale Film Archive, Meacham has been actively involved in professional organizations and associations. He represented Associate archives on the Executive Committee of the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) from 2015 to 2023 and has sat on the Board of Directors of the Association of Moving Image Archivists since 2021.
Meacham also consults on moving image collections across campus, helping with efforts to inspect, catalog, and preserve film in the collections of Manuscripts and Archives and the Yale Music Library.
