Left: Late Film Preservationist Nancy Mysel (Image Courtesy of the Mysel Family); Right: NYWIFT Board President Kim Jackson with Jonathan Mysel at the 2024 NYWIFT FinanceHER Institute Part 2 (Photo Credit: Avis Boone)
New York Women in Film & Television (NYWIFT) is pleased to announce a new scholarship furthering the organization’s support of women’s media legacy. Through generous donation of the Mysel family, the Nancy Mysel Scholarship Fund will provide NYWIFT with $5,000 per year for The NYWIFT Nancy Mysel Preservation Scholarship.
The award will be presented to an undergraduate or graduate student dedicated to film and visual art preservation. The grant is named in honor of the late Nancy Mysel. For 13 years, Mysel worked at the UCLA Film & Television Archive where she was one of its leading film preservationists. While at UCLA, Nancy worked in collaboration with many notable organizations, including Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation, the National Film Preservation Foundation, and the Film Noir Foundation, where she was recognized as one of the world’s leading specialists in the restoration of film noir.
The announcement was made live on stage at the September 2024 NYWIFT FinanceHER Institute presented in partnership with the New School in New York City, which brought together industry professionals who have successfully funded their projects and greenlighters to discuss what they’re looking for today. This second installment, focused on showrunners, branded content, and philanthropic giving is a follow up to the sold-out June 2024 event that was presented at Lincoln Center. Featured speakers included filmmakers Jennifer Esposito and Violet DuFeng, as well as representatives from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Perspective Fund, and Chicken & Egg Pictures, among many others.
Nancy Mysel’s brother Jonathan Mysel was on stage with NYWIFT Board President Kim Jackson for the announcement.
“My mother, brother, and I are excited to partner with NYWIFT as we continue to honor Nancy’s legacy with this annual scholarship. With NYWIFT’s platform and expertise, we are confident that we will continue to identify and support worthy candidates who are as committed to the important work of film preservation as Nancy was,” said Mysel’s sister Cathy Yamashita.
“We at NYWIFT are thrilled to further our support of the preservation of women’s creative legacy through this unique partnership with the Mysel family. This scholarship is a way of both honoring the filmmakers of our history while also looking ahead to the next generation of industry leaders. And it is particularly meaningful to be able to honor Nancy Mysel’s own work as her name lives on through this scholarship program,” said NYWIFT CEO Cynthia Lopez.
NYWIFT will work closely with the following schools to identify candidates for consideration for the scholarship: NYU, The L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation, University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, University of Amsterdam, Central Michigan University, and The Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA).
Applicants will be asked to submit a resume and an essay that articulates the need for the grant and what the grant will be used for, the applicant’s previous experience, interest in/dedication to preservation, and a description of how they plan to contribute to preservation work in the industry in the future.
This scholarship is just part of NYWIFT’s ongoing missions to both support the next generation of industry leaders and preserve women’s legacy in media. NYWIFT presents scholarships annually at institutions including Brooklyn College, City College of New York, Columbia University, Feirstein School of Cinema, Hunter College, New York University, Stony Brook Manhattan Center for Creative Writing & Film, and the Academy for Careers in Television and Film (TvF). The most recent list of scholarship recipients can be seen here.
Plus, since 1995, the NYWIFT Women’s Film Preservation Fund (WFPF), founded by NYWIFT in conjunction with the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), has been the only program in the world dedicated to preserving the cultural legacy of women in the industry through preserving films made by women. The WFPF’s goal is to ensure that the contributions of women to film history are not forgotten. To date the WFPF has preserved a remarkable spectrum of more than one hundred American films in which women play key creative roles. These include works by early feminists, women of color, social activists and artists that represent a unique and irreplaceable part of our nation’s cultural legacy. The films already preserved range from Barbara Kopple’s Harlan County USA (1976) and Cinda Firestone’s Attica (1974) to productions by pioneering early film directors Lois Weber and Alice Guy Blaché and experimental and animated films by Maya Deren and Mary Ellen Bute.
Learn more about the NYWIFT Women’s Film Preservation Fund at https://www.nywift.org/womens-film-preservation-fund/.
About Nancy Mysel:
Born in Paterson, New Jersey, Nancy graduated from Boston University’s School of Communications. Nancy spent seven years as assistant picture and sound editor for National Geographic in Washington, D.C. One of Nancy’s notable achievements while at NatGeo was her work on the Emmy-nominated film The Great Indian Railway. For 13 years, Nancy worked at the UCLA Film & Television Archive where she was one of its leading film preservationists. While at UCLA, Nancy worked in collaboration with many notable organizations, including Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation, the National Film Preservation Foundation, and the Film Noir Foundation, where she was recognized as one of the world’s leading specialists in the restoration of film noir.
