Basement Films archive finds new home at CNM

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The Basement Films archives are officially moving into their new home at CNM.

The archive, which specializes in 8mm and 16mm films, was kicked out of its previous space at UNM in August. Recently, CNM offered a partnership they couldn’t refuse.

“When we spoke last, we had not yet found a new home for this collection of – oh, we’ve reduced the size a little bit – but I think it’s 5,000 or 6,000 films. And we were packing things up, not knowing where they were going to go,” Archive President Bryan Konefsky said.

The thousands of historic film canisters have all been boxed up and are in the process of getting settled into their new home.

“It was wonderful that Poppy, Renee, and Tiffany, three superhero librarians, from here at CNM contacted us,” Konefsky explained. “They recognized instantly the cultural and historic value of our collection. Both as an intact archive and also the value of the cultural value of the different individual films.”

CNM also saw the educational value this collection could bring to their film students and faculty.

“When I saw that this archival film collection might be lost, the librarian in me just thought, no, that’s not, that’s not right. That’s not what we want to do. And so, you know, I talked with my director to make sure that we had the space for it. And she thought it was a great idea. And so you know, it’s really about preserving the knowledge and the different types of film,” Associate Library Director Renee Goodvin said.

For now, the collection is being held in boxes at CNM’s main library – but they can’t wait to unpack and share this resource with students.

“I’m really looking forward to the library’s partnering with them in order to maybe have the space or you know, have some of our students be involved in that and so I think that’s really what I’m looking forward to the most,” Goodvin said.

“So we’re looking to really integrate what we do with the CNM curriculum in hopefully some very important and impactful ways,” Konefsky added.

In December the whole collection will be moved to CNM’s Advanced Technology Campus to be housed with the rest of their film school.