Ateneo grad wins prestigious Kodak Fellowship in US

For devoting himself to film preservation, a graduate of the Ateneo de Manila University — Benedict Salazar Olgado — was awarded the Kodak Fellowship in Film Preservation in the United States. In a report, the "Washington Square News" of the New York University said every year, Kodak awards to a student or young professional a fellowship with the Association for Moving Image Archivists. The fellowship includes a scholarship plus a four-week internship at Kodak-affiliated institutions in Burbank, California. Olgado will be spending his fellowship at Pro-Tek and Chase Audio, both affiliates of Kodak.  For Olgado, archiving film is a way of preserving history.  "It's not just about storing things or keeping things," he said in the report. "When we talk about preservation, it's also about providing access, and that's what we do." The report said Olgado is in his second and final year of the masteral program (Moving Image Archiving and Preservation) he is taking at the Tisch School of the Arts in the US. As an undergraduate in the Philippines, he worked for the South East Asia-Pacific Audio Visual Archive Association. Olgado also worked with such prestigious organizations as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and Anthology Film Archives. According to his classmates Rufus de Rham and Marie Lascu, Olgado may be one of the youngest students in their class at Tisch School but he was the most experienced. Olgado said he hopes the things he learned in the US will help him give back to his homeland by archiving Filipino history.- VVP, GMA News