Almost five years have passed since Archie’s death - and five years since the first "Archie" for best first-time director for a film was given.
Of the many film festivals that he attended throughout the world, Archie particularly liked the Philadelphia Film Festival of which he was a founding member, making great use of his immense passion for film combined with a keen intelligence and delicious wit.
Educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Archie became a chemical engineer. He spent what he called “the War Years” with the United States Army in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, working on the Manhattan Bomb Project. He married Ruth, sired three children - Bonnie, David and Sharon - and served for many years as owner and manager of a brass foundry in Reading, Pennsylvania.
Influenced by Ruth’s mid-life career as a film teacher and scholar, Archie reinvented himself and together, they traveled to film festivals around the world - Istanbul, Jerusalem, Moscow, London, Karlovy Vary, Telluride, Palm Springs, and dozens more in the United States and Canada.
Cinema went to the very core of Archie’s intellect. There was nothing he had undertaken or accomplished during his lifetime that stimulated and excited him in quite the same way.
Archie combined his deep interest in movies with his love of all things Jewish when he became co-director of the Philadelphia Jewish Film Festival in 1981.
For 24 years, he selected and presented films that reflected and embraced the broad secular Jewish concepts of tolerance, "mending" the world, concern for social issues and commitment to forever remembering the Holocaust and its lessons. Archie believed these principles were universal. Small wonder that he thought ALL films, ultimately, were Jewish.
Whenever the traditional toast, "L’Chayim," - to life! - was offered in Archie’s presence, he personally acknowledged the honor - Chaim was, indeed, his Hebrew name.
Those of us who had the good fortune to know Archie are grateful that his spirit and life are remembered annually through the "Archie" Award given each year at the city’s film festival.
This year’s distinguished panel of jurors for the "Archie" Award for 2009 will include: Maureen Abrams, Joy Bannett, Elizabeth (Sweetie) Caulk, Romayne Sachs, Carol Saline and Dr. Stanley Shapiro.
Please - everyone - enjoy this year's festival! Thanks also for supporting the region’s film community and its many events in our wonderful city.
Ruth Perlmutter, Artistic Director, Philadelphia Jewish Film Festival; Founding Board Member, Philadelphia Film Society; and Co-Director, One Film! In partnership with One Book, One Philadelphia, a project of the Office of the Mayor and the Free Library of Philadelphia.
