About

Kirsten Larvick’s work explores the profound relationship between past and present. Through preservation, curation, and restoration, she safeguards motion picture history while expanding access to a more wide-ranging cinematic record.

As Managing Director at IndieCollect, Kirsten leads key preservation initiatives focused on filmmaker legacies. She develops funding strategies for restoring films by women directors and other independent artists, secures grants, and builds relationships with distributors. Her work also extends to artist estate planning, facilitating the acquisition and donation of film collections to partner archives, and contributing to IndieCollect’s public programming. Founded to rescue and sustain independent cinema, IndieCollect ensures that these films remain discoverable and watchable for future generations.

A dedicated advocate for film preservation, Kirsten co-chairs the Women’s Film Preservation Fund (WFPF) of New York Women in Film & Television and serves on its Grants Selection Committee. The WFPF is the world’s only program devoted to preserving the cultural legacy of women in the motion picture industry specifically through film preservation. Her deep commitment to safeguarding moving image heritage led her to establish the Al Larvick Fund, a nonprofit that supports the conservation and accessibility of home movies through digitization grants, documentation, and public screenings.

Autonomously, Kirsten acts as an independent producer of film restorations. Recent 4K restorations as a producer include, One Hand Don’t Clap (1988), Wild at Art (1995), and Building Bombs (1990). She supervises and consults on restoration and archiving projects for many independent filmmakers.

Her curatorial efforts have brought archival programming to institutions such as Anthology Film Archives, the City Reliquary Museum, Metrograph, the Museum of Modern Art, UnionDocs, in New York, and the Barbican in London. She has also produced film and multimedia exhibitions, as well as preservation events, at festivals, regional libraries, museums, archives, historical societies, and community centers across the U.S. and internationally.

Since 2022, Kirsten has served on the board of directors for UnionDocs, a nonprofit dedicated to presenting, producing, and publishing documentary works. UnionDocs fosters a diverse community of artists in pursuit of urgent expressions of the human experience, practical perspectives on contemporary issues, and bold visions for the future.

Kirsten has also served as a panelist on the Individual Artist Program in Film, Media & New Technology for New York State Council of the Arts for two consecutive three-year terms.

With a foundation in documentary film production, her early experience includes research, producing, editorial and outreach roles on Look at Us Now Mother; Bettie Page Reveals All; Singers in the Band; Young Lakota. 

Beyond preservation, Kirsten explores themes of time, memory, identity, heritage, myth, and mortality through her own creative documentary projects. Fiddling with archival materials—analog film, video, ephemera, and memorabilia—she puts together stories that look to interrogate the ephemeral nature of history and personal narrative.

@kirsten_studio

#regionalfilmmaking #womeninfilm #documentaryarts #archivalarts #archives #preservation #handmadecinema #feministfilm #communicationstudies #culturalstudies #anthropology #archeology #psychology #savecinema