Nancy Goldman and Hisashi Okajima 
Elected FIAF Honorary Members

Nancy Goldman

Hisashi Okajima

On 30 April 2026, during the 2026 FIAF Congress in Rabat, the FIAF General Assembly voted by an overwhelming majority to elect two new Honorary Members: Nancy Goldman, former Head of the Film Library & Study Center at UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), and Hisashi Okajima, former Director of the National Film Archive of Japan. As neither of the newly elected Honorary Members was present in Rabat for the vote, each will be presented with their medal in person at a later date.

Nancy Goldman and Hisashi Okajima join our small exclusive club of FIAF Honorary Members, which currently consists of Elaine Burrows, Paolo Cherchi Usai, José Manuel Costa, Robert Daudelin, David J. Francis, Edith Kramer, Peter Kubelka, Gregory Lukow, Vladimír Opěla, Eva Orbanz, Roger Smither, and Iván Trujillo Bolio. They were added to our list of 55 key FIAF figures, as well as out Memory Game of key FIAF figures.

Nancy Goldman

Nancy Goldman joined the Pacific Film Archive Library as Public Service Assistant in 1980, after obtaining a Master of Library and Information Science from the Berkeley School of Library and Information Studies. She was appointed Head of the Film Library & Study Center at the Pacific Film Archive (now UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive) in 1982 and remained in that post until her retirement in 2019.

She joined the FIAF Cataloguing and Documentation Commission (CDC) in the 1990s, and served as its Head from 1999 to 2015 (she remained its Deputy Head until 2019). In that capacity, she initiated and led for many years the Commission's project of revising and updating the FIAF Cataloguing Rules, which resulted in the publication of The FIAF Moving Image Cataloguing Manual in 2016. She also supervised the development of Treasures from the Film Archives, FIAF's database of silent-era films, and edited FIAF's International Directory of Film and Television Documentation Collections. She has taught seminars on film research methodologies and film cataloguing at institutions such as UC Berkeley, San Jose State University, and the George Eastman Museum, and at various FIAF training events.

Nominating Nancy Goldman on behalf of the CDC, the Commission's current head Adelheid Heftberger wrote, "We strongly believe that Nancy is one of the few people in the FIAF network who, as described in Rule 42 of FIAF’s Statutes and Rules, 'have given long and dedicated service to the Federation and supported its affiliates', and that she would therefore be more than deserving of a FIAF Honorary Membership." 

Hisashi Okajima

Hisashi Okajima became a curatorial staff member of the National Film Center (NFC), the film division of the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, in 1979, and was Chief Curator/Head of the NFC from 2005 to 2018. He became Director of the newly formed National Film Archive of Japan in 2018, and remained so until his retirement on 31 March 2026. 

He started attending FIAF Congresses regularly from 1992 (he participated in 26 of them between that year and 2025), and became actively involved in FIAF in the early 2000s. He was a member of the FIAF Executive Committee from 2003 to 2013, FIAF Vice-President from 2005 to 2009, and the first Asian FIAF President from 2009 to 2011. He hosted the FIAF Congress in Tokyo in 2007. That same year, he was responsible for FIAF's 70th Anniversary Manifesto and the slogan "Don't Throw Film Away". He has been a member of the Journal of Film Preservation’s Editorial Board since 2004. He was elected FIAF Honorary Member by the General Assembly in Rabat on 30 April 2026.

Hisashi Okajima was nominated by FIAF Honorary Member and former FIAF President Eva Orbanz, who wrote, "It seems to me that for him the sentence: 'That does not work' does not exist for him. Therefore, I can imagine that Hisashi as an Honorary Member of FIAF is not only an honour for FIAF but will be a true enrichment for the Federation."