Contributor
Raised in Harrison, NY, Elias Savada joined The American Film Institute immediately after his graduation from Cornell University in 1972, working on their ongoing project to catalog feature-length motion pictures produced and released in the United States. He returned to the AFI from 1983 to 1991, where he compiled a massive database of silent films released in the United States prior to 1911 — published in 1995 as the two-volume, 1,800-page American Film Institute Catalog of Motion Pictures Produced in the United States: Film Beginnings, 1893–1910, listing over 17,000 films.
In 1977 Savada founded the Motion Picture Information Service (MPIS), which assists archives, festivals, and production companies with copyright research and film transportation worldwide. He has arranged for the transportation of more than 2,000 films to institutions including the Cinemateca Portuguesa in Lisbon, the Filmoteca Española in Madrid, and the Pordenone Silent Film Festival.
He is the co-author (with David J. Skal) of Dark Carnival: The Secret World of Tod Browning, Hollywood's Master of the Macabre (Doubleday, 1995).