Film historian Peter Konlechner and artist Peter Kubelka set out in 1964 to create a film museum, archive, research center and screening room of the highest quality. In a short few years, the two had amassed an impressive collection of reels which they committed themselves to preserve and restore, if necessary. If anyone had doubted Konlechner and Kubelka at the time, the joke’s on them—the Austrian Film Museum (OeFM) is now Austria’s most comprehensive public film library and can boast filmic icon Martin Scorsese as their honorary president.

While the museum treats all their reels with equal respect (including news reels, film stills and most other film-related tidbits), they have four special collections: avant-garde, non-industrial films; avant-garde Austrian film since 1950; “film exile” or works by émigrés from Central and Eastern Europe; and films made in Soviet Russia between 1918 and 1945.

The two founders retired in 2001 and appointed film journalist and former director of the Viennale Alexander Horwath as the museum’s director. Now in good hands, the museum continues its rigorous and expansive program.