Our new name and new home

Movette Film Transfer is the new name for Video Transfer Center. We re-opened at our new home at 1407 Valencia St. on November 7, 2012 after over nine years at our old, 395 South Van Ness Ave. address.

About us & about film

Movette Film Transfer is devoted to making the fleeting images of years gone by accessible to future generations. We possess the Passion, Experience, Training, and Technology to take the moving pictures of the twentieth century into the digital age.

The Owners: Jennifer Miko and Buck Bito

Movette Film Transfer's president, Jennifer Miko has been working with film since the 1980s. Originally a portrait and documentary photographer and darkroom technician, she expanded her interests to include small gauge motion picture film when she joined the team at Video Transfer Center in 1999. In 2003, the original owner sold the business to Jennifer and her husband, Buck Bito, and they have been transforming the business to focus on film transfer under their ownership. The transformation was completed at the end of 2010 from which time the company has been providing film scanning services exclusively.

Jennifer is a 2008 graduate of The L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation. In the summer of 2008, she was awarded an internship at the Image Permanence Institute. During her time there, she developed a project investigating and tracking the evolution of cine-film stocks. Using microscopy, she created a collection of images documenting various film supports and emulsions. The results of her work have been used in the development of the current Image Permanence Institute project, filmcare.org as well as the educational poster entitled Knowing and Preserving Motion Picture Film, a collaborative effort between the Image Permanence Institute and the George Eastman House (renamed in 2015 as the Eastman Museum).

Anne Marie Smatla

Anne comes to us from Denver, CO and began her career in film in the 1990s working at a film to video transfer company, Denver's 1930s Fox movie palace, the Mayan Theatre, and for the Denver Film Society. She was Jennifer's classmate at the Selznick School and upon graduation she received the San Francisco Silent Film Festival's 2008 Preservation Fellowship bringing her to San Francisco to work on restoration of a 1923 35mm nitrate film, "Screen Snapshots #7", at Monaco Labs (RIP) sparking a love for San Francisco and an ongoing relationship with our fabulous Silent Film Festival.

Between 2008 and joining Movette in September 2013, Anne pursued more traditional photochemical film restoration as a Printing & Processing Technician at CinemaLab Preservation in Englewood, CO where she gained practical experience handling films of various gauges and degrees of damage, including severe vinegar syndrome and nitrate decomposition. She also served as Managing Director for the Denver Silent Film Festival during its early development where she presented new restorations and built relationships with internationally-known film archivists.