Bennett Lovett-Graff (Thomas Breen photo)
April 24, 2015 - “My father was a very typical Jewish shirt salesman in the New York garment district who became a 16mm film collector,” said Bennett Lovett-Graff, editor at Scarecrow Press and publisher of the New Haven Review.
But that word typical seems a bit of a misnomer. There was nothing ordinary about the zeal with which Herb Graff collected films, nor the generosity with which he shared them. “Shirt-salesman by day, passionate film maven by night,” as Lovett-Graff said, Herb Graff collected films for over 30 years and took every opportunity to present them to the public, through screenings, lectures, and leases so that they could be reused by educational programs or documentary filmmakers.