LOS ANGELES — Everyone has a favorite film. For Randy Haberkamp, executive vice president of the Library, Archive and SciTech at the Academy, it is “Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans.”

He said one’s favorite movie is a window into one’s soul.

“Movies are very personal to me," Haberkamp said. "My mom always talked about movies. My dad was in a wheelchair from polio in WWII."

It wasn’t until later in life when Haberkamp learned his mother’s favorite movie that he learned more about her.

“It had three stories, but one of them was the story of a disabled veteran coming home and his relation with his girlfriend, and I realized I was watching my parents’ story,” he said.

Haberkamp’s love of movies — and the important role he believes they play — inspired him to have a career in preserving film for all of time.

The Academy Archive, created in 1991, is dedicated to the preservation, restoration, documentation, exhibition and study of all your favorite movies. Most every film that’s ever won an Oscar for best picture or been nominated in all categories since 1993 is in a vault kept at 50 degrees Fahrenheit, holding more than 250,000 items.

“Sitting here in this shelf, this is preserving this particular artifact as well as we can possibly do it,” Haberkamp said.

At the archive, archivists were at work, with the world’s largest collection of movie trailers and other films available — all in addition to international and Hollywood productions.

“There’s a very famous film that was nominated for best actor in 1928 called ‘The Patriot,’ and it is not known to exist. It’s gone forever,” said Michael Pogorzelski, director of the Academy Film Archive, about the importance of archiving all your favorite films.

As Haberkamp looks at the maze of art he gets to work around every day, he said he’s so grateful to get to do such important work — preserving movies to show our history and aid our future.

He is making sure generations to come get to see all your favorite movies someday.