AMIA 2024

This presentation looks at vernacular moving image practices and related oral histories as sources for studying the transformation of the diaspora’s identity through a case study of the Not-So-Ordinary project on home movies and Polish Chicago. The research project is conducted by Agata Zborowska (University of Chicago/KU Leuven) in partnership with Chicago Film Archives. In the presentation, I will discuss the preliminary results of the project that aims to contextualize films and videos through oral histories and explore the media’s potential to evoke memories and narrativize one’s experience. The presented case study is an example of how to analyze not only the movies’ content and aesthetics but also the practices related to their creation, viewing, sharing, and their role in the lives of individuals, families, and communities.

In 1973, Dr. Johnye Strickland founded the Oral History Program at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. During her 52-year tenure at UALR, she and her students recorded hundreds of hours of interviews on open reel tapes, audio cassettes, and microcassettes. Thanks to a grant from the Arkansas Natural and Cultural Resources Council, the UALR Center for Arkansas History and Culture has digitized these recordings, making the stories they contain accessible again. This presentation will introduce the Johnye Strickland Collection, describe the grant project, and highlight some unique oral histories, including interviews with Vietnamese refugees, conversations with women in Arkansas politics, folk histories of Petit Jean Mountain, and discussions of craft with Arkansas poets. Strickland’s recordings feature an array of Arkansan voices – from those newly arrived to those long established – and the stories they tell enrich our understanding of this often-overlooked state’s cultural and political history.

As archivists, we are entrusted with both the preservation and access of rare and original materials created by others. However, many archivists are not often trained to project films or understand the technical standards around film projection as part of access, which is often segmented to the role of projectionists and other technical roles. Projection of works in their original formats, particularly film, is often integral to the nature of the material we steward and can additionally help highlight artistic intent around the medium and further support archival advocacy. Presented by the AMIA Small Gauge and Amateur Film Committee, this roundtable discussion is composed of filmmakers, theatrical projectionists, and archivists. It aims to bring greater awareness to the larger archival community about special issues and considerations concerning the projection of artist-made films, archival prints, and other valuable prints of both small and large gauge formats in addition to theatrical and microcinema 16mm/Super 8 projection.

Archival experts from both Warner Bros. Discovery Global Archives & Preservation Services and Iron Mountain Media and Archive Services will present on the discovery, preservation and digitization of 600 bound scripts created for Jack Warner’s personal collection. Dated between the 1920s-1970s, noteworthy scripts include Don Juan, The Adventures of Robin Hood, My Fair Lady, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and many others. The collection will be fully digitized and shared for the first time, creating a comprehensive representation of the book by digitizing not only the pages, spine, and front/back covers, but also by imaging vintage publicity stills from the features that are taped inside the books.

The National Film Archive of India (NFIA), the largest archive in India, is in the midst of a project to preserve almost 150,000 reels of film in its collection and to physically restore almost 60,000 of those reels. This case study looks at the workflows and processes, as well as new management structures created. The project is ongoing, with lessons still to be learned.  

Given the April 2024 updated Rule on the Accessibility of Web Content and Mobile Apps Provided by State and Local Governments, many organizations are working on plans to make their digitized archival audio-visual material accessible to all. With the vast quantity of streaming media available currently across our organizations, this panel will present the issues, the efforts that are beginning now and the challenges that will be faced. This will serve to introduce this topic to the AMIA community and to promote discussion within our field.

The domain of digital audiovisual preservation has been largely confined to grandfathered production technology. While signal processing has continued to improve in adjacent disciplines, we lag behind and stubbornly soldier onward using old technology and techniques. I'm proposing a workflow for visual restoration on image scans of optical tracks as a superior alternative to conventional sound readers and audio software. I'll show how this workflow enables results of higher fidelity, and I'll go in to detail about its archival and ethical merits. The process only uses image scans of optical tracks along with free and low cost software with a wide user base; therefore, I consider it "lateral thinking with withered technology," in the words of game designer Gunpei Yokoi, whose 16mm FMV games will be the first subject of the case study portion. We defy you to guess the second subject, and heartily ask you to divulge it afterward.

"Serious Business: 1970s Feminist Film Distribution; A Site for Archival Knowledge " presents the diasporic journey of a now non-existent distribution company's collection of films. Working with catalogs, ephemera, letter correspondences, oral history work, and home archives from Freude's son, this presentation shows ways to build an alternative understanding of experimental and feminist film culture in the long 1970s when films were no longer accessible.

The Filipino American Historical Society of Chicago: Autonomous Archiving is an invitation to experience the historical documentary-style 16mm home movies created by union pipefitter Nicholas Viernes (1902-199) and learn about the work done to conserve these films. As part ofIn this session, we will present three of the earliest films from among the 300 home movies in the FAHSC collection: “Little Farmers of Reynoldsburg” parts 1 and 2 (1936 and 1937), which highlights portrait shots of an interracial family and their farm animals in rural Ohio; and “All-Stars” (1939), featuring an interstate Filipino migrant baseball tournament at Grant Park near the Field Museum of Natural History. The families and migrant communities showcased in these home movies document bold moments of joy and prosperity within a rapidly diversifying social landscape of the early 20th Century. Presented by Ashley Dequilla, FASHC archivist and collection manager, and Rebecca Hall, Chicago Film Society co-founder and projectionist.

YouTube continues to be the second most visited website, the second most popular social media channel, and the second most popular search engine. It is accessed by 47% of the online population at least once a month. And although a Google search may bring users to your website, you may never reach those natively searching YouTube. A holistic access plan should include a YouTube strategy. In this session, Mitch Peyser, President of PressPlay2Entertain, Elizabeth Hansen, Managing Director of the Texas Archive of the Moving Image, and Skip Elsheimer, Founder of A/V Geeks, explore the do’s and don’ts, (and pros and cons) of creating and managing a YouTube channel with examples from their respective organizations as well data from the UCLA Film & Television Archive. We will cover creating and launching a channel, aligning that channel with your objectives, and practical tips on SEO and monetization. We’ll also discuss the risks, what can go wrong, and how to avoid missteps. Attendees are encouraged to bring their questions and experiences to the session.

This research project focuses on the preservation of Digital Live Performance Art (DLPA). Technological advancements have significantly transformed the performance landscape, enabling artists to engage with digital technology in real time during live shows. The origins of tech-centered audiovisual performances can be traced back to dance, theatre, expanded cinema, audio and video synthesis, and live programming. With the advent of new equipment, software, platforms, projection techniques, various coding environments, and visual programming languages, DLPA has developed into a unique form of artistic expression, no longer merely a supplementary component of musical or theatrical performances. DLPA blends performance art with digital (and analog) technology and human-computer interaction. This research explores two categories: live-coding and mixed-media performances through the lens of museum conservation. By identifying conservation challenges such as documentation, technology obsolescence, and performance delegation, the research aims to develop a documentation resource to aid individual artists and institutions in preserving DLPA.

Projected glass “lantern” slides were part of the cinema-going experience from the very beginning. Slides were used for advertising products, instructing, informing (or scolding) audiences, and spectacularly advertising the delights of upcoming shows. Not only visually stunning, these slides provide unique insight into audience behavior and expectations, as well as advertising and promotional strategies. Many archives and museums hold cinema slides that have been passively collected, but that generally reside on the fringes of the institution’s collection. In his richly illustrated presentation, Rob discusses the history of glass projection slides within the cinema, placing them in both a historic and aesthetic context, as well as the archival challenges and opportunities presented by these fragile objects that many institutions hold in their collections. The presentation will include the opportunity to view and handle original slide artifacts and coincides with the launch of the online Cinema Slide Archive.

This session explores the integration of archival media into media production and digital storytelling education. By leveraging archival footage, students can create compelling narratives that connect historical content with contemporary perspectives. The session will provide practical strategies and case studies from media literacy and production classes, highlighting how archival media can enhance learning and foster creativity. The two case studies will come from two university libraries working with Media Studies courses, with different archival content, leading to a broader discussion of best practices and strategies for incorporating and potentially exhibiting student projects using moving image archives. The session will include access to example assignment prompts and files for reuse in many educational contexts.

Private film collectors now arguably represent the last frontier of film preservation. Many key film titles still missing or even yet to be discovered, may well be hiding in private hands. The private film collection of British broadcaster and journalist Philip Jenkinson is testament to this. He was embedded in, and well known throughout the British film collecting community, which included Kevin Brownlow (film historian), and Ronald Grant (founder of the London Cinema Museum), and with Key American connections such as David Bradley (American writer, actor, director, and university instructor). He edited early films for some of Britain's most important filmmakers, including Ken Russell, one or two of which made it into his collection. Rosie Taylor has worked with this complex and fascinating collection, now preserved in the BFI National Archive, finding important connections and hidden gems, and discovering the important role private collectors play in film preservation.