NEWS & EVENTS
Photo: Flyer from F.D. Bluford Library at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University
Photo from News at Indiana University, courtesy of Jerald Harkness.
F.D. Bluford Library at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University showcased 163 rare films from 1900 to 1974 that document this history of N.C. A&T and African Americans nationwide before, during and after the mid-20th century civil rights era. The films were digitized by AV Geeks and include collections such as the Aggie Sports Collection and footage from the Jerald and Constance Marteena Home Movie Collection.
Jerald Harkness, award-winning Black documentarian and Indiana University Bloomington alumnus, gifts collection to Black Film Center & Archive. “Now, scholars, filmmakers and members of the IU community will have access to this film and many other audiovisual materials from Harkness, an IU alumnus, as he makes IU’s Black Film Center & Archive the home for his film collection. The gift consists of master copies, outtakes, interviews and other production elements from Harkness’ award-winning, 30-year career. Also included are Harkness’ home movies and preliminary interviews from incomplete projects.”
Screengrab from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s 'Stepping Back In Time'
A forgotten birthday, a funfair, and a village dance all come to life anew in a digital archive created by a group of Bulgarian Super 8 film lovers. Building on what started as a small collection of old home movies found in flea markets, the Kinoklub Super 8 now restores these family heirlooms on film. The group also hosts screenings that offer an intimate glimpse into daily Bulgarian life from as far back as the 1930s.
“Thursdays with the Starr Center” is excited to welcome Stanley Nelson, award-winning documentarian and director, on March 25, 2023. We will feature a film screening of Nelson’s 2010 “Freedom Riders” at 5 p.m., followed by a discussion and Q&A with the director at 7 p.m.
Nelson’s "Freedom Riders" (2010) is an inspiring film that captures the brave story of the 400 Black and white Americans who risked their lives challenging Jim Crow segregation. Traveling together on buses and trains through the Deep South in May of 1961, the Freedom Riders spotlighted a movement and forever changed a nation.
Join us for the screening at 5 p.m. and the conversation at 7 p.m. or just drop in for the conversation at 7 p.m.
If you would like to watch the film on your own, you can access it for free on the PBS website.
Still from The Challenge | Courtesy of Marsha Gordon
February 15, 2020 @ 2pm | National Gallery of Art - West Building Lecture Hall
Screening Race in American Nontheatrical Film Lecture with Marsha Gordon and Allyson Nadia Field
This program showcases a selection of 16 mm shorts produced between the 1940s and 1970s that engage with ideas about race, identity, and community outside mainstream theatrical cinema. Selections include educational films, home movies, industry and government films, student films, and anthropological films. From one of the earliest known film representations of a Japanese American cultural movement in the post-World War II era, to a Charles and Ray Eames film about the Day of the Dead, to a portrait of a young African American high schooler living in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles on the cusp of the 1965 rebellion, these films portray the lives of those who were mostly excluded from the commercial Hollywood movies of the same period. Allyson Nadia Field and Marsha Gordon, coeditors of Screening Race in American Nontheatrical Film (Duke University Press, 2019), present the works. (Approximately 130 minutes)
*Excerpts will be screened from the J. Max Bond Sr. Home Movies (repository: NMAAHC) that are discussed in Ch. 18 “Black Home Movies: Time to Represent” by Jasmyn R. Castro.
November 14, 2019 @ The Parkway Theatre in Baltimore, MD
2019 AMIA Archival Screening Night
This program represents the magnificent spectrum of formats, works, and collections protected and preserved by the AMIA community and provides members with an opportunity to showcase recent acquisitions, discoveries, and preservation efforts. We hope you enjoy the show!
— The Archival Screening Night Group
African American Home Movie Archive (AAHMA) Selections:
Title: ca. 1935 Untitled (Home Movie) | Original Format: 16mm Description: This film is one of the earliest home movies in the AAHMA collection. Dating back to the mid-1930s, this film briefly takes us inside an unknown African American township. Preservation History: This film was acquired through an online auction in May 2018. There was some significant deterioration, but we were able to salvage sections (through replasticization) and have them scanned with the assistance of Colorlab in Rockville, MD.
Title: ca. 1984 Untitled (Home Movie) | Original Format: Super 8 Description: This film is a Baltimore City, MD original production shot at Christ Temple church ca. 1984. Preservation History: This film was cleaned and digitally scanned by AAHMA.
Nov. 12, 2019 - Screening Race in American Nontheatrical Film officially published by Duke University Press
Although overlooked by most narratives of American cinema history, films made for purposes outside of theatrical entertainment dominated twentieth-century motion picture production. This volume adds to the growing study of nontheatrical films by focusing on the ways filmmakers developed and audiences encountered ideas about race, identity, politics, and community outside the borders of theatrical cinema. The contributors to Screening Race in American Nontheatrical Film examine the place and role of race in educational films, home movies, industry and government films, anthropological films, and church films as well as other forms of nontheatrical filmmaking. From filmic depictions of Native Americans and films by 1920s African American religious leaders to a government educational film about the unequal treatment of Latin American immigrants, these films portrayed—for various purposes and intentions—the lives of those who were mostly excluded from the commercial films being produced in Hollywood. This volume is more than an examination of a broad swath of neglected twentieth-century filmmaking; it is a reevaluation of basic assumptions about American film culture and the place of race within it.