Hidden Collections Registry - Dev

Items

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  The Woman Behind the Camera: Home Movies and Amateur Film by Women, 1925-1997

  This project will create high-quality digital surrogates of analog collections of home movies and amateur film and video made by women between 1925 and 1997. The collections are held by Northeast Historic Film, the Lesbian Home Movie Project, and Chicago Film Archives. The project will result in item level catalog records, finding aids, and newly digitized surrogates from film and video made by women filmmakers that will be shared online via a project website that links users back to the holding institutions' websites. Most of these works are original camera reversal, meaning no other copies exist. Protecting original analog media with excellent digital surrogates advances research and preservation. The project holds great significance for scholarship by providing online access to films currently unavailable for off-site viewing and by challenging the notion that women were simply the subjects of home movies and amateur film, rather than filmmakers themselves.
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  Moving Images 1938-1940: Amateur Filmmakers Record the New York World's Fair and Its Period

  The topic of this three-institution collaborative project is the New York World's Fair (1939-1940), and the context of other amateur films made during that period. The materials are original 16mm and 8mm film reels, the records of individuals and families. The partners will catalog film at Northeast Historic Film, Queens Museum of Art, and George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film. These moving images are primary source materials considered essential to study of the period. Footage is by members of the Amateur Cinema League and others. Architect Stephen F. Voorhees was vice president of the New York World's Fair and president of the Amateur Cinema League (ACL). In the ACL monthly magazine he wrote, "The New York World's Fair depends upon your camera and your eye to tell other generations that here, in 1939, men and women of good will from all over the earth had the courage to set up a tribute to the ways of peace and the hope of perfection." (ACL Movie Makers, June 1939) The Robert Decker Collection at Northeast Historic Film is Kodachrome color footage. Kodachrome, introduced by Kodak in 1923 and discontinued 2009, provided exceptional color quality and archival stability. Queens Museum of Art holds the 8mm and 16mm film of Ritabelle Shore and others. George Eastman House film is b&w and Kodachrome, received from personal collections, that describe New York City including Times Square, Jones Beach, and the World’s Fair.
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  Intellectual Access to Moving Images of Work Life, 1916-1950

  "Intellectual Access to Moving Images of Work Life, 1916-1950" has created descriptive records for 50 film collections (16mm, 8mm, 35mm) identified as significant moving image archival documents relating to work and labor in the first half of the 20th century. Like NHF's films named to the National Film Registry, From Stump to Ship (1930) and The Making of an American (1920), our accessions reward scholars with detailed records of labor, environment, and society. Each reel is unique coverage, not otherwise available. Our collecting criteria result from cooperation with historians since our founding, including David C. Smith, our first board member, Bird & Bird Professor of History at the Univ. of Maine, and Martha J. McNamara, Director, New England Arts & Architecture Program, Wellesley College. The reels hold hidden research materials--with a range of cataloging requirements--from among 800 collections gathered at NHF over 23 years. Many relate to non-moving image documents in other repositories, as moving images are a demanding category of archival holdings too often separated from related materials. NHF's Albert Farwell Bemis Collection, 16mm film (1920s-1930) shot by Bemis, an industrialist and benefactor to housing research, adds depth to MIT Institute Archives and Special Collections Albert Farwell Bemis Foundation papers. Film from our Edwin Bienick Collection of the American Writing Paper Co. enhance holdings at W.E.B. Du Bois Library, Univ. of Mass., Amherst.