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The Crying of Lot 230720778503:

A case study in repatriation of historic amateur film

The course

MIAS 240: Moving Image Archive Administration

Required in the Moving Image Archive Studies core curriculum

Course objectives included:

•Understand the principles and practical concerns that guide moving image archives’ creation, administration, and institutional growth

•Be able to perform basic strategic assessments, budgeting, and planning for archival programs

•Critically evaluate institutional policies, documents, forms, and projects relative to organizational missions and goals

•Develop or increase competencies in essential supporting functions of the archive, including grant-writing and fundraising, donor relations, and human resources management

•Be familiar with and able to apply community and personal standards for ethical conduct in developing, preserving, and providing access to audiovisual collections

The assignment

Option 1: Curators & Donors: You/your group will become the new owners of a collection of home movies purchased on eBay within the last few weeks. Your project will include, but not be limited to, doing a full condition assessment and detailed inventory of the film(s) in the collection; appraising the collection’s financial and archival value; documenting and, where necessary, researching the provenance and content of the film(s); and researching and executing transfer of the collection to an appropriate institution. You will be asked to collaborate with other students and groups selecting this option and Option 2, below, to develop a workable system such as a database, spreadsheet, or other information management tool to document collections acquired and disposed of during the quarter.

The group

The materials

All three reels have been digitized with the help of the Center for Home Movies, and are viewable online through the Internet Archive's moving image collection:

http://archive.org/details/MIAS240_reel_2-13-68

http://archive.org/details/MIAS240_reel_2

http://archive.org/details/MIAS240_reel_3

"A box of ghosts...

an unopened box of films or an unwatched reel on its own is simultaneously many things: interesting, boring, important, meaningless, unique, commonplace, etc."

Key outcomes

  • Interrogating assumptions
  • Do these films belong together?
  • Is this a "family"?
  • Developing research strategies
  • SSDI, Google maps, digitized newspapers
  • Dead ends just further down the road
  • Establishing parameters for ethical conduct
  • The group as owner(s) and arbiter(s)
  • Difference between institutional and personal perspectives
  • "Could passion to have access to one home movie be substituted for the financial resources needed for long-term preservation of all three home movies?" - Jovita Dominguez
  • Disposition
  • Critical evaluation of repositories and their donation agreements
  • Having something concrete, rather than abstract
  • Unavoidable influence of money
  • Essential need for repatriation
  • Local knowledge, local relevance
  • Displacement of people and records
  • Situating moving images in the historical record
  • Minor items, major significance?
  • Investing time, adding value
  • Balancing access and sensitivity
  • Privacy
  • Comfort
  • (Re-)connection
  • Expressing good intentions and constructing non-litigious remedies
  • Building contacts within and across communities

Amanda Smith

Left to right:

Amanda Smith

Jovita Dominguez

Meg Weichman

Not shown:

Yasmin Damshenas

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