Archival Spotlight Regeneration in Digital Contexts: Early Black Film

Stewart proposes a challenging new avenue for the study of early black film-an area marked by its scarcity of extent documentation-by identifying unmined evidentiary value in what "we can learn from the singularity of each print . . . and what any existing print might teach us about the circula...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Black camera : the newsletter of the Black Film Center/Archives 2015-04, Vol.6 (2), p.252-263
Main Author: Sewald, Ronda L
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Archives & records
Censorship
Conferences
Cultural change
Digital humanities
Digital media
Documentation
Micheaux, Oscar (1884-1951)
Motion pictures
Museums
Public libraries
Stewart, Jacqueline
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Summary:Stewart proposes a challenging new avenue for the study of early black film-an area marked by its scarcity of extent documentation-by identifying unmined evidentiary value in what "we can learn from the singularity of each print . . . and what any existing print might teach us about the circulation, exhibition, and content of movies in this under documented film culture. While the study of film is not the only place such work takes place and while exploring and exploiting the capacity of digital technologies to advance such work through processes of regeneration is not the only way in which to advance such concerns, there is no question that the study of film and in particular the historical study of its earliest circuits of circulation, exhibition, and content point to an important dimension of our cultural history. White described walking the streets depicted in Oscar Micheaux's books and the possibility of creating a virtual version of historic black Atlanta similar to Emory University Library's "Virtual Rome" project.3 In "The Carrier as Content," Rachael Stoeltje (Indiana University) moderated a panel including Jacqueline Stewart (University of Chicago), Mike Mashon (Library of Congress), Leah Kerr (Academy Museum of Motion Pictures), and Jan-Christopher Horak (UCLA Film and Television Archive). Reto Kromer (AV Preservation by retro.ch LLC) offered a technical report from the field of audiovisual digitization, reviewing various aspects of capturing and representing analog media in digital form and best practices for scanning older film formats.
ISSN:1536-3155
1947-4237