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So to be able to see him on film and see the man who brought our family together – it’s because of him,” she said. Moody donated 18 reels of home movies, which, along with the other donations, are stored in a temperature-controlled vault designed to hold film so it doesn’t deteriorate. “It’s a project that’s really inspired by the belief that people have always documented their own lives in really intimate and powerful ways,” she said.
We aim to build an alternative, accessible visual record, filling gaps in existing written and visual histories, and ensuring that the diverse experiences and perspectives of South Siders will be available to larger audiences and to future generations. Launched in September 2005, the South Side Home Movie Project is a five-part initiative to collect, preserve, digitize, exhibit, and research home movies made by residents of Chicago’s South Side neighborhoods. Our goal is to ensure that the diverse experiences and perspectives of South Siders will be available to a wide public audience, to film scholars, and to future generations. By amplifying the interactivity of our online platform, we will aggregate community knowledge, inviting visitors from various backgrounds to contribute information in the form of comments, anecdotes, data, and additional digital exhibitions. Each of our films offers an intimate glimpse into history, situated within the context of personal relationships and public or private spaces. Capturing insights from community members will enrich the historical record, providing details about specific Chicago neighborhoods as well as midcentury urban life more broadly.
SPOTLIGHT: Teen Arts Council Collaboration
Craig is responsible for the recent uptick of community events, such as installations, hands-on workshops, and screenings, which Stewart said helps spread awareness, increase engagement, and encourage people to donate their own film. At the Peace and Justice Radio Project, she developed a youth media literacy curriculum used in Chicago public high schools and the Juvenile Temporary Detention Center. Craig coordinates the advisory committee, relays their guidance and feedback to the design team, and organizes the public launch activities, and related outreach/communications. University of Chicago film professor Jacqueline Stewart founded the South Side Home Movie Project in 2005 to collect, preserve, digitize, and exhibit home videos from South Side residents.
They show us how people dress and pose, work and play, travel and learn, celebrate and organize, raise their children and even mourn their dead. These films also jog memories, and incite conversations about people, practices, locations and events that are not always captured in official histories. With its website and curriculum, the Home Movie Project redefines what a historical collection can be by allowing residents to “feel they can contribute to the archives,” said Ellen Placey Wadey, the foundation’s director of Chicago arts and collections. N May 1, the South Side Home Movie Project launched its digital archive, a globally accessible online portal to home movies shot by residents of Chicago’s South Side neighborhoods between 1929 and 1982.
SPOTLIGHT: Ellis and Susan McClelland Oral History Recording
Williams said the archive is always expanding and urged South Siders to search their homes for 8mm and 16mm film reels. "Part of our mission is to re-exhibit these films, to bring them from a basement... and to actually redistribute them so that we can hold these images and these memories in our working minds today," said archivist and project manager Justin Williams. Hundreds of hours of archival home movies documenting Black life in Chicago during the 20th century sit inside of a film vault at The University of Chicago. Block Club Chicago is a nonprofit news organization dedicated to delivering reliable, nonpartisan and essential coverage of Chicago’s diverse neighborhoods.
By showcasing original artwork inspired by our collection, we will invite dialogue that connects the scenes depicted in home movies to our current cultural moment. Now a daily facet of modern life, filming ourselves and sharing our recordings has its roots in home moviemaking, a tradition of self-representation that started nearly 100 years ago. First introduced in 1923, small-gauge film gave millions of consumers the ability to create and share moving-image documentation of their lives and pastimes.
Decades of South Side Home Movies to be Released in Digital Archive
Students analyze the movies as records of residents’ intimate moments and for their historical value, Williams said. By studying Spinning Home Movies episodes, students also learn how to add new life to old film with video montage and collaging techniques. HYDE PARK — The archivists behind a collection of hundreds of home movies filmed by South Side residents are making their website more interactive and developing an arts curriculum that incorporates decades’ worth of footage.
Home movies provide a unique visual record that enriches our understanding of culture, history, and aesthetics. Through our research practices and educational partnerships, we hope to study, describe and share this unique resource with new audiences and new generations. Ideas include adding feedback options, where viewers can share their knowledge about films; visualization tools like maps or timelines; and showcases for visitors to upload projects that creatively reuse the films, in the vein of Spinning Home Movies. The South Side Home Movie Project documents everyday life, celebrations and historical moments in the community from the 1920s through the 2010s.
Watch "The History of Vacations" by Aranya A., and read more about this project on the Research & Education page. The South Side Home Movie Project combed through our archive to find scenes of sisters, and invited these now-grown women to reflect on their childhood and the role that sisterhood has played in their lives. We invited Global Girls, a performing arts organization for young African American women in Greater Grand Crossing, to share their perspectives as younger women and their insight into contemporary modes of self-representation. In a public film screening and conversation moderated by SSHMP director and UChicago film scholar Jacqueline Stewart, these groups will watch and talk along with the audience as family dynamics, sibling relationships, and the everyday lives of South Siders unfold on the screen. Launched as an effort to connect with our communities virtually in spring 2020, the ongoing Spinning Home Movies series has emerged as a new paradigm for meaningful artist/archive partnerships and for robust community engagement. Each episode features a minute set of home movie footage, curated and sound-tracked by Chicago DJs, musicians and performing artists, followed by a live discussion, “The Rewind,” where the production team, guest artists and film donors dig deeper into the episode’s themes.
“One of the things I’m thinking about is expanding the project to include videotape,” Stewart said. “ film was cheaper and it opens up a broader range of family demographics.” Other considerations include partnering with local organizations to help uncover rich materials from more neighborhoods, she said. Hen newly-appointed Chicago Police Board president and developer Ghian Foreman met Stewart in a bookstore where archived footage was being shown, he was immediately compelled to search for his own family’s videos. In March, the Project installed a television at the South Shore Branch Library that played an hour’s worth of home videos depicting moments from women’s lives in honor of Women’s History Month.
The South Side Home Movie Project is a five-part initiative to collect, preserve, digitize, exhibit, and research home movies made by residents of Chicago’s South Side neighborhoods. The SSHMP seeks to increase understanding of the many histories and cultures comprising Chicago’s South Side, and of amateur filmmaking practices, by asking owners of home movies to share their footage and describe it from their personal perspectives. The project brings materials that are typically kept in private collections into public light and discussion.
These qualities position the South Side Home Movie Project as a work of social, spatial, and racial justice — areas our world needs far more investment in, and that Span and its designers are dedicated to. A screening of South Side home movies, featuring newly preserved films of Bronzeville nightlife in the 1950s, including footage from the Parkway Ballroom, followed by conversation with families who have donated their home movies to South Side Home Movie Project. Jeanette Foreman, niece of Jean Patton, one of the most prolific home movie makers included in the Archive, is an attorney, community activist, and lifelong resident of the Chatham and Hyde Park neighborhoods. She serves as a liaison between the SSHMP and the many community organizations in which she is involved. She also provides information and anecdotes about the over 100 films in the SSHMP’s Patton Family Collection. The project is actively seeking participants to contribute their films and stories to the archive.
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