The Archive is (A)Live: Preserving and Sharing Memories with the South Side Home Movie Project
Justin Williams, the project manager and archivist at the Southside Home Movie Project, will introduce new interactive features on the SSHMP’s recently redesigned website that allows users to create and share “community tags” and “memories.” These features allow users of all kinds to immerse themselves directly in descriptive practices as full partners. Williams will present on the collaborative design process that led to the development of these features and will also invite attendees to demo them live during the session.
The SSHMP is a community-engaged initiative to collect, preserve, digitize, research, and exhibit small-gauge home movies made by residents of Chicago’s South Side neighborhoods. To date, SSHMP has served over 35 families and preserved more than 700 films shot between the mid-1930s and the mid-1980s. This time period overlaps with the growth of Chicago’s African American communities fueled by the Great Migration. This racial demographic shift is evident in the first-hand accounts of family and community life, social and cultural events, and historic moments depicted within SSHMP’s collections.
Unique in its focus on home movies from this region, SSHMP aims to build an alternative, accessible visual record, filling gaps in existing written and visual histories. The project brings materials that are typically kept in private collections into public light and discussion. By asking home movie donors to share their footage, describe it from their personal perspectives, and allow it to be creatively reused in novel ways, SSHMP hopes to transmit the cultural heritage of Chicago’s South Side and ensure it reaches new audiences and will be available to future generations.
The Black Film Center & Archive and the IU Libraries Moving Image Archive are co-hosting the event.