16mm Films

January CARLI Member Archives Collection Highlight: Southern Illinois University Carbondale

The Special Collections Research Center at Southern Illinois University Carbondale received a $1,000 grant from the Illinois State Historical Records Advisory Board (ISHRAB) to digitize several 16mm films. The ISHRAB grant will be used in combination with funding from the Friends of Morris Library.

The films were selected for their historical significance, reference demand, preservation concerns, and potential for broad public interest. Most were created by SIU′s Film Production Unit that produced promotional and educational films from about 1960-1974. Two of these were CINE Golden Eagle Award winners: 1967 NCAA Gymnastics Championship, a documentary on SIU′s national champion men′s team, and Vergette Making a Pot, showcasing SIU art professor and sculptor Nicholas Vergette′s creative process. Another film, Mississippi River Festival, highlights the origins of the event held on the SIU Edwardsville campus that grew into a major annual rock music festival in the 1970s.

The film Blacksmith Workshop was selected from researcher demand. The patron noted, "It supposedly documents ′the first blacksmith workshop in the country′ held by L. Brent Kington," another SIU art professor. He said, "According to Kington, ′The interesting thing about the film is it undeniably records the birth of a medium, or the renaissance of a medium, into the American craft movement."

Although we cannot view the films to assess the content, we were aided by film catalog descriptions and Film Production′s project files. Not all films were adequately described, and a few were selected based on our best guess informed by what little metadata was available. For example, one canister is labeled O′Neal Interview which we suspect is Frederick O′Neal, founder of the American Negro Theater and the British Negro Theatre. In another case, a film from the Trovillion Private Press collection is labeled "Carbondale 1938," and we are excited to see what it reveals.

This project allows us to provide access to otherwise inaccessible films. Once complete, they will be uploaded to Morris Library′s YouTube channel and publicized through our social media and university news channels.

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