Miami, Oct. 2, 2018 – Travel back in time to the New Wave 1980s in Miami courtesy of the Lynn and Louis Wolfson II Florida Moving Image Archives at Miami Dade College’s (MDC) Wolfson Campus. Wayback Wednesday: 80s Miami will screen on Wednesday, Oct. 10, from noon to 1:30 p.m. at MDC’s Live Arts Lab. Free of charge and open to the public.
The city of Christo, car phones, sushi chefs, Miami Vice, and cocaine cowboys is preserved on historic film by the Wolfson Archives and shared with the public through its REWIND series. REWIND programs are short – fifteen to thirty minutes each – and repeat during each ninety-minute screening.
“We’ve been engaging audiences with our REWIND screenings for some time now,” says Wolfson Archives Director Rene Ramos. “We want to build REWIND’s audience by putting the event in the center of campus when there’s a lot going on.”
REWIND’S Wayback Wednesday: 80s Miam features emblematic Miami scenes of the 1980s, from aerobics classes to the fiery bust of a cocaine lab in a Miami Beach condo. Many video clips show new trends and technologies and people’s hilariously funny reactions to these now commonplace items. Regularly scheduled REWIND screenings will continue taking place Tuesdays and Thursdays, from noon to 1:30 p.m.
About the Lynn and Louis Wolfson II Florida Moving Image Archives
The Lynn and Louis Wolfson II Florida Moving Image Archives is an official moving image repository and archives of the State of Florida and is one of the largest institutions of its kind in the United States. Lynn Wolfson helped found the Moving Image Archives in 1984, along with Ralph Renick and historian Arva Moore Parks. Named in honor of Lynn and the late Louis Wolfson II, a Florida legislator and leader in the state’s communications industry, the Archives was created under the joint sponsorship of the Miami-Dade Public Library System, Miami Dade College (MDC), and the University of Miami. Now solely operated by MDC, the Archives takes a giant leap into the future via a 9,000 square foot state-of-the-art facility on MDC’s Wolfson Campus. The Archives’ collections include 35,000 hours of video tape and 23 million feet of film. A local television news collection dates to the late 1940s, with footage from landmark television station WTVJ (first in Florida, 18th in the nation) as well as WPLG, WCKT, WCIX, and WINK. A television documentaries collection covers the topics of immigration, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Space Program, presidential elections, and many more global events and trends that have played out on the Florida stage. Finally, home movie holdings of over 3000 reels dating to the 1910s bring long-gone buildings, attractions, and folkways alive for new generations. The Archives has received funding from the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs, the Dade Heritage Trust, the Florida Humanities Council, the Florida Department of Historical Resources, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Film Preservation Foundation. These awards have been used to create a popular series of public programs and enable ongoing preservation work on fragile and obsolete film and video assets. The capstone of activities at the Archives is a long-term digitization project funded generously by an additional gift from Lynn Wolfson. Film scanners and robotic videotape digitizers have been purchased that will enable Archives staff to digitize all current holdings and new acquisitions within the next 3-5 years. The digitized videos will be made available on the World Wide Web, enabling an explosion of scholarship and discovery. The State of Florida’s Department of Historical Resources has recognized the possibilities inherent in this newly digitized collection with a grant to develop a video tour of Miami’s historical buildings and sites via mobile telephones and tablets; this is but one example of new ventures that will be possible for the Archives moving forward. For more information, visit www.wolfsonarchives.org.
Events at the Wolfson Archives are presented with the support of the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners.
WHAT: REWIND’S Wayback Wednesday: 80s Miami
WHEN: Wednesday, Oct. 10, Noon to 1:30 p.m.
WHERE: MDC Live Arts Lab, Building 1
300 NE Second Ave.
For more information about “REWIND’S Wayback Wednesday, please contact the Lynn and Louis Wolfson II Florida Moving Image Archives at 305-237-7731, or info@wolfsonarchive.org.
Wolfson Archives contacts: Rene Ramos, Archives Director, Lynn and Louis Wolfson II Florida Moving Image Archives, 305-237-7731, rramos@mdc.edu; Lou Kramer, Archives Manager, Lynn and Louis Wolfson II Florida Moving Image Archives, 305-327-7731, lkramer1@mdc.edu; Kevin Wynn, Public Programs Coordinator, Lynn and Louis Wolfson II Florida Moving Image Archives, 305-327-7732, kwynn@mdc.edu.