Miami, Oct. 5, 2018 – The Lynn and Louis Wolfson II Florida Moving Image Archives at Miami Dade College (MDC) and O Cinema Wynwood present the Wolfson Archives’ Home Movie Day: Whose Home Movies? on Saturday, Oct. 20, from 11 a.m. – 1 p.m., at O Cinema Wynwood. Free and open to the public.
Home Movie Day is a celebration of home movies for amateur cinema fans all over the world. For the Wolfson Archives, which preserves several thousand reels of home movies and is always collecting more, Home Movie Day is an opportunity to have fun sharing its unique film and video with audiences.
“’Orphan films’ have attracted a lot of interest in the last few years from film archivists, filmmakers and audiences,” said Wolfson Archives Director Rene Ramos. “These are films that have fallen out of copyright or whose ownership isn’t clear, or in the case of home movies, just got separated from the people who made them. The stories behind them are lost to us, but the images remain.”
The Wolfson Archives will also be accepting donations on Home Movie Day. Those who donate their home movies will receive a digital copy of their videos if the materials can be transferred. In order to be accepted materials should be related to Florida and the region.
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: Home Movie Day: Whose Home Movies?
WHEN: Saturday, Oct. 20., from 11 a.m. – 1 p.m.
WHERE: O Cinema Wynwood
90 N.W. 29th St.
For more information about Home Movie Day: Whose Home Movies? 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.