For Immediate Release: July 13, 2009
The Labyrinth Project, with support from Pro8mm invite you to participate in a screening and collection event of home movies shot on regular 8, super 8 and 16mm film for a new project, JEWISH HOMEGROWN HISTORY.
What is Jewish Homegrown History?
Jewish Homegrown History is the latest multimedia project from USC’s pioneering research initiative, The Labyrinth Project, which has been producing award-winning installations, websites and DVDs for the past ten years.
What is the screening event?
Home Movie Collection Day for Jewish Homegrown History
is a community celebration of amateur cinema. Selected works will be considered for inclusion in Jewish Homegrown History, an exhibition opening at the Skirball Cultural Center in September 2010.
Where is the screening/collection event?
DATE: Sunday, July 19, 2009
TIME: 11:00AM - 5:00PM (drop in any time)
LOCATION: USC School of Cinematic Arts, SCA110
What are we looking for?
Jewish Homegrown History creates an interactive narrative of the American Jewish experience on a global and local scale. Starting with California, the team at Labyrinth has been collecting images, text and video to build a historical foundation for our online database and upcoming museum installation. There are three central themes we hope to explore: Immigration, Identity, and Intermarriage. Although archival material and published histories have been key in our research, what we really want are the personal accounts and homegrown details that bring these themes to life. We are interested in your home movies to help us tell these stories.
Your footage will be screened alongside passages from relevant literature, photos from digital archives, and interviews we have conducted with scholars, entrepreneurs and historians across California. The goal of this project is to create a productive dialogue between official history and personal narrative. We want to see how events publicized in traditional sources relate to the people who actually lived through them. We want to see the faces of the men and women who worked so hard and fought so bravely when the country went to war. We want to see the houses with picket fences and big backyards when families moved to the suburbs. We want to see the bride and groom together in love when larger forces conspired to keep them apart. Ordinary people doing ordinary things.
At the Home Movie Screening and Collection event, we will be looking for these kinds of images that enrich and contextualize the broader stories we are telling with our research. However, we also welcome divergent points of view. We expect what we see to both reinforce and challenge our own experiences and theories. We are less concerned with telling you how history happened, but rather how you can share your perspective with us. At Labyrinth, we believe that there are many paths to a destination, so for this story we encourage contributions from as many voices as possible.
We are currently focused on representing Jewish life in California, with special emphasis on Jewish neighborhoods like Boyle Heights, the Fairfax District, the Pico-Robertson Area, Hancock Park, and the Valley. We are also featuring Riverside County resorts like Murietta Hot Springs, Lake Elsinore, and Highland Hot Springs. We are especially interested in older films or videos but will look at anything up through the1980s. Additionally, we are seeking almost anything that represents Jewish life in California including:
• Worship at synagogues
• Holiday celebrations
• Dinner parties
• Recreational activities
• Places of business
• Portraits of neighborhoods and people
• Interfaith and interethnic relationships
• Political and social events
For additional information, contact:
By email: mkinder@usc.edu
By telephone, call: 213-740-5112
By postcard or letter, write:
The Labyrinth Project
School of Cinematic Arts, LPB 118,
University of Southern California
Los Angeles, CA 90089-2211
Attention: Marsha Kinder
Feel free to visit our website at http://college.usc.edu/labyrinth/
FIVE GREAT REASONS TO PARTICIPATE:
1. Come and screen your old films.
In case you do not have a working projector for your 8mm/Super8/16mm films, we’ve got you covered. If you have been curious to see what is on those old reels, this is your chance!
2. Rediscover memories of your favorite people and places.
-Want to remind your husband how stunning you looked in your wedding dress?
-Want to go back to the house you grew up in?
-Want to honor the memory of a relative no longer with us?
Come share your significant moments with an audience of family and friends. Show us the things you care about.
3. Be part of history!
Participate in a nationally recognized historical research project! Your home movies could become part of our traveling museum installation, Jewish Homegrown History, which is scheduled for the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles, the New Americans Museum in San Diego, and the Judah Magnes Museum in Berkeley.
4. Transfer your home movies to HD digital video with Pro8mm and get a significant discount off their list price for broadcast quality archiving. Representatives from Pro8mm will be on hand to examine your films and give advice on how best to care for the original reels. Pro8mm has been archiving the world’s most famous faces and events for over 30 years.
5. Learn how to post your home movies to social networking sites such as Facebook, put them on your iphone, or email clips. Sharing your favorite memories with your loved ones is easy when your digitize your footage.
*BONUS*
6. Get a tax write-off!
Contribute your digitized footage to the installation or to the USC Digital Archive and get a tax write-off for the cost of the transfer.
Above all, we want to encourage people to come out and have fun. Come anytime between 11:00 AM and 5:00 PM. Bring your films, no matter the format, and we will screen them. Bring friends and family too. Cinema is a shared experience and we would love for you to share yours with us. See you July 19th!
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