Moving image material digitized at MIPoPS is available for artistic use!

MIPoPS’s work is primarily about preserving fragments of history held on fragile magnetic media, but they’re not exactly all work and no play! We encounter lots of interesting content as we pore over boxes of tapes from local collections, and often find ourselves thinking “Someone should use these in a music video!” or “This NEEDS to be in a documentary.” Luckily, many of the organizations whose materials we process are open to proposals from artists of all stripes to find creative applications for their content.

This showcase is a compilation of home movies and news station ephemera that have been digitally re-edited and/or re-scored by NWFF and MIPoPS staff. All of these films have screened in livestreams throughout NWFF’s pandemic closure, but … that … doesn’t count. We want you to see them on the big screen! The star film of the evening is a perfect segue into Seattle’s summer months: Parks, Pleasant Occasions, and Happiness (1977) is a 16mm sonnet to a Seattle that glistens with sweat and sunscreen, set to music by NWFF Technical Director Brenan Chambers and his Plant Lab bandmate Owen Whitcomb. NWFF/MIPoPS Communications Manager Paul Siple has also contributed a video that wantonly mashes together Betacam SP footage of the foliage at Seward and Frink Park, introducing unnatural washes of color from video feedback throughout.

Edited by Libby Hopfauf

A compilation of silent footage shot by professional photographer Karl Kernberger during a trip along the length of the Yukon River. He made the journey with four friends in 1963, and contributed the material to the documentary Yukon River, which is available to view for free on UWSC’s Internet Archive page.

Material from UW Special Collections:

• Yukon River, Part 1
  Original format: 1963, 16mm (transferred from 16mm to 1-inch Type C videotape in 1989)

Music by Brenan Chambers & Owen Whitcomb
Editing by Paul Siple

Denizens of the most beautiful city on Earth enjoy its many public parks, sunning themselves, walking dogs, flirting, and experiencing a profoundly enriching pre-smartphone existence. Cruising from Volunteer Park, its attendant green house and art museum, to Green Lake, Gasworks, and Alki Beach, we see hundreds of Seattleites young and old enjoying the outdoors without the slightest inkling of a thought to their crypto profile’s performance, Instagram notifications, or email. You wish with every fiber of your being that you could warn them, and that you could be them.

Material from Seattle Municipal Archives’ Department of Parks and Recreation Moving Images Collection:

• Parks, Pleasant Occasions and Happiness
  Original format: 1977, 16mm (later transferred from 16mm to 1798 Digital Betacam)

Music by Chris Day
Editing by Paul Siple

An 8mm record of Ed and Edith Thompson’s experience attending the Century 21 Exposition at Seattle Center. Monorail rides, Space Needle views, water-skiing, amusement park and cable car rides – the works! The film ends with nighttime scenes with prominent neon signs and views from the cable car ride of the fairgrounds at night. Originally aired in MIPoPS’s Oct. 25, 2020 livestream.

Material from two sources in University of Washington Libraries’ Special Collections:

• Jack Shawcroft Multimedia Collection
  Original format: 1963, 8mm, color, silent
  PH2018-037, VC759
• Edwin C. Thompson Home Movies
  Original format: 1962, 8mm, color, silent

Music by Chris Day
Editing by Paul Siple

KING-TV newsmen set up and shoot around hydroplane races, a parade, a dam, and their own family picnics. Look out for the footage of a gigantic excavation in a residential neighborhood, and let us know if you can tell what the devil is going on there! Originally aired in MIPoPS’s Oct. 25, 2020 livestream.

Original format: 16mm, color, silent

Music and editing by Paul Siple

Iwao Matsushita (b. 1/10/1892) and his wife Hanaye Tamura (b. 3/9/1898) emigrated to Seattle in 1919 for Matsushita to pursue educational opportunities. Academia temporarily landed on the back burner for Matsushita, however, and he spent several years working as a cook, a hotel manager, and then in various positions for Mitsui and Company, a major Tokyo-based trading firm, which allowed him and Hanaye leisure time (as shown here). Featuring handwritten and typewritten titles throughout, often in both English and Japanese. Originally aired in MIPoPS’s Oct. 25, 2020 livestream.

Material from University of Washington Libraries’ Special Collections:

• Iwao Matsushita Films
  Original formats: c. 1933, 8mm, color and B&W, silent

Music and editing by Paul Siple

Using some Betacam SP B-roll of Seattle’s lush Seward and Frink Parks, stacked with a many-hued wash of video feedback, Paul created this video for his song “Lake Alice.”

Material from Seattle Municipal Archives’ Seattle Channel Collection:

• Seward Park – Old Growth
  Original format: 2003, Betacam SP
• Seward Park/Frink Park
  Original format: 2003, Betacam SP

MIPoPS is a nonprofit whose mission is to assist archives, libraries, and other organizations with the conversion of analog video recordings to digital formats according to archival best practices.

Featuring a variety of material and topics, this series curates a quarterly set of archival videotape clips that document diverse Seattle histories of the arts, politics, and community.

MIPoPS hopes this series will educate and entertain viewers during this time of uncertainty and isolation.

Find out more about MIPoPS at mipops.org
Watch past screenings on their YouTube Channel
Browse hundreds of videos they’ve digitized on their Internet Archive collection

Connect with MIPoPS on social media:
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