Our Story
In 2005, Dr. Jacqueline Stewart founded the South Side Home Movie Project (SSHMP), a research and archival initiative to collect, preserve, digitize, exhibit and research small-gauge home movies made by residents of Chicago’s South Side neighborhoods. By asking owners of home movies to share their footage and describe it from their personal perspectives, SSHMP seeks to increase understanding of amateur filmmaking practices, and of the many histories and cultures comprising Chicago’s South Side.
The project brings materials that are typically kept in private collections into public light and discussion. Unique in its focus on home movies from this region, SSHMP aims to build an alternative, accessible visual record, filling gaps in existing written and visual histories, and ensuring that the diverse experiences and perspectives of South Siders will be available to larger audiences and to future generations.
Today, SSHMP presents a uniquely successful model for encouraging local residents to recognize the value of their personal archives, to preserve original film prints in optimal conditions, and to digitize home movies for public access, creative projects and scholarly research. Our film vault currently houses over 1000 film reels (8mm, Super 8, 16mm) from 40 South Side families, and our digital archive has expanded to over 30 terabytes of data. The Project offers a robust line-up of public programs that invite students, neighbors, artists and partner organizations to explore and activate the archive in imaginative new ways.
In addition to the incredible support the project has received from the community, SSHMP’s work has also been recognized by national film organizations. In 2019, SSHMP received the Advocacy Award from the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) for raising public consciousness about the importance of archival work and access to media archives.
Arts + Public Life
In Fall 2019, South Side Home Movie Project joined Arts + Public Life at the University of Chicago as an expansion of APL's ongoing commitment to Cultural Preservation. Arts + Public Life is a dynamic hub of exploration, expression, and exchange that centers people of color and fosters neighborhood vibrancy through the arts on the South Side of Chicago. Its Cultural Preservation initiative is a broad and collaborative project to remember, collect, preserve and share back to our communities a range of artifacts and expressions that document, reflect and uplift the lived experiences of Chicago’s South Side neighborhoods.
Family Donors
Family archivists, local historians, amateur filmmakers, kids who watched home movies on an 8mm projector - SSHMP donors are family members who wanted to preserve a piece of their family legacy and share it as a piece of Chicago history. Whether they lived on the South Side for generations or only briefly, our donors offer an intimate window into a family’s life and a rare look at the lives of South Siders in the 20th century, through their own eyes.
Resources and Funding
South Side Home Movie Project is grateful for the generous support provided by UChicago's Division of Humanities, Humanities Computing, Center for the Study of Race, Politics & Culture (in part by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation), Franke Institute for Humanities, Film Studies Center, Women’s Board, Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, Academic Technology Solutions and Office of Civic Engagement’s Community Program Accelerator.
SSHMP is also grateful for the vital support provided by the American Council of Learned Societies, the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, Illinois Humanities, the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture, and Elizabeth Crown and Bill Wallace.
Team
Jacqueline Stewart
Founder and Director
University of Chicago professor of Cinema and Media Studies Jacqueline Stewart (AM ’93, PhD ’99) is the founder and director of the South Side Home Movie Project. Dr. Stewart’s research and teaching explore African American film cultures from the origins of the medium to the present, as well as the archiving and preservation of moving images, and “orphan” media histories, including nontheatrical, amateur and activist film and video. Stewart is Director and President of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, and is also the host of Silent Sunday Nights on Turner Classic Movies. She is author of Migrating to the Movies: Cinema and Black Urban Modernity (2005), the co-edited book William Greaves: Filmmaking as Mission (2021), as well as numerous articles and book chapters. She is the co-curator of the L.A. Rebellion Preservation Project at the UCLA Film and Television Archive, and locally, curated both Black Cinema House and Cinema 53, a film series at the historic Harper Theater in Hyde Park.
Camille Townson
Processing Archivist
Camille Townson (they/them) is a digital audiovisual archivist and community organizer. They were a 2022 AMIA Pathways Fellow with SSHMP and are grateful to be assisting with such a unique body of work. They earned their B.S. in Cognitive Science: Human-Computer Interaction and Design from University of California at San Diego ('20) and specialize in user experience, digital accessibility, and critical gender studies. They are most interested in intimate history-making and increasing community access to archival material.
Rai Mckinley Terry
Community Engagement and Outreach
Rai Mckinley Terry (they/them) is an audiovisual artist and archivist. Rai began working with SSHMP in the Summer of 2021 as an Association of Moving Image Archivists Pathways fellow. Rai is interested in the power and preservation of home movies, especially those recorded on videotape. They have an B.A. in African and African American Arts from Brandeis University and an M.A. in Public Humanities from Brown University.
Avery LaFlamme
Graduate Student Intern
Avery LaFlamme (he/him) is a PhD candidate in the Department of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago. His work focuses on Black film history and Black documentary and nonfiction filmmaking. His work at SSHMP supports archival initiatives and public programming, in particular the Spinning Home Movies series.