Film Comment podcast - Ina Archer, National Museum of African American History and Culture
Listen to the Film Comment Podcast featuring Ina Archer, Media Conservative and Digitization Specialist at National Museum of African American History and Culture, speaks about Prasad’s work on restoring “Black Chariot” and “Will” for the museum’s film archive. Prasad’s partner Colorlab, in Rockville, MD, who provides digitization services utilizing Prasad/DFT Scanity HDR wetgate, is the lead on this project working directly with Ina Archer from the museum.
Ina comments in the podcast that her goal on these projects is to bring back films that never had the opportunity to be distributed, or seen, which also gives the filmmakers a new opportunity for their work.
Prasad will be digitally restoring BLACK CHARIOT, a 1971 American blaxploitation drama film directed by Robert Goodwin and starring Bernie Casey, Barbara O. Jones, and Paulene Myers. Colorlab provided the digitization services in 4K.
WILL is a film produced in 1981 by women filmmaker Jessie Maple, an American cinematographer and film director most noted as a pioneer for the civil rights of African-Americans and women in th
e film industry. WILL was one of the first feature-length dramatic films created by an African-American woman.
Only a faded print has survived. Colorlab has digitized the film in one pass and the filmmaker is now working on color grading. Prasad will be providing preservation services on the film to fix scratches and other repairs, and to pull more color out, careful not to add any new artifacts, and to not lose the films personality.
The National Museum of African American History and Culture is the only national museum devoted exclusively to the documentation of African American life, history, and culture. It was established by an Act of Congress in 2003, following decades of efforts to promote and highlight the contributions of African Americans. To date, the Museum has collected more than 40,000 artifacts and nearly 100,000 individuals have become members. The Museum opened to the public on September 24, 2016, as the 19th museum of the Smithsonian Institution.
We highly recommend following Film Comment’s podcast on Spotify. This particular episode aired July 19, 2022.
Listening to the Film Comment podcast with Ina Archer took me straight back to my first visit to the National Museum of African American History and Culture. I remember standing in front of the “The Power of the Press” exhibit, feeling the weight of the newspapers and photographs that documented the struggle for civil rights, and then hearing Ina discuss how those same stories shape contemporary cinema. It was like the museum’s walls were whispering into my headphones, reminding me why representation matters on screen https://adstandards.com.au/codes-and-cases/codes The way she linked archival footage to modern storytelling sparked a memory of a film class where we dissected “Do the Right Thing” and debated how history informs narrative choices. I left the episode…
Listening to the Film Comment podcast with Ina Archer took me straight back to my first visit to the National Museum of African American History and Culture a few years ago. I remember standing in front of the powerful photograph of the Tuskegee Airmen, feeling the weight of history in a way that movies rarely capture. When Ina talked about the museum’s role in shaping narratives and preserving stories, I thought about the guided tour I took with my grandmother, who shared her own family’s migration story as we walked through the exhibit on the Great Migration https://www.justice.qld.gov.au/initiatives/liquor-gaming The way the podcast blends film analysis with the museum’s curatorial insights reminded me of those moments when a film scene perfectly…