Assessment and Recommendations for Kartemquin Films’ Digital Collections
FAIN: PG-280854-21
Kartemquin Films Ltd. (Chicago, IL 60657-4029)
Elise Schierbeek (Project Director: January 2021 to April 2025)
A preservation assessment of Kartemquin Educational Films’ digital audiovisual collection, which encompasses over 55 years of independent documentary filmmaking. The collection of more than 70 films documents a diverse range of topics such as healthcare, urban youth, race, labor, gentrification, immigration, and gender, and includes such critically acclaimed titles as Hoop Dreams, The New Americans, and Academy Award nominees Minding the Gap, Abacus: Small Enough to Jail and Edith+Eddie. The digital collection of final master video and audio files for all productions, master technical elements, and digitally reformatted legacy media have been used extensively in educational curricula and screenings, research, and public programming such as an online platform and curriculum for the film ’63 Boycott, and a multi-platform short-video series in collaboration with Illinois Humanities and the Marshall Project presenting portraits of Chicagoans touched by the criminal justice system.
To support “Assessment and Recommendations for Kartemquin Films’ Digital Collections.” This project proposes consultation around the Kartemquin Archive’s digital collections management and digital preservation. A Media Collections Management Consultant and a Technology Consultant will together assess Kartemquin’s digital collections storage, backup, and management, write a report on the current state and preservation needs of the materials, and recommend a list of possible solutions for storage and management going forward. The collections to be assessed include master audio and video elements for Kartemquin’s social issue documentary films, masters-related technical elements, and digitally reformatted files of legacy titles. Consultants will conduct interviews with Kartemquin Archive, Post-Production, and Distribution staff remotely and at Kartemquin’s headquarters in Chicago, IL.