The Act of Recording is an Act of Love: The South Side Home Movie Project
Image of Lynette Frazier playing tennis in Washington Park, 1965, from the Lynette Frazier Collection, courtesy of SSHMP.
Logan Center Exhibitions and Arts + Public Life is pleased to present The Act of Recording is an Act of Love: The South Side Home Movie Project.
This exhibition traces the 20-year history of the South Side Home Movie Project (SSHMP), an archival and community engagement initiative that preserves and shares amateur films and the stories of local everyday life that they uniquely capture. Founded in 2005 at the University of Chicago by Cinema and Media Studies professor Jacqueline Stewart, SSHMP is dedicated to collecting, preserving, digitizing, exhibiting, and researching the rich tapestry of home movies created by Chicago's South Side residents..
In partnership with the Film Studies Center, the SSHMP preserves these fragile films and makes them accessible online. Today, SSHMP boasts a collection of over 1,200 reels of 16mm, 8mm, and Super-8mm footage shot by South Siders from the 1930s to the 1980s. As part of UChicago’s Arts + Public Life (APL), the SSHMP transcends traditional archival roles. It acts as a cultural steward, collaborating with a vibrant community of film donors, educators, artists, and filmmakers to explore a wide range of educational and creative uses for these invaluable historical films.
Musician and poet Jamila Woods, inspired by the images she saw in the South Side Home Movie Project archive, observed that “The act of recording is an act of love. To press record is to say, ’I want to remember you, I wish you to be remembered.’”
As the South Side Home Movie Project begins to celebrate two decades of conserving and sharing these memories, this exhibition gives visitors a glimpse into its research and preservation processes while highlighting stories of joy, love, and the intimacies of everyday life through the lens of the home movies. This exhibition also features furniture pieces by the renowned, Chicago-based Norman Teague Design Studios.
Join us for an engaging journey into the distinct ways that home movies can activate community memories and provide affirming resources for imagining our futures!
PROGRAMS AND EVENTS
Digital Storytelling Initiative’s Mothering on Screen Film Series
Sunday, July 13 | 1 PM
Logan Center Screening Room, 201
Down in the Delta, directed by Maya Angelou (1998, 112m)
Mothering on Screen, a free film and discussion series on Sundays in July and August, will featuring six films that explore the experiences of black mothers across different decades, landscapes and social contexts. This series will follow the labor of mothering through the popular, critical and experimental terms of black cinema.
Mothering on Screen begins with Down in the Delta. Directed by Maya Angelou in her first and only credit behind the camera, Down in the Delta explores the relationship between mothering and the ancestral memory of Black migration. Loretta is a single mother struggling to care for her two young children along the busy streets of Chicago. To protect her daughter from poverty and addiction, Loretta’s mother sends the family south to the Mississippi Delta for a summer with their Uncle Earl. This return to the South promises to revive the roots of a fragmented family tree, a restorative journey made possible by the multigenerational force of mothering.
This screening will feature a selection of home movies taken from the Lynette Frazier Collection, archived by the South Side Home Movie Project. Throughout the 50s and 60s, Frazier recorded silent, 8mm home movies that captured her Greater Grand Crossing neighborhood and her many travels across the country and abroad. Intended as a way to share her experiences with her family, Frazier’s collection mirrors Angelou’s Down in the Delta by using film as a tool for the preservation of family memory across time and space. Frazier will join us as a special guest.
Reception and discussion to follow.
16mm Screen Test
Saturday, July 19 | 2-4PM
Logan Center Gallery
Pose for an individual or group portrait on 16mm motion picture film!
Thomas Comerford, 16mm Production Instructor, and Avery Echols, UChicago ’25, will introduce participants to the Bolex Reflex motion picture camera, the workhorse of 16mm professional, student and amateur filmmaking world-wide for nearly 100 years (and a favorite of many SSHMP family filmmakers).
Wear a costume, or just be yourself, and step in front of the camera to strike a pose or perform a pantomime for your 22-second screen test!
After the shoot, the screen test portraits will be sent to the lab for processing and printing. The films will be screened on a 16mm projector during the exhibition closing event on Friday, August 15, 6-8pm. All participants will receive a digital transfer of their screen tests.
Closing Reception
Friday, August 15 | 6-8 PM
Logan Center Gallery
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION TEAM
Arts + Public Life / South Side Home Movie Project Staff: Sabrina Craig, Avery LaFlamme, Alfredo Nieves, Jacqueline Stewart, Rai Mckinley Terry, Camille Townson, Liu Yang
Logan Center Programming and Production Staff: Jan Brugger, Ben Chandler, Jaden Dueñas, Emily Hooper Lansana, Kal Haile, Adelina Mejia, Bill Michel, Jenny Pinson, Ben Ruder, Anika Steppe, Marcus Warren
The Act of Recording is an Act of Love: The South Side Home Movie Project, presented by Arts + Public Life and Logan Center Exhibitions, is curated by Jacqueline Stewart and Sabrina Craig. Additional support is provided by the Ng Family Visiting Artist Fund, the Office of the Provost’s Diversity & Inclusion Initiative at the University of Chicago, the Revada Foundation, and Friends of the Logan Center.