S4.3: Stephany Kim: Filmmakers of Color, Daily Activism and Pushing Boundaries to Work For a Better Future

I could fill this page and 50 more with words of praise for Stephany Kim.

I miss our lunches at Musso & Frank’s. I miss our laughs and inside baseball talks about archiving, Hollywood and Korean culture.
I never thought she would come on the podcast but finally it happened and more importantly, she came on to discuss the current situation in the US with the protests and #BlackLivesMatter and systemic oppression.
This episode is a little longer than normal (please forgive us) but I think you’ll agree that we had a lot of ground to cover.

I also want to point out that since the time of our recording, three more Black men have been lynched. 5 Black men hung from trees in just a little over a week. The police want to call them suicides.
No Black person looks at a tree and thinks: yeah, that’s how I’m gonna off myself. Just like how all the white folks used to kill my ancestors way back when.
NOT A SINGLE BLACK PERSON IN EVER.
While people protest for BLM, there are calculated publicly visible murders being carried out. Yeah.

And less and less white people are paying attention to the people who are protesting because they have the added distraction of having the US opening up again for business which (inevitably) will only lead to a lot more COVID cases.

That said…Stephany and I had an amazing conversation about what education had missed in the way of POC in film, our varied local experiences of the recent BLM protests, Karen Eruptions and what the archives world is(n’t) doing.
Check it out!
And don’t miss the bio below as well as the mad amounts of links!

Stephany Kim is a Coordinator, Restoration and Preservation at The Walt Disney Studios. She received a BA in Film Studies from Smith College and a MA in English (Media Preservation) from the University of Rochester. Her film-related interests are in the history of silent film intertitles and modern day approaches to intertitle recreation, preservation of home movies and family histories of people of color in the United States, and the celebrity image and its relation to parasocial interactions during the silent film era.

Her free time is usually dedicated to Polaroid portraitures, staring at pie designs (one of her favorite Instagram accounts is @crumbcrush), and daydreaming about fluffy animals and carne asada tacos. She is overly invested in THE GREAT BRITISH BAKE OFF even though she doesn’t bake.
Stephany was born and raised in the San Fernando Valley and is unapologetic for her Valley Girl accent and usage of Valspeak.

Links and references from the ‘cast

The racist history of tipping: https://afropunk.com/2018/04/the-racist-history-of-tipping/

Black crime fiction writers

Chester Himes: https://hub.jhu.edu/magazine/2017/fall/chester-himes-lonely-crusader-african-american-fiction-writer/

Walter Mosley: http://www.waltermosley.com/

Iceberg Slim: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/05/books/review-street-poison-the-biography-of-iceberg-slim-studies-the-life-of-a-pimp.html

Barbara Neely: https://www.npr.org/2020/03/11/814603243/remembering-barbara-neely-a-pioneer-in-crime-fiction

Here’s a full list of Black-owned bookstores to support right now:

HTTPS://WWW.TOWNANDCOUNTRYMAG.COM/LEISURE/ARTS-AND-CULTURE/G32782756/BLACK-OWNED-BOOKSTORES/

Some ways you can show up for Black Trans Folks: http://www.tgijp.org/from-words-to-action-showing-up-for-black-trans-women.html

A collection of Black-led Queer and Trans orgs to support: https://www.bustle.com/p/32-black-led-queer-trans-organizations-to-support-22959025


And finally…for those wondering about James Wong Howe…
there actually are a few books about him! Check ’em out here:

James Wong Howe, Cinematographer
by Todd Rainsberger

James Wong Howe The Camera Eye: A Career Interview
by Alain Silver

Episode 2: Jarrett Drake, Respectability Boxes & Archiving Accountability

Thanks for coming back to Episode 2 of Archivist’s Alley!

Got great responses to our first episode with Siobhan over at MARMIA. That was such a fun time. I have to say- I have the best unpaid job on this podcast- spending a little time with, hands down, the most exquisite human beings working in this field. I am so glad I am getting to introduce them to all of you listening. I am continuing to record episodes as I go and prepare more and more. SO MANY EXCITING GUESTS COMING UP!!

This week is Valentine’s Day so our guest is a friend and colleague whose work and ideas I feelΒ INCREDIBLY PASSIONATEΒ  about and I hope that you do too. I get a little excited in here. I use some adulty language of the 4-letter variety, so be aware. But I’m about to use some of that now too so, to hell with it. We’re all grown ups.

Mr. Jarrett Drake is one badass mofo.

But he’s also one of the most incredibly qualified and mindblowingly REAL motherfuckers I know.

I don’t know anyone like him. Sometimes I wish I did because we could really use more Jarretts in the world but other times…His words and power are so great that he’s like the Highlander: there can be only one.

I suggest that you follow him on twitter: @jmddrake. His threads on labor, archives, the experiences of POC in archival and academic environs are GOLDEN. He also deconstructs football politics in a way that even people who aren’t football-ish (like me) can find illuminating.

His Medium page,Β medium.com/@jmddrake, is SO. DAMN. GOOD.

For our podcast discussion, I recommend you read these pieces, as we mention them:

https://medium.com/on-archivy/im-leaving-the-archival-profession-it-s-better-this-way-ed631c6d72fe

https://medium.com/on-archivy/archivists-without-archives-a-labor-day-reflection-e120038848e

Jarrett’s own bio is as follows:

Jarrett M. Drake is a PhD student in Social Anthropology at Harvard University and an advisory archivist for A People’s Archives of Police Violence in Cleveland. His lines of inquiry converge on issues of justice, state violence, accountability, and memory work. Prior to Harvard, Jarrett spent four years as the Digital Archivist at Princeton University. While there, he volunteered as an instructor in the New Jersey Scholarship and Transformative Education in Prisons (NJ-STEP) Consortium through the Princeton Prison Teaching Initiative, teaching preparatory and introductory college composition. Jarrett is a graduate of Benjamin Banneker Achievement Center in Gary, Indiana

I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I loved doing it.