S4.8: Candace Ming: Immediate Access, Weird Collectors, and the Necessity of Personal Time

As usual these days, I’m behind. I keep feeling like I’m going to catch up with myself and the podcast and maybe I will but it seems like life and this horrible pandemic and Other Stuff keep coming up.

But I want to reiterate that this podcast is still important to me and I am still extremely dedicated to it, even in the middle of whatever chaos is happening.
As usual, thank you for your patience and continued listening. I believe in you, these guests, and every conversation and issue that we discuss. It’s just that whole…life thing, amirite?

THAT SAID, I want to bring you an incredible conversation with an invaluable member of our archiving and preservation community, Candace Ming. When I first met them, I was so excited! To me, just hearing the name “Candace Ming” attached was legendary- they had always felt like superstar-tier. And then I got to hang out with them at an AMIA conference and it was so cool! I just felt like a million bucks!

Recording this was an absolute blast. And I really hope that you enjoy it and get as much out of it as I did. Candace is authentically one of the best humans with some GREAT things to say.

Two quick things:
-this was recorded before the elections so some of the conversation is a *wee* bit dated. This is what happens when life (my life) gets in the way of my podcast and a brilliant conversation. Again- apologies all around.
– please note that I used the pronouns “her/she” in the introduction and beginning of the show. These are not Candace’s preferred pronouns. The correct ones are they/them and those should be used going forward.

And now…Please enjoy the amazing Candace Ming on Archivist’s Alley! As usual, bio and copious links are below the podcast!

Candace Ming is the Media Conservation and Digitization Specialist at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.  They are a graduate of NYU’s Moving Image Archiving and Preservation program. They have a wealth of experience as an archivist (Carnegie Hall Archives, Alaska Film Archives, Missouri History Museum) and as a film projectionist (Landmark Theaters in their native St. Louis). They are the former Project Manager/Archivist of the South Side Home Movie Project where they were responsible for digitizing and preserving all home movies donated to the SSHMP and also conducted community outreach. They are on the Board of Directors for the Center for Home Movies and the Association of Moving Image Archivists. they also serve as Secretary for the International Association of Audiovisual Archives Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Committee.

LINKS! CHECK ‘EM OUT!!!


https://sova.si.edu/record/NMAAHC.SC.0001?s=0&n=10&t=C&q=great+migration&i=0


https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/initiatives/great-migration-home-movie-projecthttps://www.centerforhomemovies.org/


https://sshmp.uchicago.edu/https://sshmpportal.uchicago.edu/

Mo Henry: Negative Cutting, Orson Welles Restorations & Women’s Power in the Film Industry

Mo Henry!!! Mo Henry!!! She is so cool!

I wish you all could meet her and hang out with her! I hope that you get a good sense of how cool she is from this episode because she really is one of the most fun-to-hang-out-with women I have ever met.

If you had told me that we would end up being friends when I first saw her talk about her work on The Other Side of the Wind, I would’ve doubted you. She’s genuinely amazing, inspirational and….well, we could have gone on for a few hours more with other stories…

So I hope you enjoy this conversation and I hope that you read all the articles that I’m including here because they are AWESOME. Much like the magnificent Mo!

Bio:

Mo Henry is a film negative cutter acclaimed by many as one of the greatest in her field. Her works include franchise film series such as Spiderman, Batman, The Matrix, and Harry Potter, cult classics such as Mulholland Drive, The Big Lebowski, El Mariachi (uncredited) and Apocalypse Now Redux. Mo worked exclusively for many years on Clint Eastwood’s films and on all of Frances Ford Coppola’s restoration projects. More recently, she cut several of Christopher Nolan’s films such as The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises, and Inception.  According to The Internet Movie Database, she has been a negative cutter on over 300 films, although Mo claims IMDB has many inaccuracies, missing many films that she has cut and including her on films on which she was not involved, and her ultimate total far exceeds 300. In addition, she cut a fair number of adult films under the alias Ruby Diamond. Despite her low profile she has amassed a fan base over the years, and many fans are known to stay during the final credits to see if Mo’s name appears.

She is a fourth generation Henry negative cutter, starting at Universal at 19. Her first cut feature film (uncredited) was Jaws, a film she was told (by her boss/father) was likely to be a flop, so he allowed her to train on it as a novice. She took a break from negative cutting to be a real estate agent in Beverly Hills in the eighties (with, as she describes it, “Big Hair and Big Shoulder pads”), and as a production coordinator on television commercials and rock videos.

She is left-handed, which initially made it harder for her to learn to cut negative, however, she says her obsessive-compulsive disorder works to her advantage, as it allows her to remember numbers and because she checks everything repeatedly, she has rarely made a mistake.

Mo is a Los Angeles native and a first generation American on her father’s side of the family, the Henrys having immigrated from Ireland.

LINKS:

https://www.aintitcool.com/node/80117

Michelle Caswell: Creating Archives, Making Space & Activating Records of the Now

I first met Dr. Michelle Caswell when I was at UCLA finishing my degree and I already heard how amazing she was back then.

Years later, I was lucky enough to finally get to meet Jarrett Drake in person because he was here in Los Angeles for a conference that (I think) Michelle was running and we talked a little bit about how Michelle’s perspective and work was to the things that we believed and fought for in the archiving world.

Fast forward to now.

The more things change the more they stay the same. Jarrett, Michelle and I are all still working for the same things just maybe not within the same formats or institutions and (obvs) there are many reasons for that as my podcast has shown.

I feel so grateful to have been able to sit down with Dr. Caswell and talk with her about what she does and has been doing because she is TRULY INCREDIBLE. The work that she does and the thinking that she pursues within the archives and memory field is larger than the archives and library/information world. She’s the best kind of academic: the kind who goes for access and important content over fanciness. It’s not that her work isn’t smart- it’s smart as hell!

But the fact that she produces and discusses topics and material that we can all get together on? That’s my jam!

Anyways, here’s our conversation and the bio and links are below as usual.

PLEASE check out those links!!! They are AMAZING!!

BIO: 

Michelle Caswell, PhD, is Associate Professor of Archival Studies in the Department of Information Studies at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), where she directs the UCLA Community Archives Lab.
She is the co-founder of the South Asian American Digital Archive, an online repository that documents and provides access to the
stories of South Asian Americans. She is also the author of the book Archiving the Unspeakable: Silence, Memory and the Photographic Record in Cambodia (University of Wisconsin Press, 2014), as well as more than three dozen peer-reviewed articles on archives, memory, and communities.

Info on the event at UCLA on 2/23 https://www.saada.org/ucla

Film mentioned in the podcast: “Lavaan” by Zain Alam https://www.saada.org/wherewebelong/lavaan 
Archivists Against:
http://www.archivistsagainst.org/
Michelle Caswell:
https://michellecaswell.org/

Ashley Blewer: Digital Archiving, Open Source Work & Systems of Strength

My friend and colleague Ashley Blewer is one of the most inspirational people I know. She makes hard things seem simple because she enjoys them so much. She has this brilliant gift of being talented at digital preservation and moving image archiving yet not coming off as intimidating or pretentious. She always seems willing to answer questions you might have and goes out of her way not to make you feel stupid for asking.  Ashley has spent countless hours working on projects that provide educational access to folks who might want to learn about moving image archiving but may not have the funds to do so.

I am incredibly proud to know this fabulous human being, count her as one of my friends and get to watch her be the mighty rock star that she is!!!

Please enjoy our conversation and check out the links and the bio just underneath here. Please note that this episode was recorded in advance so forgive date discrepancies

Bio:

Ashley works as at Artefactual Systems as their AV Preservation Specialist, primarily on the Archivematica project. She specializes in time-based media preservation, digital repository management, infrastructure/community building, computer-to-human interpretation, and teaching technical concepts. She is an active contributor to MediaArea’s MediaConch, a open source digital video file conformance checker software project, and Bay Area Video Coalition’s QCTools, an open source digitized video analysis software project. She holds Master of Library and Information Science (Archives) and Bachelor of Arts (Graphic Design) degrees from the University of South Carolina.

The absolutely amazing Beyoncé articles that Ashley wrote that we discussed:

https://bits.ashleyblewer.com/blog/2016/04/29/lemonade/

https://bits.ashleyblewer.com/blog/2016/02/09/format-ion-video-playback-errors-in-beyonces-latest-music-video/

The other OMGWTFBBQ mindblowing piece that she wrote on the recent Netflix doc series, Wild Wild Country:

https://bits.ashleyblewer.com/blog/2018/04/01/wild-wild-country-and-the-magnetic-media-crisis/

MOAR FUN ASHLEY LINKS!!!:

avpres-training resource https://training.ashleyblewer.com/