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

S4.2: Sydney Perkins: Of Kaiju, “Right People” and How Little COVID-19 Has Changed Life as an Archivist

******** UPDATE TO BLOG *********
Since this was recorded, my guest made some wonderful positive discoveries about herself and moved forward on them. Unfortunately, that made some of the information in this recording no longer valid and rather painful.
A statement from my guest:

“I do not go by the name used in this episode or later ones anymore, and even at the time I was privately aware of the distress that name was causing me. It is completely unacceptable to ever refer to me by that name or record it in any context anymore. Also my pronouns are she/they now.”

I have thusly changed all blog information (including photo) to match her truth, and you will only find the aforementioned references within the recordings. We both felt (as archivists) that it would be a shame to completely delete the podcast but it is my responsibility to support and platform my guests and not do them harm.

I believe that changing information based on these critical life issues need to be attended to, now and always. I hope others do the same.

*******************

I’m thrilled to pieces to welcome my beloved friend and colleague Sydney Perkins to Archivist’s Alley. More importantly, she is my first REAL GUEST from my new home base here in Paju, South Korea!
I hope you enjoy our conversation as much as I liked having it.
She is a really special person to me in all kinds of ways and beyond talented. She is funny, charming and delightful. I wish you could all meet her in person. When I say on the podcast that I respect her and wish that I was as talented as she is, I am not even lying. She’s impressive. We should all be so lucky to be as engaged, passionate and gifted in our chosen line of work as my darling pal Sydney is.
As usual, profile and bio below, plus a few frames of the super cool font presentation we talk about on the ‘cast!!!

QUICK NOTE:
As I’ve been here and as things have been getting weirder and more worrisome all over the world, I decided that, as an archivist, archival activist and advocate for change (especially in terms of platforming invisible voices via my podcast) I wanted to cover how COVID-19 is hitting (or not hitting) the people in our community. So if you are reading this and you are a media specialist, historian, information professional of any kind and identify as POC, LGBTQI, differently abled, woman-identifying, or any other marginalized group that my privileged white ass may have not covered (and for which I deeply apologize), please hit me up here archivistsalley@gmail.com

Sydney Perkins is an enthusiastic film arqueervist who loves handling and researching film and thinking of creative approaches to restoration. Currently she is unemployed and probably working on a shitpost for Archivist Memes.

One of the brilliant intertitles that Sydney created
Another one of the brilliant intertitles that Sydney created
Sydney is just a rock star.

S4.1: Ariel and Archivist’s Alley Moved to Korea: Update and Request

Hey there!

It’s me, Ariel.

I finally got myself together enough to record an episode. And I’m glad I did. I swore that I wouldn’t leave this behind when I moved to Korea and I’m very much not intending to.

The world has clearly been changing drastically since I left the US and I think this show HAS to reflect that.

I want to invite anyone who wants to talk about all the things that we normally talk about- preservation, mental health, media materials, white supremacy, class consciousness, archives, digitization, technology, queerness, blackness, transphobia, contract work and unions- to feel free to contact me at archivistsalley@gmail.com or via Twitter @archivistsalley and maybe we can do an episode together.

Community- it’s what’s feeds the heart, soul & mind. Let’s keep it healthy while we keep ourselves healthy, yeah?

So here’s my update. Gimme a shout, y’all.

Dr. T.J. Tallie: Queered Power Structures, Polygamist Archive Studies and How to Survive the Non-Stop Fiesta of Sadness

If I could shout it from every karaoke bar and academic institution that has ever existed, I would take up ALL THE SPACE yelling and singing about how much my dear friend (and glorious glamour queen) Dr. T.J. Tallie rules.
He has taught me so many things about how to be a better person, historian, activist and friend.

THE GREATEST THING IS THAT AS OF THIS LAST WEEK, THE BOOK THAT WE TALK ABOUT ON THIS PODCAST IS AVAILABLE FOR SALE AND YOU SHOULD ALL BUY ONE!!!!!!!!

The link is right here and it is available on Barnes & Noble and all kinds of online book sellers as well as the one I linked to.
This is what it looks like:

Buy this amazing work!!!

However, my convo with T.J. will be the second to last podcast that I do from the US. I will do one more and then….well, you’ll hear in the next podcast!!

Just check out this truly amazing and fun conversation with one of the greatest young professional minds/academics/historians and Missy Elliot Karaoke Singers of our time. ALSO- NO ONE LOOKS BETTER IN A CAPE OR VICTORIAN COLLAR THAN DR. TALLIE. This is just fact. Trust me on it.

As usual, bio and links under the podcast…

BIO:

T.J. Tallie is an Assistant Professor of History in the Department of History at the University of San Diego. His work focuses on questions of gender, race, colonialism, indigeneity, Africa, and sexuality. He is the author of Queering Colonial Natal: Indigeneity and the Violence of Belonging in Southern Africa. He is from Los Angeles originally and is a sassy unicorn of knowledge and justice.

Links:

https://read.dukeupress.edu/glq/article/3/4/437/9940/Punks-Bulldaggers-and-Welfare-Queens-The-Radical

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