Image of Althea Gibson from the Ramon Williams Collection, courtesy of SSHMP.
Join us for a reception celebrating 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, 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.
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.