The Center for Asian American Media's Memories to Light: Asian American Home Movies initiative is a project to collect and digitize home movies and to share them -- and the stories they tell -- to a broad public.
For the past three years, CAAM's Memories to Light team has gathered, archived, and digitized home movies from 19 families -- comprising 180 films totaling about 15 hours of footage, spanning six decades. The films represent diverse communities including Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Korean, Thai American and mixed-race families, representing twelve states and the District of Columbia.
CAAM is now ready to take Memories to Light to the next level, and is asking for your support to make it happen. They've launched a campaign to raise funds that will help them collect and preserve more home movies from diverse Asian and Asian American communities from all 50 states.
Watch this video for more information about the project:
Three years ago, the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM) created the Memories to Light: Asian American Home Movies program to collect, preserve, and share the home movies (on 16mm, 8mm, and super 8mm film) and experiences of Asian American communities from across the United States from the 1920s through the 1980s.
This national, community-sourced program was developed in part to offer more authentic and complex portrayals of the Asian American experience through the home movies shot by everyday people and families. The films capture unique moments of life over the last 70 years such as graduations and birthdays, buddies with a shared love of a sport, trips to the beach, grandma’s place, time in the backyard, or hanging on the stoop waiting for the parade. Some of the films and footage also have historical significance such as families visiting the world's fair and the legendary Expo ’67 in Montreal.
Help us save Asian American memories and experiences from being lost forever so that we can continue to share the personal stories that go along with these films with the public.
Their goal is to raise $7,500 by August 14.
Your donation will help CAAM purchase equipment, preserve and digitize home movie collections, host public screening events, and maintain the Memories to Light website, among other program costs.
For further information, and to make a donation to the Memories to Light campaign, go here.
