Link Love: Amateur Film of Mexico in the Archives of American Art

In August 2012, Megan McShea, the audiovisual archivist for the Archives of American Art, posted about the amateur films of artists Stefan Hirsch and Elsa Rogo shot in Mexico between 1935 and 1941 that had just been preserved with a grant from the National Film Preservation Foundation.  For this story see http://blog.aaa.si.edu/2012/08/hirsch-rogo-home-movies.html

A followup blog post by Elena Jackson Albarrán, assistant professor of History and Latin American, Latino/a and Caribbean Studies at Miami University of Ohio, is a rare essay based on actual experience with using amateur film in an academic setting: http://blog.aaa.si.edu/2012/12/mexico-on-the-move-a-return-from-timelessness.html. Dr. Albarrán brings the knowledge of Mexican history and art to the reading of this film and, hence, finds what could otherwise be missed without that contextualization.



Reproduction of Schoolhouse Vista, a tempera by Efren Villalobos, age 11, 1932?. 
Stefan Hirsch and Elsa Rogo papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

- Pamela Wintle, Human Studies Film Archives