The Moving Image Society is hosting its inaugural "Save the Archives" benefit screening! In line with our ongoing programming efforts, we want to provoke discussion about the place of analog media and its preservation in a digital world. We invite submissions of works made on or using "obsolete media" (analog video, small-gauge celluloid film like 8mm and 16mm), found footage works made with any media, and any films that are about or related to archives, preservation, restoration, or provenance.

Our inaugural screening will be hosted in the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Union Cinema, a Sundance Institute Art House Project Certified venue, which has remained committed to programming classic, experimental, and independent cinema on celluloid since its founding in 1972. The screening will benefit the UWM Film Studies Moving Image Archive, a collection of classic, experimental, educational, and orphan 16mm films.

The UWM Film Studies Moving Image Archive includes the Patricia Mellencamp 16mm Print Founding Collection, which holds over 90 cinema classics, and the Marquette Collection, which holds over 60 educational and orphan films. The majority of the films are currently stored in cardboard boxes or in rusty metal cans, and moving the films to appropriate archival storage is necessary. Your submission fee will help ensure the continued life of our collections.

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Patricia Mellencamp is Professor Emerita in Art History and author of "Indiscretions: Avant-Garde Film, Video, and Feminism" (1990), and was instrumental in founding the university's film program in the early 1970s. She taught film history courses for thirty years until her retirement in 2002. The 16mm Print Founding Collection, which was recently rediscovered in a storage room and subsequently rehoused to the Center for 21st Century Studies, consists of prints she used in her courses until the advent of VHS and digital media.

The Moving Image Society was founded with its mission to care for the collection and preserve Mellencamp's legacy, and offers UWM students pursuing careers in film archiving and programming practical and vocational experience, professional development opportunities, and support in realizing their creative projects.