Help Me Save Filmstrips

As far as I can tell, I’m the only person saving filmstrips, a forgotten 20th-century multimedia format used in classrooms and industry. These projected still-image presentations, a budget alternative to 16mm movies, were common in underfunded school districts serving poorer communities. Often printed on cheap, decomposing film, they’re at risk of being lost forever. Unlike movies or VHS, most are discarded or sold as pricey antiques, their rarity unrecognized. Not saving them erases the historical record of marginalized voices.

Preserving filmstrips is time-consuming work. Because tools for archival-quality 35mm scans aren't readily available in the consumer space, I scan each frame on a flatbed scanner, which can take up to three minutes per frame. Filmstrips can exceed 100 frames each, making the effort exponentially painstaking. I have almost 3,000 left to preserve, many from a 2,500-filmstrip donation in 2022. And as people learn about my work, they send me more to save. It’s at least a decade of full-time work with my current tools.

If a filmstrip’s soundtrack hasn’t been lost, I reassemble the scans and soundtrack into a video that recreates its original viewing experience. This requires manually cropping and straightening frames, a task no software or AI can correctly do, attempting color correction, digitizing vinyl records or audiocassettes, and compiling everything in a video editor. Archivists, institutions, and museums have ignored filmstrips. Every filmstrip I scan is made freely available on the Internet Archive, and fully-restored titles are also uploaded to YouTube.

Your financial support keeps this solo mission alive. It covers my time, equipment, and basic expenses like electricity, groceries, and taxes. If these needs are met, I can focus on saving these quirky pieces of history. Exceeding this goal could fund better tools to preserve more history faster. Filmstrips are forgotten primary sources of our culture and education, full of nostalgia and kitsch. They deserve to be remembered for equity in our shared past.

Help me save this endangered format. Back my work to preserve filmstrips for future generations. Every dollar makes a difference!