Special Collections to Participate in 'Arkansas's Reel History' Next Saturday in Little Rock

W.J. Good

CBS film crew of The Search sets up on Oct. 2, 1954 (University Libraries Special Collections, PC2376). The episode this team filmed centered on Mary C. Parler's search for "the great-great-grandchild" of an Elizabethan ballad, "The Two Sisters." The Fine Arts Building in the background, designed by famed architect Edward Durell Stone, had just been completed a few years earlier.

The University of Arkansas Libraries Special Collections Department will be taking part in "Arkansas's Reel History" on Saturday, Oct. 10, from 1 to 6 p.m., at the Ron Robinson Theater at 100 River Market Ave., in Little Rock. Participants will view several rare historic films along with a panel discussion addressing the conservation and preservation of archival film footage in personal collections.

The films include footage from Dunbar High School in the 1940s; Nashville, Arkansas in the 1950s; annual OBU/Henderson State football games and parades in the 1940s; Arkansas politics; the1953 Little Rock Christmas parade; and Hot Springs in the 1930s and 1940s.

In addition, Special Collections is screening two films from the archives: Opportunity for Arkansas – Buffalo National River, a fifteen-minute film created by Neil Compton in spring 1963 to promote keeping the Buffalo River free-flowing and undammed;  and an episode of CBS's The Search, featuring folklorist Mary C. Parler as she scours the Ozarks for folk songs in 1954.

Angela Fritz, interim head of Special Collections, is taking part in the panel discussion, which aims to promote the importance of preserving film and moving images. The panel will discuss the importance of privately-owned film collections and home movies and how they tell stories, document communities, and capture family memories – an important, yet fragile, part of the country's film heritage.  "By digitally preserving these films," Fritz adds, "we save the history of our communities and state for future generations, as well as enable unprecedented access to these important cultural artifacts of American life to a diverse audience."

The Ron Robinson Theater is part of Central Arkansas Library System's Main Library campus and is located in the River Market district.  "Arkansas's Reel History" is free, open to the public, and popcorn will be provided. For more information, please call 501-682-6900 or email history.commission@arkansas.gov. For more information about University Libraries Special Collections Department, please contact 479-575-8444 or email specoll@uark.edu. 

The event is sponsored by the Arkansas History Commission and State Archives in collaboration with Ouachita Baptist University Archives and Special Collections, The Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, UALR's Center of Arkansas History and Culture, the Garland County Historical Society, and the University of Arkansas Libraries Special Collections, and is funded in part by a grant from the Arkansas Humanities Council, the Department of Arkansas Heritage, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.