In the days before the ubiquitous cell phone camera captured every small moment, home movies provided a unique eye on everyday life, which sometimes turned out to be significant historical moments. Such is the case with the Walther Barth Collection.
The Tennessee Archive of Moving Image and Sound (TAMIS) is pleased to announce a grant award of $71,400 from the National Film Preservation Foundation. The funds will be used to restore and preserve home movies and films from Dr. Walther Barth. TAMIS is a part of the McClung Historical Collection of the Knox County Public Library. The Friends of the Library are acting as the grant’s fiscal agent and are providing $12,000 in matching funds to complete the project.
This one-of-a-kind collection consists of several thousand feet of silent 16mm reversal motion picture film. The grant enables TAMIS to fund the most comprehensive preservation process possible on this collection. Without it, the expertise and specialized lab work would be unattainable.
This is the second grant TAMIS has received to fund preservation of this extensive collection. The process is expected to take one to two years to complete. With careful management, the preservation materials are expected to last several hundred years without degradation.
Barth was a skilled amateur filmmaker who immigrated to the United States in 1931, eventually settling in Knoxville. He captured the hustle and bustle of cosmopolitan continental life, early evidence of Nazi influences on German society, pastoral outings, the verdant landscapes of upstate New York, the Great Smoky Mountains and vignettes of family life.
“These films are important to preserve because they document scenes in pre-war Germany that provide a candid look at a moment before the societal changes of the Third Reich and the devastation of World War II,” said TAMIS project manager John Morton.
“After Dr. Barth’s move to the United States, the footage preserves period glimpses of American marvels, both natural and man-made, and a lively portrait of the emerging automobile culture. The breadth of the collection is capacious enough to offer multiple rich veins of material to researchers.”
Dr. Barth’s son donated the films to TAMIS in 2007. Portions have been digitized and presented in screenings at the Tennessee Theatre in Knoxville and at the Orphan Film Symposium in New York City. It was selected for inclusion in the orphan film night at the To Save and Project film festival at the Museum of Modern Art, NYC. This grant will preserve and restore the remainder of the films not preserved with TAMIS’ 2020 grant funding.
Along with the Barth Collection at TAMIS, the National Film Preservation Foundation announced grants to 27 additional institutions across the United States to preserve numerous reels from their collections.
Portions of the previously preserved films are available online.
Mary Pom Claiborne is assistant director for marketing, communications and development for Knox County Public Library