By Tori Lee

Aug 8, 2025

Story originally posted on UChciago News

“We want your home movies!” proclaimed Hyde Park Herald ads and fliers tacked up in South Side storefronts. Two decades ago, the scrappy archive headed by University of Chicago Prof. Jacqueline Stewart first put out the call for the historical treasure troves hidden in basements and attics. 

Today, in a climate-controlled vault at the Logan Center for the Arts, the South Side Home Movie Project (SSHMP) holds over 1,200 reels of footage shot by South Siders from the 1930s to the 1980s. With a few clicks on the archive’s portal, anyone can step inside a 1940s nightclub, wave to Joe Louis in the Bud Billiken parade, or spend Christmas morning in a Chatham neighborhood living room. 

This year the memory project is marking its 20th anniversary with an exhibition titled “The Act of Recording is an Act of Love,” kicking off a year-long celebration of the archive’s journey collecting community history. 

In the early 2000s, Stewart, a renowned film scholar and South Side native, had become increasingly interested in how nontheatrical films contribute to motion picture history. At a home movie day event in New York, she saw the power of community screenings.

“I thought it was a phenomenal way to bring that kind of local moviemaking to light,” said Stewart, a professor in the Department of Cinema and Media Studies and host of the “Silent Sunday Nights” program on Turner Classic Movies, “to honor the people who made it and to immediately show them why it was important to share it with others.”

For the past 20 years, SSHMP, now part of UChicago’s Arts + Public Life, has carefully digitized and preserved more than 1,200 reels of film. Though just as essential as preserving physical materials, Stewart notes, are the programs and events which bring together musicians, donor families, community members and scholars to activate the collection.

“Step by step, we've been working to discover new ways to share these films within and beyond the South Side communities in which they were made,” said Stewart, who recently returned to campus after serving as director and president of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles. “I'm hoping that our 20th anniversary can be a way for us to connect with more partners to help us make sure that this archive continues to build and thrive for generations to come.”

The 20th anniversary exhibition title was inspired by an observation from poet and musician Jamila Woods after viewing materials from the archive: “The act of recording is an act of love,” said Woods. “To press record is to say, ‘I want to remember you, I wish you to be remembered.’” 

Discover highlights from the South Side Home Movie Project archive, all publicly available for viewing and creative reuse. Got home movies of your own? Let your family memories live on by donating to the archive.

 

Famous faces

What do boxer Joe Louis, tennis player Althea Gibson and the Queen of England have in common? All were captured on film by Ramon Williams, an electrician and amateur Chicago filmmaker who documented life in Bronzeville from the 1940s to the 1960s, the epicenter of a Black cultural renaissance. Over 300 reels of film shot by the “citizen with a camera” were donated to the archive in 2020, the project’s largest donation ever. Visit the Williams collection to watch former heavyweight champion Louis serving as grand marshal of the historic Bud Billiken Parade or chatting with Duke Ellington at the Midwest Horse Show. 

Aftermath of MLK's assassination

When civil rights leader Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on a balcony of the Lorraine Motel in 1968, the world reacted in pain, anger and fear. In Chicago, people took to the streets. Footage from the Jean Patton Collection captures the aftermath in East Garfield Park—military vehicles and police officers mill around as firefighters hose down smoking buildings. In the same reel, the filmmaker gives us a rare glimpse of the original Wall of Respect, a mural of famous Black figures painted in 1967 by the Visual Arts Workshop of the Organization of Black American Culture at 43rd Street and Langley Avenue. The building has since been torn down.

Black fashion and hair

Curious what was at the height of fashion in the 1930s and 40s? Watch the Hope Fashion Show held at the Parkway Ballroom or the Defender Banquet Hair Show, both captured by Williams on 16mm film. Or see a stylish Jean Patton wearing shiny gold pants while playing solitaire in her 1960s chartreuse kitchen in Chatham. In 2024, the SSHMP hosted a film and fashion show celebrating the history of Black fashion using films from the collection. 

Chicagoans get their groove on

In the Alphonse and Nancie Teer Ellis Family Collection, watch Susan Ellis doing The Bump with her brother Michael in their family living room or the Swim with friends at a sleepover. The Ellis family shot 40 films on 8mm film at their Auburn Gresham home and on family trips throughout the 1960s. 

“The families are the heart and soul of the project,” Stewart said.

Or spend the evening at the Roberts Show Lounge, a West Woodlawn nightclub that hosted the toast of Black society during the mid-1950s. The Roberts Family Collection was shot primarily by club owner Herman Roberts and his staff, capturing South Side nightlife from Englewood to Hyde Park.

Since March 2020—in an effort to create community connection during the pandemic—SSHMP has hosted Spinning Home Movies. In each episode, artists including DJs, poets and composers create soundscapes inspired by films in the collection. 

UChicago and Hyde Park history

Visit the Jay Kavanaugh Collection to see what Promontory Point looked like in the 1950s or how UChicago’s campus has changed. Hear from George Reed Jr., a Black physicist who worked at Argonne National Laboratory and contributed to some of the biggest scientific endeavors of the 20th century—the Manhattan Project and the first moonwalk.

— “The Act of Recording is an Act of Love” is free and open to the public through Aug. 24 at the Logan Center for the Arts. Join the South Side Home Movie Project for the closing reception on Friday, Aug. 15 from 6-8 p.m