Texas Film Round-Up launches statewide mail-in event

AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 30, 2020 — In honor of American Archives Month, the Texas Archive of the Moving Image (TAMI) is offering its award-winning Texas Film Round-Up with an inaugural statewide mail-in event for the month of October 2020. Individuals, businesses, and institutions can mail their Texas-related films and videotapes to TAMI for free digitization in exchange for contributing a digital copy of their materials for possible inclusion in TAMI’s online archive. Details are available at texasarchive.org/round-up.

The Texas Film Round-Up is a preservation program presented by the Texas Archive of the Moving Image (TAMI) and the Office of the Governor's Texas Film Commission (TFC). Since 2008, thousands of residents, businesses and cultural institutions have participated in one of the 40 in-person Film Round-Up events hosted in locations across Texas. This year’s free digitization event will be statewide by way of remote participation. Contributors are asked to register on TAMI’s website, then mail their Texas-related films and videotapes, including home movies, industrial films, educational films, advertisements, local television and promotional films, directly to TAMI’s office.

The recipient of the Texas Digital Library’s 2020 Outreach Award, the Film Round-Up discovers, preserves and shares the stories of Texans by digitizing and providing access to their obsolete media. The program has resulted in the digitization of more than 50,000 films and videotapes, dating as far back as 1910 and spanning through the decades of media technology. A curated collection of more than 5,000 videos is available at texasarchive.org. This online video-sharing platform welcomes the public to watch, explore and learn about Texas history and culture. It also includes free lesson plans to assist educators in using the videos as primary and secondary source materials for teaching Texas and US History.

“American Archives Month provides an opportunity for the public to learn about why preserving records is important,” said the Texas Archive of the Moving Image’s Interim Director, Elizabeth Hansen. “For Texans, the Film Round-Up program is a great way to preserve their films and videotapes while contributing to the ever-growing story of the Texas experience. It’s a big state worthy of a big archive, and we’re hoping to get every county represented.”

To qualify for free digitization, the films and videotapes must be Texas related, and participants must be willing to donate a digital copy of their materials to the program. The materials must be sent to TAMI during the month of October, will be digitized in Austin, Texas, then returned by mail to the owners, along with a digital copy. More information about the program and its requirements is available at texasarchive.org/round-up.

The Texas Archive of the Moving Image (TAMI) is an independent non-profit organization founded in 2002 to discover, preserve, make accessible and serve community interest in Texas’ moving image heritage. To learn more about the Texas Archive of the Moving Image, visit texasarchive.org. Additional support for TAMI comes from Humanities Texas and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) as part of the federal CARES Act.