‘Eyes on the Prize’: Preservation to dissemination

Abstract

In this paper, key personnel from the Film & Media Archive at Washington University in St. Louis and Crawford Media Services describe their five-year effort to preserve, digitise, reassemble and provide access to the complete interviews conducted for the first six one-hour episodes of ‘Eyes on the Prize’. A production covering the history of the civil rights movement in the United States from 1954 to 1965, this seminal documentary was broadcast on public television in 1987. The interviews, all shot on 16-mm film were unavailable due to their original format and condition, requiring preservation prior to digitisation. A detailed overview of the digitisation and reassembly workflow, along with the hurdles faced throughout the grant-funded project are discussed, along with the challenges of making the interviews accessible in a Samvera digital repository.