Oddball Film Archives and Angel Island

So once again, I'm a week behind on my post, cos it just seems to be one of those things... Anyway, another exciting week-end to tell you about... So I started off the week-end taking part in a workshop organised by the San Francisco Film Society, which I'd come across at random. The workshop was entitled All Rights Reserved: Stock Footage and I was drawn to it because I'm interested in the use of found or re-appropriated footage in my art work. 

The location for the workshop literally blew me away. It was taking place at Oddball Film + Video, which I soon discovered is an independent film archive, run by Stephen Parr who's been collecting reels of film and building this archive for the last 40 years. He now uses the collection as a stock footage bank where documentary and film makers can find footage for their projects and get licensed to display it. The photos you see below are only the tip of the iceberg, the whole place was just rooms with stacks and stacks of film reels going 10 shelves high. One of the main occupations of the staff at the archive is currently trying to get all this footage in digital format, so it becomes more accessible to the costumers and will eventually be available just to be downloaded on the internet by the costumers (obviously for a price). 

 The workshop was fascinating, first giving us a glimpse into the vast array of stock footage available in this archive, but also in other similar archives. Even more interestingly though, it also gave us a bit of knowledge of how to go about getting the rights to stock footage, how much it might cost and where to find free footage as well.

The archive also offers internships, which I think I might like to look into at some point after graduating from art school.

On the Sunday, a couple of friends and I went hiking on Angel Island. We got the ferry early in the morning and set out to the island. We were really lucky with the weather, it was a glorious day!

San Francisco seen from the ferry

Alcatraz seen from the ferry

Angel Island basically used to be the equivalent of New York's Ellis Island but for asian immigrants. Unfortunately, due to racist biases of the time, Angel Island wasn't so welcoming as Ellis Island and in fact its main purpose was to keep asians out, so that only the most determined managed to make it into the US. They've preserved the immigration centre, which doubled as an internment camp for POWs during WWII and we got to visit it.

The island is also full of abandoned buildings dating from when it was used as a navy outpost during WWII and we got to have a look around those. I was very surprised to see that they weren't condemned.

My friends Sam and Greg

The island itself was really beautiful and we had a really nice hike around the perimeter road and up the highest mound of the island from which we had a beautiful view!

The island is also populated with lots of birds of prey like the vulture in the photograph below, flying and perching a tree. I was so excited! It's not every day you get to see vultures than close up!

Golden Gate Bridge, seen from the island

Golden Gate Bridge seen from the ferry, on the way home