MIAMI — The next big artifact documenting South Florida’s past probably isn’t behind glass, it’s likely forgotten, collecting dust.
Maybe it’s sitting in a closet. Maybe it’s tucked away in a garage. Wherever it is, whatever it is, the team at Wolfson Archives wants to find it — preserving history while adding to it.
“A lot of those home movies chronicle places that no longer exist,” said Lou Kramer, archives manager at the Lynn and Louis Wolfson II Florida Moving Image Archives. “You see people on vacation. You see family events. You see the crazy things that families do when a camera is pointed at them.”
The archives, a division of Miami Dade College, houses one of the largest collections of moving images of South Florida. They want to digitize it all and make it accessible to the public. Inside its temperature controlled vault is millions of feet of local film and thousands of hours of tape already.
“It’s a project that you want to be a part of,” Kramer said. “We are safeguarding history. We are safeguarding the past,” she continued.
Many of those recordings came from ordinary families, documenting milestones and moments of shared tradition and social life. From pool days at the Venetian in the 1920s in Coral Gables, to quinceañeras in Miami, circa 1966, and big birthdays decades later — it’s all restored and saved online.
The team at Wolfson Archives carefully cleans and digitizes aging film reels and videotapes that are donated by families and local news organizations. Local 10’s archival footage makes up a massive part of this collection used by researchers, students, historians, filmmakers, and the public to experience and learn from.
WATCH: Major videotape donation by WPLG to Wolfson Archives 2007
CLICK HERE to search the Wolfson archives.
For family films, search “home movies” — then enter a year and a keyword —i.e “1940, birthday.”
Together, the footage creates a visual timeline of the region — from major headlines to everyday moments that reveal how communities lived, celebrated and evolved.
To donate your film to the archive or to request help with old reels, click here.
To submit an idea for What Connects Us, email whatconnectsus@wplg.com.
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