Over the course of three Saturdays in October, 2019, the AMIA Film Advocacy Task Force held a 16mm film workshop at Middle School #250 in New York City.

Designed to engage school children in a consideration of motion pictures as a science, a tactile art-making enterprise and as an archival medium, the workshop curriculum includes direct animation, photochemical processing [using caffenol], visual literacy and film exhibition. Students learned from a diverse group of film professionals, including Connie Huang, the camera operator for Stephen Speilberg’s current production WEST SIDE STORY. On the final Saturday, the students presented their final film projects and place their film originals with The New York Public Library, thereby ensuring that their works are conserved and accessible in perpetuity.

This is the second WS2F Workshop, the first was in 2017.  The goal of the program is to inspire young people from diverse socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds at a critical time in their development to think about careers in film-associated fields which are, at this point, challenged by a lack of diversity and inclusion while also serving formal curricular goals in Science Technology Engineering Art Mathematics (S.T.E.A.M.).

Images from the 2017 We Save 2 Film Workshop