News

We thankfully survived the fall and winter months of 2019, so that we can ring in the new year and celebrate the Jones Collection’s 50^th anniversary!

• Reporter Chris Sadeghi, along with a film crew from WFAA, came down to the vault to film a promotional piece for Sadeghi’s REWIND series, which features footage from our WFAA Newsfilm archive.   Check that out here!
• Two SMU classes, David Sedman’s Introduction to Film and Mike Morris’ 16mm Film Production, toured our facilities in October.  For Sedman’s course, Jones Collection curator, Jeremy Spracklen, gave a presentation on the history collection to the class and showed samples of 35mm films from our vault.  Morris’ students came back towards the end of the semester and had their films digitized and color corrected.  These students showed their films, along with a Jones Collection 16mm print of UN CHIEN ANDALOU, at Top Ten Records in December!
• KERA’s FRAME OF MIND latest season included an episode on Norm Hitzges, which featured footage from our collection.  NORM HITZGES: AN OPINIONATED HISTORY OF DALLAS SPORTS had a special advanced screening at the Alamo Drafthouse before premiering on KERA in November.
• Jones Collection curator Jeremy Spracklen attended the 2019 Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) conference in Baltimore.  While there, as part of the festival’s archival screening night, Spracklen showcased our footage of the Velvet Underground at a Vietnam War protest on Dallas’ White Rock Lake.
• One of the collection’s highlights this fall was the digitization of a WFAA audio reel,entitled “A Service of Thanksgiving and Dedication,” commemorating the 100^th anniversary of the founding of Dallas.  Please give it a listen and read some of the Dallas Morning News’ Robert Wilonsky much needed context  here.
• The Video Association of Dallas donated over 30 years of media materials to the Jones Collection, including features and shorts from its storied local festival, VIdeofest.  We at the Jones Collection couldn’t be more excited about this donation! Stay tuned for a more formal announcement to come!;

As we mentioned, this is the Collection’s 50^th Anniversary, and we’ve had a number of exciting events in store including:

• January 19, 2020 at 7:00 pm – The historic Texas Theatre will screen our beautiful 35mm print of the 1947 Bogart & Bacall noir, DARK PASSAGE. Tickets and info can be found here.
• January 30, 2020 – The Jones Collection will offer tour of our facilities for attendees of the World Languages and Literature Department 2020 Film Festival, followed by a panel discussion and a screening of JUKE JOINT, which will be introduced by SMU film faculty member, Kevin Heffernan.
• February 6, 2020 – The Jones Collection and the SMU’s Friends of the Library are so excited to host an evening with WFAA’s Tracey Rowlett, Doug Fox, Byron Harris, and John Sparks, discussing their favorite stories from the 1970s and behind-the-scenes tales from newsroom, along with footage from our collection. Current WFAA reporter, Chris Sadeghi, will moderate.

For more information on these and other events in 2020, check out our Facebook and Twitter.

Screenings

The Jones Collection screened prints for SMU classes, continued its monthly series at the historic Texas Theatre, and had several prints travel nationally and abroad.  These include:

• DEADLY SPAWN – 35mm – The Texas Theatre
• THE BLOOD OF JESUS – DCP – Zurich
• SHOOT THE PIANO PLAYER – 35mm – SMU
• BLOOD OF A POET – 16mm – Top Ten Records
• UN CHIEN ANDALOU – 16mm – Top Ten Records

And we’ve got some big 2020 films lined up for classes at SMU and public screenings beyond, including:

• BALLET MECHANIQUE
• SULPHUR SPRINGS SILENT FILMS
• JUKE JONT
• DARK PASSAGE
• THE IMMIGRANT
• COPS
• BIG BUSINESS
• I AM A FUGITIVE ON THE CHAIN GANG
• LET THERE BE LIGHT
• MEMPHIS BELLE
• NEAR DARK
• CARIB GOLD
• LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS
• I AM JOAQUIN
• DISCO GODFATHER

In the Media

The Jones Collection was more than busy in the final quarter of 2019, and our footage could be seen everywhere!  Here are just a few of the notable highlights:

• WFAA – Monday Night Football
• SMU’s MPRINT – Keeping it Reel
• WFAA – Santa Claus & the Christmas Holiday
• Flashback: Dallas – “Political Paranoia” and the North Dallas Democratic Women’s Club, feat. Future Governor Ann Richards
• WFAA – Airports & Holiday Travel
• Lone Star 92.5 – See Newly Digitized Footage Of Evel Knievel Visiting Dallas In 1974
• WFAA – Dallas Marathon
• Fort Worth Star Telegram – Alan Bean Day Parade
• WFAA – DFW Hockey History

Social Media Stats

We had just around 147,267 video views over the last three months Our most popular clips during the month of December were:

Captain Kangaroo – 1956
WFAA – Baseball Fight
WFAA – Report from Terlingua, Texas (Don Harris)
WFAA – Tex Watson
WFAA – Man Finds Sphere

Newsfilm Update

Even though we’ve finished digitizing our entire WFAA newsfilm collection (all 3,932 reels of it!!), we still have our work cut out for us.  We’ve begun the identification process for these films, painstakingly going through each and every story and researching the people, places and events that make up this little slice of history.  It’s a lot of work (we even brought in Paula Bosse of Flashback: Dallas fame to help!), but we’ve identified six months of footage so far, with even more in store for the new year.  If you’re interested to see just how far we’ve come, you can check out a sample of this collection here.