Thank you and Farewell, Justin!

As summer came to a close we also drew down our time with Roselani Intern, Justin. We had so much fun with him and we think that he had fun with us, too! In the interview below Justin shares some of the things that he picked up in his time in the archive with us and how his time in ʻUluʻulu affected his perspective.

Could you share a little more about the work you did at ʻUluʻulu since we did your last interview? Did your assignments change over the time you were with the archive?

 A few things changed during my last interview. As I began to complete my assignments, there were times where I needed to pivot and balance requests as needed. One of the larger assignments is a current project with the American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB) where I assisted in pulling video tapes from the film vault, placed them in order by HKG number on a staging module rack, and applied ID stickers on each of the 721 video tapes in this batch to be sent out and digitized. One of my favorite assignments was transcoding KGMB ENG DVD files into an mp4 format to be used as reference files. I didn’t realize how large the collection was but I’m happy I was able to get through the folders I was given. Fortunately creating these reference files overlapped with my reference assignment to assist in providing these files to incoming research requests. As for my project in creating catalog descriptions. I felt that the most difficult part was thinking of interesting ways to create descriptions for video clips that may not have a lot of things going on. My project in assessing and creating an inventory for the Hawaiʻi International Film Festival (HIFF) collection slightly changed a bit. This project taught me the importance of paying attention to detail especially when items come in without labels or any identifying information. 

Was there anything about the material  you worked with that was surprising or unexpected?

One thing that stuck out to me while transcribing the KGMB ENG logsheets was a news story titled Wrestle Mania. Initially I was intrigued just by the name and thought maybe it was just a brief segment of the inaugural WrestleMania I promoted by the then World Wrestling Federation (WWF), that occurred on March 31, 1985 at Madison Square Garden in New York City. After prioritizing this electronic news gathering (ENG) file for transcoding, I eagerly scrubbed through the footage and was amazed to find that it was actual coverage of a local wrestling show in Hawai’i put on by a local promotion National Wrestling Association (NWA) Polynesia. Even more interesting, was having footage including some of the most famous wrestlers during this golden age of professional wrestling like Bruiser Brody and Kevin Sullivan. I’ve always known that wrestling occurred in Hawaiʻi, but to actually see a glimpse of a time we can never get back is definitely special. More than just the action portrayed in the news segment, are the interspersed fan interviews, one of which I love is the kupuna exclaiming she has never missed a wrestling match ever since professional wrestling was happening in Hawaiʻi. 

Now that you have worked as a Moving Image Archivist, and have had a chance to work with some different formats, what is your favorite archival media format and why?

I was fortunate to assist in assessing and creating an inventory on the Hawaiʻi International Film Festival (HIFF) collection. It was a good mix between 35mm film reels and magnetic tape, and even a Digital Audio Tape (DAT) and floppy disks randomly attached to some items. As much as it was fun creating inspection reports and transcribing and discernable notes on the tapes themselves, I loved being able to handle and inspect the 35mm reels. Maybe I’m slightly biased because my background is originally archiving still photography, but having the ability to physically inspect the frames for clues to assist in my description unlike a magnetic tape where I could only describe it by format type and mark it as “unlabeled” if there were no notes included on the case or the tape itself.

Do you have any recommendations for movies or TV shows that feature libraries, archives, or archival footage?

This is tough haha because I haven’t come across anything recently that captivated me enough to sit down and watch it. I was about to say the Breakfast Club but that would be cheating on this question haha. But one movie I do want to rewatch is called The Ninth Gate, where Johnny Depp’s character is a rare and excotic  bookseller contracted by a collector to find a book written by a 17th-century author which supposedly has the power to summon the Devil. As archivists and information professionals, we’re sorta like that in a way having the prowess to find and preserve things that could potentially be lost. Having worked predominantly in documentary films on the archival side of the process, a film I have been wanting to watch is about the late Māori filmmaker Merata Mita called Merata: How Mum Decolonised the Screen, which chronicles her life as told by her children and uses footage shot of and by her.

Thank you, Justin! We hope to see you buzzing about in the archives world in the future. Here’s to a great summer!

Through the generous support of the Henry Ku‘ualoha & Muriel Roselani Giugni Fund of the Hawai‘i Community Foundation, and in partnership with the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) Pathways Fellowship Program, the Roselani Media Preservation Internship is offered each year at ‘Ulu‘ulu to give a student of merit who is committed to the preservation of our media history the opportunity to acquire practical experience in a moving image archive.