Speaker: Chad Hunter (Outgoing Executive Director of Video Trust; Media Preservation Consultant with Appalshop)
Founded in 1969, Appalshop is a multi-disciplinary media arts and cultural center located in rural eastern Kentucky. The Archive of Appalshop stewards the largest body of moving image documentation of central Appalachia in the country.
On July 28, 2022, a catastrophic 1000-year flood that exceeded the area's worst-recorded flood by 7 feet, breaching Appalshop's building and immersing the organization's archive of photographs, paper records and most of its 18,000 obsolete-format audiovisual items in flood water. The disaster has placed nearly a century of first-voice primary source film and video documentation of central Appalachian history, art, and culture at grave risk of being lost forever.
Appalshop Media Preservation Consultant Chad Hunter will provide an overview of the disaster, rescue efforts in the immediate aftermath of the flood, and the current race to salvage and preserve the collections.
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