Silent Movie Day is an international celebration of Silent Films.
It began in 2021 and this year marks the third anniversary. Each year the BYU Motion Picture Archive has joined in the celebration.
Silent Movie Day is set on the calendar as September 29th each year, and we try and do what makes sense to our calendar at BYU. So we are doing a few things to celebrate that beautiful early cinema that relied upon images to tell a story (helped by title cards here and there).
THE TEN COMMANDMENTS (1923) 100th anniversary screening of Cecil B. DeMille’s first attempt at creating the greatest cinematic epic of its time. DeMille is credited with releasing the first feature film in Hollywood history THE SQUAW MAN (1913), and ever since he was continuing to present lavish productions based both in modern settings and from historical moments. With TEN COMMANDMENTS we get both of those worlds, where half the film is the telling of the tale of how ancient Israel was brought out of bondage by God’s own hand, and then it flips to demonstrate how the commandments are applicable today in lives of every person, “You cannot break the Ten Commandments – They will break you.”
Thursday September 28th at 7:30 pm in the Library Auditorium
SILENT MOVIE REMIX – Join us for an exhibition of silent shorts and a feature put to music by BYU students. Silent movies may not have had synchronized sound, but they were practically always presented with some kind of musical accompaniment. BYU students have needle-dropped music from any era they choose to accompany the silent imagery to come up with new and innovative ways to underscore the onscreen drama. Come and watch a few shorts or stay for the whole program!
Friday September 29th from 2:00 – 4:00 pm in the Library Auditorium
We hope you will come and join us for a celebration of these amazing artworks from yesteryear!
*Parking lot restrictions are lifted at 7pm, we are trying a start time a little later so that more parking freedom is available.
Today marks the 250th anniversary of the first publication of Phillis Wheatley’s Poems on Various Subjects, the first book published by an African-American writer.
Wheatley was born in West Africa around 1753 and was sold into slavery as a child. She was taken to Boston, where she was purchased by a wealthy merchant family, the Wheatleys, and given the name Phillis. The Wheatley family gave Phillis an education in English, Greek and Latin, which was highly unusual for enslaved persons. They also and encouraged her to write, and arranged for her to travel to London in order to secure a publisher for her poetry when none could be arranged in Boston. Poems on Various Subjects was published in London on September 1, 1773, and gained notoriety in both England and the American colonies due to its author’s race. Wheatley was manumitted the following year, and while she continued to write and publish poems, she was unable to find a publisher for a second book before she died in 1784. Her work was revived by 19th century abolitionists and again in the 20th century by literary scholars, cementing her importance in the history of American literature.
The BYU library’s copy of Wheatley’s poems was acquired in 1976.
A primary focus at Brigham Young University is providing students with experiential learning opportunities. These opportunities enable students to take the skills that they are learning in the classroom and apply them in real world situations. This deepens learning in rich and meaningful ways. The Yellowstone National Park collection held in the L. Tom Perry Special Collections in the Harold B. Lee Library at Brigham Young University provides a wealth of resources that have the potential to enable rich experiential learning opportunities for students.
Dr. Jay Buckley of the BYU History Department has leveraged the resources in the Yellowstone National Park collection to provide experiential learning opportunities for students. His work with undergraduate student Nathan Benavidez highlights the ways in which the Yellowstone collection can be used. Together they conducted research on how mountain men in the 1820s and 1830s depicted the region that would become Yellowstone National Park. This research provided Nathan with a deeper understanding of historical research and the effort required to publish that research. His work with Dr. Buckley resulted in an article entitled “Mountain Men Reveal Yellowstone: Observations of Daniel Potts, Warren Ferris, and Osborne Russell in the 1820s and 1830s” that was published in the Rocky Mountain Fur Trade Journal in 2022. It also resulted in two national presentations on the topic–one at the Conversations on Collecting Yellowstone Conference in Bozeman, Montana and another at the Museum of the Mountain Man in Pinedale, Wyoming.
Dr. Buckley and Nathan Benavidez with a copy of their article.
Nathan Benavidez presenting at the Conversations on Collecting Yellowstone conference in Bozeman, MT.
Brigham Young University’s Yellowstone National Park collection is exceptionally strong and provides students and faculty with a variety of research opportunities. You can learn more about the Yellowstone National Park collection here and you can access digitized content from BYU’s holdings here.
150 years ago this week, Louisa May Alcott’s novel Work: A Story of Experience first appeared in print. Work was revised from an earlier draft of a novel which Alcott began in 1861.
Work is Alcott’s most autobiographical novel. In it, heroine Christie Devon faces many trials as she tries to earn an independent living, finding positions (including seamstress, nurse, servant, and governess) in which Alcott and her sisters were themselves employed as young women. Christie’s work life mirrors the economic precariousness and despair which Alcott experienced while trying to support herself and her family before she found success as the author of Little Women.
When she returned to the manuscript a decade later, now in her 40s and a wealthy, successful writer, Alcott created a more rewarding and meaningful work life for Christie. In the latter half of the novel, Christie finds happiness with a loving husband, but he is killed in the Civil War. The novel ends with Christie and her young daughter enfolded in a sisterhood of single and widowed women whose work supports each other and improves the lives of the working classes in their community.
BYU Special Collections is pleased to announce the availability of a newly digitized collection: James Richard Bodily mission diaries (MSS 6120). The collection includes two diaries from Bodily’s mission to the Southern States for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. One journal is a “synopsis of (his) missionary labors,” beginning from the time of his call to his journey to the Southern States from Utah. Elder Bodily makes reference to conditions and also many of the individuals and families he had the privilege to visit, teach, and baptize. The second journal continues to document his labors in the Southern States Mission. In the second journal Elder Bodily documents the weather as well as people he meets with and teaches. Dated 1897-1900.
James Richard Bodily was born on February 1, 1872 in Hyde Park, Utah, to William and Sarah Talbot Bodily. He married Margaret Charlotte Cole, the daughter of Joseph and Celia Cole, in the Logan Temple in Logan, Utah, June 2, 1897. Fifteen days after their marriage, James left home to serve a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to the Southern States. He spent most of his mission in Kentucky; he returned home September 2, 1899. In 1902 James and Margaret bought a 160 acre farm in Cherryville for $3000.00. While in Cherryville, James taught school. He purchased additional farms and homesteaded 160 acres at Bancroft in 1912. They lived there fourteen months before selling it and purchasing additional acres. The couple had five children, all of whom were educated in the Whitney Grade School and Preston High School. James was clerk of the Whitney School Board and took an active part in the construction of the school in 1924. After spending the last 19 years of life in Mesa Arizona, he passed away April 12, 1967 at the age of 95 in the Preston Hospital and was laid to rest in the Whitney Cemetery beside his wife who had died three years before.
If you are coming to campus this week for graduation, stop by Special Collections and visit the Latter-day Gamers exhibit. On display are over 100 games themed on Latter-day Saint culture. As humankind gathered to form societies, games and play followed. Fundamentally, games have been used to teach culture, pass on heritage, and identify one another as part of a community. This impressive collection of games is about the realization of a community of Saints. They were created to teach the gospel and to build relationships by connecting us in faith, play, fun, and learning gospel principles.
While in the exhibit, you will have the chance to: Play a game of Book of Mormon chess from Latter-day Designs. Find the first Latter-day Saint board game created in 1947. Examine one of the most popular games, Settlers of Zarahemla, made in 2002. Watch Joel from The Last of Us video game survey the Salt Lake City landscape and Temple. And learn about the history of Pong while playing Pong, Pong Doubles, Quadrapong, or Pong Sports on the installed arcade cabinet.
In 2020, BYU Special Collections acquired a significant collection of early modern and Baroque books in Spanish and Portuguese from a private collector. These materials are now available for researchers. Highlights include literary, historical, and religious titles, and early dictionaries and works on composition. A few examples are shown below:
A new exhibit for Women’s History Month is now on display in the Special Collections lobby area. In Her Own Words features autobiographical writings by 19th century American women, including prominent and lesser-known writers. Their life experiences reflect many of the major themes and events of 19th century American history, such as the Great Awakening, the Civil War, and immigration and westward expansion, as well struggles for the rights of women and minorities.
This Student-Produced film sought to capture the traditions both formal and informal of BYU student life in 1971.
In the spring of 1971 several students at Brigham Young University produced this film.
It is a playful campus romance that captures a slice-of-life of BYU campus culture at the
time and some of the cherished dating traditions of that era.
The 28-minute movie was premiered before 6,000 students in the Smith Field House
on campus on May 6, 1971, and it ran until the end of the term in the on-campus Varsity
Theater.
Since that time it has been an underground cult classic at BYU.
FILM RESTORATION AT BYU
At the BYU Motion Picture Archive we have a variety of historical materials.
Sometimes these are Hollywood film artifacts: film prints of Hollywood-produced films. Some of these are common (CASABLANCA) and some of these are rare (WINGED VICTORY).
A special group of materials are those absolutely unique camera original elements that we find in our collections. From these original elements we can now scan with cutting edge technology and see the films of yesteryear as they have never been seen before.
This is film restoration: to go back to a purer source of information so that what was there in the beginning can be brought back and enjoyed in its fulness.
The library has generously afforded me to offer internships in film restoration to students. Together, we work to restore titles for which we have the original film materials.
On March 3, we are holding our next RESTORATION SHOWCASE, where a student will present his project.
YOU WILL NOT WANT TO MISS THIS.
Historical. Fun. Interesting. Entertaining.
Join us, and some special guests, as we take a walk down memory lane with newly-restored media as it has never been seen before.
Silent Movie Day is an international celebration of Silent Films.
THE TEN COMMANDMENTS (1923) 100th anniversary screening of Cecil B. DeMille’s first attempt at creating the greatest cinematic epic of its time. DeMille is credited with releasing the first feature film in Hollywood history THE SQUAW MAN (1913), and ever since he was continuing to present lavish productions based both in modern settings and from historical moments. With TEN COMMANDMENTS we get both of those worlds, where half the film is the telling of the tale of how ancient Israel was brought out of bondage by God’s own hand, and then it flips to demonstrate how the commandments are applicable today in lives of every person, “You cannot break the Ten Commandments – They will break you.”
Today marks the 250th anniversary of the first publication of Phillis Wheatley’s Poems on Various Subjects, the first book published by an African-American writer.
Work is Alcott’s most autobiographical novel. In it, heroine Christie Devon faces many trials as she tries to earn an independent living, finding positions (including seamstress, nurse, servant, and governess) in which Alcott and her sisters were themselves employed as young women. Christie’s work life mirrors the economic precariousness and despair which Alcott experienced while trying to support herself and her family before she found success as the author of Little Women.
