UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Penn State University Libraries’ Community Archives Pilot Project is hosting a free public screening and discussion of the film “Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project” at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 2, in The Attic at The State Theatre in downtown State College. The film raises critical questions and centers a different perspective about community archival work.
For more than 30 years, Marion Stokes of Philadelphia secretly recorded American television 24 hours a day, starting with the Iranian Hostage Crisis in 1979 and ending with her death while coverage of the Sandy Hook school massacre unfolded in late 2012. For Stokes, taping was a form of activism to seek the truth, and she believed that a comprehensive archive of the media would one day be invaluable.
She captured the revolutions, wars, triumphs and catastrophes that illuminate who we are and how TV has shaped the world in which we live today. Her visionary project nearly tore her family apart, but now her 70,000 VHS tapes are being digitized for future generations.