East Tennessee Reruns

Kingsport Archives hosting “East Tennessee Reruns” program

The Archives of the City of Kingsport will host a special program next week titled “East Tennessee Reruns” – a collection of one-of-a-kind home movies, industrial films and news footage from the Tennessee Archive of Moving Image and Sound (TAMIS).

This free, one-hour event will be held at 2 p.m. on October 24 at the Kingsport Center for Higher Education. TAMIS is the historic audio-visual department of the Knox County Public Library.

The program will include selections from home movies, news footage, short documentaries and industrial films depicting the people and places of the Tri-Cities, Knoxville and the Great Smoky Mountains. The time frame of the selections will draw heavily from the 1940s through the 1970s, said John Morton, the McClung Historical Collection Audiovisual Archivist at TAMIS.

“We tried to choose selections that are fun, interesting, and connect with a wide audience of people,” Morton said. “I really hope folks don’t think they need to have strong grounding in history to come watch the program. If you’re interested in seeing something new and different with a link to the region, then you should come on out.”

The original footage was shot in either 8 mm, Super 8 or 16 mm, with many of the movies and films donated from community members over the years. If you happen to have a collection of old home movies, Morton said he would be happy to speak to you about donating the material to TAMIS. When people donate to TAMIS, the archive will return a digital copy of the material to you to keep.

“We’re always interested in strengthening our collection outside of Knoxville,” Morton said.

For more information about TAMIS, visit www.knoxcountylibrary.org/tamis.

About the City of Kingsport

Founded in 1917, the City of Kingsport (pop. 55,400) is located on the Tennessee-Virginia border at the crossroads of I-81 and I-26 near the geographic center of the eastern U.S. The city is widely known as a planned community, designed by renowned city planner John Nolen and wrapping around the foot of Bays Mountain – a 3,750-acre park, nature preserve, planetarium and observatory. Kingsport is recognized as an International Safe Community by the National Safety Council, a Healthier Tennessee community, and won the 2009 Harvard Innovations in American Government Award for its higher education initiatives. While many city names are duplicated throughout the U.S., there’s only one Kingsport – a fact that invokes community pride, known locally as the “Kingsport Spirit.”

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