>> I'm Alex Cherian.
I'm the Film Archivist at San
Francisco State University.
The John Paul Leonard
Library has a Department
of Special Collections.
We preserve over
4,000 hours of news,
film and documentary
material that was produced
in the Bay Area from the
1950s through to about 1980.
We're digitizing this material
and making it available
to view online for free in DIVA.
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>> It's like you're a detective
and you use Special Collections.
You look at the DIVA footage.
You're able to make
your own conclusions.
You join that with
good scholarship,
I think you have a more holistic
view of what actually occurred.
>> I came across a surprising
and unusual link which was
to Art in Action, a film
clip in the collection
of San Francisco State's
University DIVA digital archive
that I was unaware of and I
clicked on it and was shocked
as this live, very beautiful,
color imagery of Diego Rivera
on the scaffolding appeared.
But as you watch the footage,
you see many other
people appear.
We see an image of the artist
Mini Okubo doing a demonstration
about fresco technique.
When I saw this clip, I
knew Mini Okubo personally
as a very old woman
just before her death
because we've done
a lot of research
about Asian-American artists
here at San Francisco State.
She was a salty woman
in her old age.
And here she is in
bright yellow pants
and I thought, that
is Mini Okubo.
>> What historians can do
when they're using our
collection is bring these,
not new voices, but
remind people of the voices
that were commonplace
back in the day
and DIVA is allowing
them to do that.
There are thousands of unique
voices within the archive and in
that sense, what we're
presenting you through DIVA is
with a living history.
>> It gives us another
perspective on multi-culturalism
in America to see
so many artists
of diverse ethnicities
working together
in 1939 in San Francisco.
>> San Francisco in the 1950s,
'60s and '70s was a hotbed
of civil rights movements.
It was one of the birth
places for the gay
and lesbian civil
rights movements.
The local Oakland Black
Panther chapter was very active
in the 1960s.
In June 1971, Native
Americans were removed
from Alcatraz by federal agents.
They had been occupying
the Rock for 18 months,
trying to bring world attention
to the civil rights needs
of Native American people.
A few months later, CRUM
TV made a documentary
about the Native
American occupation
of Alcatraz and its aftermath.
>> And we looked at these
clips and it was so exciting
to see history unfolding.
>> Over the years, you
know, Alcatraz has come
to signify a lot of
stuff to a lot of people.
There's a whole lot of Native
American activists out there
that are doing their thing.
You know and I think a lot
of that came from Alcatraz,
but it didn't -- you know,
it wasn't like, you
know, we did it.
It was just an idea.
>> In the name of all Indians,
therefore we reclaim this island
for all Indian nations,
for all these reasons.
We feel this claim
is just and proper
and that this land should
rightfully be granted to us
for as long as the
rivers shall run
and the sun shall
shine, shall shine.
Signed Indians of All
Tribes, November 1969,
San Francisco, California.
>> This visibility
through primary sources
that people can relate
to is essential not only
for scholarship, but also for
the promotion of human rights.
>> In 1899, one of the
world's first film archivists,
who was the photographer
for Sir Nicholas the Second,
commented on the
cinematic graphic print.
He said that it makes the dead
and the absent stand up and walk
and that is the esence of using
film as a historical resource.
People can see and
hear what is happening
and imagine what it
was like at the time.
It hits them on a gut level
and it allows them to interact
with what might otherwise might
be culled and distant material.
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