Teenaged Little Rock Filmmakers Featured at Archives Month Open House

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Sarah and Emma Bailin photographed for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette by Benjamin Krain. Used by permission.

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – October is American Archives Month, and the University Libraries’ special collections department is commemorating the occasion by hosting an open house from 3 to 5 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 27, in special collections, Mullins Library Room 130.

Titled “Discover Arkansas in the Archives: Archives Month 2010,” the event will begin with refreshments and a reception at 3 p.m. Tom W. Dillard, the head of special collections, will present an overview of the past year’s acquisitions of manuscripts, rare books and maps at 3:30 p.m.

“The people of Arkansas have an amazing history, and University Libraries are doing their best to document this heritage,” Dillard said. “Our open house gives people an opportunity to see the rare letters, diaries, photographs, and books that document the lives of Arkansans through history.”

The featured presenters will be teenaged documentary-film makers Sarah and Emma Bailin of Little Rock. The Bailins have been making films and documentaries since they were eleven years old and own and operate their own production company, DoubleTroublets Productions. Together they have produced 15 documentaries and short films to date, which have been screened at more than 50 film festivals around the nation, including the Los Angeles Film Festival, the CineYouth Film Festival in Chicago, the da Vinci Film Festival in Corvallis, Ore., the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, the National Film Festival for Talented Youth in Seattle, and the Independents’ Film Festival Showcase in Tampa, Fla. Their documentaries have aired regularly on the Arkansas Educational Television Network and the Manhattan Television Network, New York.

As active members of the EAST program and former guest writers for the T Tauri Film Festivals' Galaxy website, the Bailins have made multiple appearances at a variety of venues, most notably as keynote speakers at the State Educational Technology Directors Association annual conference in Washington, D.C. As seniors at Little Rock Central High School, they are currently working on their fifth documentary for their “It Happened Here” Arkansas History documentary film collection.

The Bailins’ presentation will be followed by a screening of their short documentary film Return to Sender (2008, 10 minutes), the story of Arkansas’ role in the months following the Cuban Mariel Boat Lift in 1980. The film focuses on the effect that Cuban refugees housed at Fort Chaffee, Ark., had on the political landscape of Arkansas. Return to Sender is the third documentary in the DoubleTroublets Productions’ “It Happened Here” Arkansas History Collection and has garnered more than 20 state and national film awards and screenings, including official selection at the Los Angeles Film Festival and best documentary in the Senior Division at the Tampa Film Festival in Florida.

Logo for Doubletroublets Productions, owned and operated by Sarah and Emma Bailin.

American Archives Month is a collaborative effort by professional organizations around the nation to raise awareness of the value of archival materials and to encourage persons and organizations to preserve records of enduring historical value. The special collections department of the University of Arkansas Libraries was created in 1967 to foster research and writing in the history and culture of Arkansas and the surrounding region. It is an archival repository of more than 13,500 linear feet of documents in the manuscripts collection, more than 28,000 cataloged titles in the Arkansas collection and the rare books collection, and more than 150,000 photographs, broadsides and maps.

The EAST Initiative is a nonprofit organization that focuses on student-driven service projects through the use of the latest in technology. Students find problems in their local communities, and then use these tools to solve them. EAST was piloted at Greenbrier High School in Greenbrier in the 1995-1996 school year. Since then, it has expanded and sparked national recognition — there are now hundreds of EAST classrooms in more than 200 schools in 8 states.

The T Tauri Film Festival and Movie Camp is the youth division of Ozark Foothills FilmFest, Inc., a rural educational non-profit organization dedicated to excellence and accessibility in the media arts. The primary program of the organization's youth division is an annual summer event that combines a national, peer-judged young filmmakers competition, public screenings of youth-produced films, and filmmaking workshops in a variety of areas. The annual “movie camp” is one of a very small number of youth media training programs operating in rural America.

The event is free and open to the public; no registration is required. For more information, including directions and parking information, call 479-575-5577.