The How and Why of Spuds (1920), National Archives Collection

This year’s Northeast Historic Film’s Summer Symposium takes place 25-26 July, at Bucksport, Maine. Northeast Historic Film collects, preserves, and makes available to the public, film and videotape of interest to the people of northern New England, and holds an annual symposium which focuses on regional film, much of it amateur, and stretching back to the 1920s. This year’s theme is City & Country:

Images and archetypes of the city and the country as seemingly distinct locations and ways of life have remained a potent force in the cultural imagination since the mid 19th century. Even though the transformations of industrial culture and mobility have changed rural and urban landscapes and lifestyles, the ideas and images associated with the City and the Country continues to thrive as traditional poles of modern experience. They are where we anchor the dreams and fears of technology and tradition, and where we are animated by hopes of progress and the comforts of nostalgia. As Raymond Williams noted of this powerful duality, “the contrast of country and city is one of the major forms in which we become conscious of a central part of our experience and of the crises of our society.”

More information as ever from the website.