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Colorado Ski Museum lands a grant for film preservation

VAIL — The Colorado Ski & Snowboard Museum and Hall of Fame in Vail has been awarded a $111,514 grant by the Institute of Museum and Library Science to digitize, preserve and provide a public listing of its massive collection of historical ski films.

More than 400 total pieces of 16-millimeter film, 8-millimeter film and VHS video — much of it more than 50 years old — is now being restored, preserved and edited for public consumption in the form of three 30-minute historical sports footage compilations that will be aired during the 2015 World Alpine Ski Championships in Vail and Beaver Creek.



‘BEGINNINGS OF SKI HISTORY’

“Our collection contains footage of hall of famers, the 26 current ski resorts and the beginnings of ski history at Lost Resorts,” said Colorado Ski & Snowboard Museum curator of collections Erica Garcia. “Our 10th Mountain Division Collection, although small, is one of our most valuable collections, with films ranging from the ‘Story of Company G’ to the military-issued ‘10th Mountain Division Ski Training’ film.”

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A large group of volunteers is now in the process of individually viewing each piece of film and gathering information — or descriptive metadata — about the time period, location and any of the people in the film segments.

Cinemalab, with offices in Burbank, Calif., and Englewood, is digitizing the film, and Avon’s Eef Productions is converting the VHS to DVD.

SOME FILMS DATE BACK 70 YEARS

Some of the collection dates back more than 70 years and includes footage from early ski racing competitions, as well as early Nordic teams and adaptive and paralympic alpine teams.

“The project will develop a searchable index of film subjects and make the materials available on the museum’s website,” said Garcia. “The digitized works will be shown at the museum and in two visitor welcome centers during the World Alpine Ski Championships in Vail and Beaver Creek in 2015. Additional information will be accessible via smartphones.”

For more information on the project and the films being digitized, visit http://www.skimuseum.net/video/ collection. A full description of each film will be available on the Colorado Ski & Snowboard Museum website following the World Ski Championships in February 2015.


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