Now Streaming in Austin: The Texas Archive of the Moving Image

Welcome to Now Streaming in Austin, highlighting locally-made movies to watch while self-quarantining.

With phone cameras ubiquitous, it's easy to forget that your Austin forebears were making their own videos - only they called them home movies.

Now, the problem with old recordings like this is the medium. You might be able to find an 8mm projector or a VHS machine, but what if grandpa caught those memorable moments on Digibeta? Or grandma was archiving public events on 1/2" open reel? How to watch them then?

Enter the Texas Archive of the Moving Image. Since 2002, the non-profit has been working with the state to convert, save, and upload a huge library of everything from road trips to PSAs donated by Texans from their own private collections and inherited stockpiles. TAMI transfers the tapes and film to digital and returns them (and a fresh digital copy) to the donor, then uploads the transfer to

The archive is immense, running into the thousands of hours from around the state, covering everything from home movies to TV commercials and documentaries. For Austin, the library really starts in 1943 with "Austin, Texas ... the Friendly City." Produced by the Austin Chamber of Commerce, it was intended to highlight the 512 as an attractive destination for young families and not, as if was at the time, a remote college town. Yup, get ready for a trip back to when I-35 was still East Avenue and, to quote the narration, "a pleasure to the eye."

You can find all the Austin material right here but that's just a fraction of the complete archive in this incredible treasure trove. So, as just a little tease, how about Jean Boone interviewing Cesar Romero in advance of the 1966 world premiere of Batman: The Movie for CBS Austin affiliate KTBC's Noontime Show.

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Texas Archive of the Moving Image

• Full free archive (Link)