We are a father and daughter filmmaking duo. Lewis Laska acquired the over one million feet of archival 16mm film when a local news station discarded it. Rescuing dumpster loads of raw film from 1951 to 1973, the archive has everything from major world events to lifestyle footage of the American southeast, Lewis kept the enormous collection in storage for decades. Years later, Jennava earned her BFA and MFA in film production. Film technology advances made it possible to do scanning from the tangible film medium to a high definition digital format. Finally making it possible to review and restore the thousands of unnamed, unarchived film reels. During the 2020 pandemic, Lewis and Jennava decided to use the lockdown time to begin the digital transfer of the 16mm footage. The Laska Archive is bringing back the past for contemporary audiences.
