The Bay Area Television Archive is a regional moving image archive. It preserves and digitally restores 16mm newsfilm, documentaries and other shows produced by TV stations in Northern California, local Emmy Award-winning programs and privately donated film collections. BATA was established in 1982 by Helene Whitson and is part of the J. Paul Leonard Library's Special Collections Unit, located on San Francisco State University's main campus.
Collections
TV stations
BATA preserves over 3000 hours of 16mm newsfilm, documentaries and other shows produced by local TV stations KPIX-TV, KQED, KRON-TV and KTVU. This includes footage of the first TV broadcast in Northern California by KPIX-TV on December 22, 1948, from the roof of the Mark Hopkins Hotel on Nob Hill, in San Francisco.
The TV Archive curates approximately 100 hours of archival footage donated by local film makers and politicians from Northern California. These include the Willie Brown Collection, which features news reports and programs relating to the former State Assembly Speaker and Mayor of San Francisco's career and the Dorothy Goldner Collection, which features silent, color film of the Golden Gate International Exposition, produced by Orville C. Goldner in 1939-40.
Access
Online viewing
Selected archival footage from BATA's collections is publicly available to view online for free at the website of SF State's Digital Information Virtual Archive.
Public screenings
Former KQED producer and director Richard O. Moore introduced screenings of his documentaries Take This Hammer and Losing just the same, at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, in August 2009. Newsfilm clips featuring the Occupation of Alcatraz Island by Native American activists, were projected onto San Francisco's Coit Tower in November 2009, as part of the official 40th Anniversary remembrance program for the occupation.
Film production
Archival footage from BATA features in Gus Van Sant's 2008 Oscar-winning biographical film of the gay rights activist and politician Harvey Milk Milk, in Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman's 2010 Howl biopic of beat poet Allen Ginsberg and also in David Weissman and Bill Weber's 2011 documentary film about the AIDS crisis in San Francisco We Were Here.
