Preserving "More Than One Thing"

More Than One Thing film reels

Thanks to the generous support of the National Film Preservation Foundation (NFPF), the Washington University Libraries Film & Media Archive successfully completed the preservation of More Than One Thing in July of 2015. The Archive houses the only existing prints of the film, donated by the filmmaker. Grant funds awarded by NFPF covered the cost of a 16mm duplicate negative, 16mm full-coat magnetic track, 16mm negative optical track, 16mm composite print, and HD transfer. Blu-ray copies with closed captioning are available to researchers in Washington University’s Department of Special Collections and may be found through our web accessible catalog, mavisWeb. All preservation elements are stored in the Archive’s climate-controlled vault.

FMA Stacks

Upon completion of the grant, Washington University Libraries was pleased to hold the first public screening of the film in over 45 years as part of the 25th annual St. Louis International Film Festival (SLIFF) on Sunday, November 6th, 2016. The screening was part of a special program entitled, “Mean Streets: Viewing the Divided City Through the Lens of Film and Television," which featured narrative and documentary works that address the strong intersections between racial divisions and urban spaces. The screening was followed by a Q&A with subjects of More Than One Thing Billy and Tommie Towns, as well as Sylvester Brown, Jr., another former resident of Pruitt-Igoe.

“Mean Streets” was a collaboration among Cinema St. Louis, Washington University Libraries, the Missouri History Museum, and Washington University’s Sam Fox School’s College of Architecture and was part of “The Divided City” initiative, a joint project of Washington University’s Center for the Humanities and the College of Architecture and Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Design. “The Divided City” is funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Below is a Q&A sample from this special presentation of More Than One Thing, featuring (from left to right) Curator of Film & Media Archive Brian Woodman, More Than One Thing's Billy Towns and Tommie Towns, and former Pruitt-Igoe resident Sylvester Brown, Jr.