Watch This: Texas Archive Of The Moving Image Presents Austin in the ’70s

The Texas Archive Of The Moving Image (TAMI), now in its 15th year, continues to provide a valuable service to all of us, and to posterity, by preserving film artifacts and making them available and accessible to all. Their ongoing mission is well worth tracking, and, as they are a non-profit, you can contribute to them as well.

This week they have posted some films from the William Mackie collection. Mackie was a professor in the University Of Texas’ Radio Television & Film Department in the ’70s and ’80s and these films, made by his students, provide an interesting look at central Texas in the ’70s, both on-campus and off.

Watch the whole collection of six here. Of particular interest may be this one, the 1976 film by student Frank Binney, called LAST OF THE LITTLE BREWERIES. It takes the viewer inside the Spoetzl Brewery where Shiner Bock is made and founder Kosmos Spoetzl’s Bavarian legacy lives on.

On the weird fringe is this film by Dwight Adair and Gary Ganter: DOLLS is an avant-garde film depicting the on-campus university beauty pageant. In both documenting and commenting upon this pageant, the filmmakers provide an especially valuable time capsule, not only of the kind of prosaic, all-American vulgarity of the times, but also of freak culture’s attitude toward it.