Background
Between 1936 and 1942, Arthur J. Higgins, an itinerant filmmaker, traveled around the country, most likely with his wife, filming the people and places of various towns, and then selling tickets to and exhibiting those films a week or two later, to towns people who were eager to see their face on the screen.
Since that time, those films have been lost and found, collected and scattered, as various historians have expressed interest in the historical significance of these film. In 2005, an avid collector named Arthur Steg began to collect these films, ending up with over half of the films that have been known to be shot. In 2010, Steg wrote an article entitled "The Itinerant Films of Arthur J. Higgins," and the films fame has grown from there, becoming almost required reading in many classes over amateur films.
The Project
In the spring of 2011, Snowden Becker's "Preserving & Presenting Historic Home Movies" class, taught at Texas State university, began individual projects, with each student investigating a certain town or towns in Texas which were captured by Higgins and his camera. As projects began to fall together - or fall apart - those students began to collaborate on a blog, thus increasing the internet presence of the project.
This blog seeks to serve as a contact point for those who may have knowledge about Higgins' Texas films, in an attempt to further the research for those films and begin apply the historical importance of said films.
If you have any information on Higgins, his films, or the towns during the year in which Higgins visited them, you can contact us as thehigginsprojecttx@gmail.com.
