![]() It’s a story that is as heavy as it is multi-layered, at once a harrowing look at life inside a high-control group and an examination of the strange new forms these relational systems can take within the specific context of millennial Internet culture. What seems at first like a utopian art project rooted in themes of racial and economic justice devolves over time into a tangled web of financial, emotional, and sexual control-especially after the organization evolves into a roving live-in community called the DayLife Army, which conscripts a small group of idealistic young people into a life of homelessness, punishing content and revenue quotas, and total personal sacrifice. The piece, titled “Inside the Social Media Cult that Convinces Young People to Give Up Everything,” follows the story of a musician named Matthew who meets two strangers on the Internet during his sophomore year in college, then leaves his life behind to join them in building an online spiritual community called Tumple. So I really feel like by processing the film and rescuing the images, we are somehow fulfilling his hopes and justifying all the work he put into packaging and cataloging the film.”Ĭheck out Bettweiser’s fundraising video, and a few choice photos from the Rescued Film Project, below.Earlier this Summer, The Culture Journalist’s Emilie Friedlander and independent journalist Joy Crane published a 10,000-word investigation about a self-proclaimed “cult” that emerged out of the irony-obsessed Weird Facebook scene of the mid-00s. “I have a feeling that, because of the way it was packaged, the photographer meant for these images to be revealed much later in the future. “With this batch we feel it's important to process it as soon as possible so we are asking for help,” Bettweiser explains. He’s teamed up with Blue Moon Camera in Portland, Oregon, who have agreed to develop the film at a discount, and is looking for donations to help pay for shipping and film processing costs. Bettweiser says the film rolls were so tightly packaged, it took a team of eight volunteers six hours just to open 22 of the 66 bundles.īecause 1200 rolls of film is significantly more than Bettweiser can process on his own, and because the old film is rapidly deteriorating, Bettweiser is raising money for this project on Indiegogo. Though the photographer never developed-and therefore never saw-his own photos, he carefully wrapped each roll of film in aluminum foil and athletic tape, labeled it, and packaged it in a cigar box. The film, which has never been developed, was packaged meticulously in 66 bundles, each containing eight to 36 rolls of film. Bettweiser recently acquired 1200 rolls of film from the 1950s, shot by a steel worker named Paul. But now, he’s reaching out to the internet for help with his largest photo project to date. “Once I processed my first batch of film and saw how many images I got, it made me realize that there must be thousands of rolls of film out there that are lost or forgotten that contain images in need of rescuing,” Bettweiser tells mental_floss. “While so many of the images we rescue might be classified as ‘ordinary,’ we realize that they all were moments in time that was special for someone.”įor the last few years, Bettweiser has been running the Rescued Film Project on his own, feeding his personal time and money into developing lost photos. Last year, Bettweiser developed 31 rolls of film shot by an unidentified American soldier during World War II, adding battlefields and army uniforms to the Rescued Film Project’s online archive. But while most of the photos provide insights into daily life in the 20th century, others portray important moments in history. There are children’s birthday parties and holiday celebrations, family vacations and high school graduations. ![]() Spanning the 1930s through the 1990s, most of the photos depict the day-to-day life of Americans. The photos Bettweiser develops and uploads on the Rescued Film Project website run the gamut of subjects, locations, and eras. His mission is simple: To leave no roll of film undeveloped. As the creator of the Rescued Film Project, Bettwieser spends his days perusing online auctions and rifling through bins at flea markets to find abandoned rolls of film. Boise, Idaho-based photographer Levi Bettwieser is on a search and rescue mission to save America’s forgotten, undeveloped photos.
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