Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project (Documentary)

Marion Stokes

Woman Records TV Programs 24 Hours Daily for 33 Consecutive Years, Archived on 70,000 VHS and Betamax Tapes

Marion Stokes (1929-2012) was a librarian and access television producer who began recording television programs around the clock, beginning in 1979, ending in 2012 upon her death. The recorded TV shows consisted mainly of news broadcasts from stations such as CNN, C-SPAN, CNBC, etc. She had as many as eight VCR machines recording at once, throughout her home. Each videotape had a 6 hour recording limit, so Stokes and her husband arranged their daily routines and schedules so at least one of them was around to switch the tapes when needed.

The result of this was that, after 33 years, she amassed a collection of  71,716 videotapes with a total of 840,000 hours of recorded television programs.

Wow! This makes even Weird Paul look like a slacker archivist .

She also collected newspapers, magazines and computers. All of these were stored in numerous apartments and storage units.

Internet Archive 

When Stokes died in 2012 at the age of 83, her entire collection was left to her son Michael Metelits. Prior to her death, she had instructed him to donate it to a charity of his choice. After much consideration, he decided the best place for it was in the hands of The Internet Archive. It required four shipping containers to relocate the collection to IA's headquarters in San Francisco at a cost of $16,000.

Once IA received the videotapes in late 2013, a group of volunteers began digitizing the videotapes around the clock. It was expected that it would take several years to digitize the entire collection. Here is what's available so far of the Marion Stokes Collection at the Internet Archive.

Historian or Hoarder? 

Was Marion Stokes a dedicated historian, archiving and preserving information that might otherwise be lost forever or was she an eccentric hoarder who wasted her time? I suppose you'll have to watch the movie and decide for yourself.

Either way, I wonder if Marion would wear one of these t-shirts. I would hope that she'd appreciate the humour.

Recorder Premiere at Tribeca 

The documentary movie Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project premiered at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival. It was then screened at several other film festivals, including the Oak Cliff Film Festival, where it was the Best Documentary winner.

Upcoming Screenings

The next screening of the movie will be at the Gimli Film Festival in Manitoba on July 28, 2019.

Director Matt Wolf 

Matt Wolf, the director of the documentary movie, was interviewed by Mackenzie Fegan on 112BK, to talk about Marion Stokes and the project.