Task: Watch “The Magic Room” Documentary about the Atari Summer Camp
Needed: Web browser
Time: 30-60 minutes
Introduction
Atari ran several summer computer camps during the early 1980s and produced a documentary featuring kids at the first one. There are three versions of the film each with a different length. The shortest, three minutes in length, is a trailer. The 26-minute film is the longest. An 18-minute version with some different content was recently tracked down by Kay Savetz (thanks Kay!). These are really interesting to watch and each is a bit different.
Instructions
Here is the three-minute trailer on Archive.org.
Here is the 18-minute version on Archive.org.
Here is the 26-minute version on Archive.org.
Comments
The Archive.org page for the 18-minute video has some informative comments by Kay Savetz.
Here is Kay’s interview with Bob Elfstrom who was one of the filmmakers.
Here is the Antic Podcast episode about the summer camp.
Here is the curriculum for the summer camp.