{
 "slug": "deserted-films",
 "display_name": "Deserted Films",
 "legal_name": "DESERTED FILMS",
 "ein": "88-3383988",
 "organization_type": "501(c)(3) nonprofit",
 "year_established": 2023,
 "year_established_source": "propublica",
 "headquarters_city": "Palm Springs",
 "headquarters_state": "CA",
 "primary_cause": "Arts & Culture",
 "primary_cause_source": "NTEE A20 via ProPublica (approximate)",
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 "record_status": "Verified \u2014 identity and participation",
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 "short_description": "A Cultural Memory Archive Deserted Films is an archive in Palm Springs that collects, preserves, and digitizes historically significant home movies and other rare films depicting the Coachella Valley and Southern California more broadly.",
 "about": "A Cultural Memory Archive\n\nDeserted Films is an archive in Palm Springs that collects, preserves, and digitizes historically significant home movies and other rare films depicting the Coachella Valley and Southern California more broadly. We educate the public through presentations of these films online and in-person.\u00a0 We do not sell stock footage. All donations, stipends for presentations, and ticket sales for our fundraiser shows go towards our film preservation efforts benefiting researchers, students, and other local nonprofits with whom we collaborate. They also help us off-set the cost of our public outreach efforts (tabling at civic events, educational screenings...)\u00a0described below.\n\nDrs. Melissa Dollman and Devin Orgeron founded Deserted Films in Palm Springs in 2021 and incorporated as a nonprofit in July 2022. In 2023, it was federally recognized as a 501(c)(3). A bit about us: We collect, care for and make accessible films shot in the general Palm Springs region -- by locals and tourists -- during that golden age of nontheatrical film from the 1920s-1990s when 16mm, 8mm, Super 8 celluloid film and video cameras (instead of our phones!) were the tools we used to preserve our memories. The collection also houses a fair bit of footage of Southern California, generally, and our surrounding desert regions. If a film documents a historical event (or historically under-represented peoples), we grab it too. To date, our archive consists of over 2,000 films, photographs, and other ephemera (800+ items are digitized and on our website).\n\nCoachella Valley Filipino Festival 2025.\nPhoto by Andrea Heck Addington.\n\nOutreach and Collaborations\n\nEducational Screenings:\u00a0 Our outreach endeavors have included pairing home movies from our collection with feature films we introduce at the Palm Springs Cultural Center, or including them in our educational -- and entertaining we think! -- presentations (winter holidays, Black History Month, Women's History Month, Home Movie Day) at the Palm Springs Public Library. We've presented quite a few times during Modernism Week, also at Maleza, and for the Rotary Club of Indio and Seven Lakes Country Club.\n\nCollaborations:\u00a0 While we do not sell footage, we contributed clips for the \"Section 14\" exhibit at the Agua Caliente Cultural Museum, and created a 15-minute looping video documenting the Riverside County Fair and National Date Festival from the 1940s through the 1970s for the museum in the Sands of Time Building at the Riverside County Fair & National Date Festival (2026).\n\nThis woman recognized herself in a home movie of the 1958 Date Festival Parade in Indio that we screened during Modernism Week a couple of years ago. Here she is posing next to the same footage used in our looping video of the Fair/Festival.\n\nIn June 2025, we collaborated with The LGBTQ+ History & Archives of the Desert, Palm Springs Cultural Center (venue) and the UCLA Film and Television Archive on \u201c Home Movies Out of the Closet: LGBTQ+, Hollywood, Palm Springs, and You! \u201d, \u00a0a screening of rarely and never-before-seen LGBTQ+ home movie footage from our collections.\n\nIn November 2025, we hosted a information table at the Coachella Valley Filipino Festival as a way to help folks think through personal archiving needs -- what to do with those family home movies, photographs, slides, and otherwise -- and we are doing the same at the Black History Committee's Town Fair in Palm Springs (February 28, 2026). We also have an application in for an information table at ONE-PS's annual picnic in March, and will do so for Palm Springs Pride in November.\n\nHow We Spent the Funding We Received Last Year\n\nLast summer, we preserved an additional 31 films, and purchased a humidity controlled refrigerator to aid in the preservation of decaying films.\n\nPalm Springs Life (August 2024)\n\nTestimonials & Press\n\nFor their August 2024 issue, Palm Springs Life magazine did a feature on us ! Our holiday shows at the Palm Springs Cultural Center have made the Palm Springs Post's holiday guide for the past three years, also Palm Springs Life' s, and others. Most recently, Steve Sumrall from NBC Palm Springs interviewed us for a The Roggin Report \u2018s \u201c Desert in a Minute \u201d segment. It aired December 17, 2025. Most recently, Kendall Balchan wrote a nice piece about us and our participation in the Fair/Festival for The Indio Post on February 4th.",
 "description_source": "description as provided by the organization for CV Giving Day (via its Mightycause profile)",
 "description_retrieved": "2026-08-13",
 "official_website": "https://desertedfilms.org",
 "official_website_source": "provided by the organization on its CV Giving Day profile",
 "official_website_verified": "2026-08-13",
 "mightycause_categories": [
  "Arts & Culture"
 ],
 "keywords_provided_by_org": "history; home movies; films; culture; tourism; locals; education; under-represented",
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 "primary_cause_reviewed": "Arts & Culture",
 "primary_cause_reviewed_source": "CV Giving Day review against the organization's own description",
 "primary_cause_reviewed_date": "2026-08-17",
 "roster_status": "active",
 "participation_years": [
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 "participation_note": "years_covered scopes what is known. Absence of a year from participation_years does not mean the organization did not participate: 2023 and 2024 org-level records are not held. participation_years is derived from the CV Giving Day participant lists, matched on EIN.",
 "participation_provenance": {
  "2026": "Mightycause giving-event summary export (Registration Status = Approved)",
  "2025": "CV Giving Day 2025 approved-participant list, matched on EIN"
 },
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  "name": "Deserted Films",
  "legalName": "DESERTED FILMS",
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  "url": "https://desertedfilms.org",
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   "addressLocality": "Palm Springs",
   "addressRegion": "CA",
   "addressCountry": "US"
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  "description": "A Cultural Memory Archive Deserted Films is an archive in Palm Springs that collects, preserves, and digitizes historically significant home movies and other rare films depicting the Coachella Valley and Southern California more broadly.",
  "foundingDate": "2023",
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  "dateModified": "2026-08-19",
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 "last_verified": "2026-08-19",
 "date_modified": "2026-08-19",
 "verified_statement": "Identity confirmed against IRS records. Participation confirmed against CV Giving Day registration. Public information compiled from the organization's own sources. Organizations that have indicated a preference against search indexing on their CV Giving Day registration are excluded from search indexing and from this site's sitemap. A cause may come from the organization's own category selection, from its IRS classification, or from CV Giving Day review; the source is always stated on the page and in this record."
}