Army AV tech inspects motion picture reel, NARA ID 6399202.
CALLING ALL FILM BUFFS! 🎥
FILMS OF STATE - 1st-ever VIRTUAL Gov't Film Conference April 7-9 Register online for this special FREE virtual event - in partnership with U-MD - and join us for screenings, presentations, panels, and “how-to” film research guidance. Open to filmmakers, press, film students/historians/scholars, and anyone else interested in gov't films! Full schedule here. Archivist of the United States David S. Ferriero will welcome participants. Learn more in Audrey Amidon's Unwritten Record blog, Introducing Films of State.
Session highlights include:
Uncle Sam Presents: 75 Years of Government Films
Vaccine and Antidote: US Military Psychiatric Films in WWII
Correcting Corrections: Instructional Films for Corrections Officers Post-Attica
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: Government Films’ Second Life on the Small Screen
A Federal Vision of Black-Owned Land in Rural Georgia: the US Information Service’s Men of the Forest (1952)
Jean Bridget (L) and Ethel Burke (R) examine some of the millions of feet of film at the National Archives before cataloguing it. 10/8/1944. NARA ID 208-FS-3221.
As you well know, the National Archives holds the permanently valuable records of the federal government. In addition to 14 billion documents, including the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights, the agency also holds an estimated half a million reels of motion picture film–the world’s largest public domain film collection. The Motion Picture Preservation Lab physically handles about 2 million feet of film per year – if laid out end-to-end, it would be greater than the distance between College Park, MD, and Boston, MA. They include the Apollo 11 raw footage, the Iwo Jima Flag Raising, The March on Washington, and the first color film of Yellowstone National Park!
NARA staffer in the Nitrate Motion Picture Film Storage Vault, NARA ID 12168512.
Glenn C. Henry with NARA Motion Picture Film, 10/12/1937, NARA ID 5928166.
