Obtain 9,200+ Free Movies from the Prelinger Archives: Documentaries, Cartoons & Extra

Rely­ing on the way you reck­on it, the “Amer­i­can cen­tu­ry” has already finish­ed, is now draw­ing to its shut, or has some life left in it but. However what­ev­er its sure­aries, that ambigu­ous peri­od has been cul­tur­al­ly outlined by one medi­um above all: movie, or extra broad­ly converse­ing, movement pic­tures. These very phrases would possibly begin a collection of clips rolling in your thoughts, a excessive­gentle reel of indus­tri­al devel­op­ments, polit­i­cal speech­es, protest march­es, sports activities vic­to­ries, NASA mis­sions, and for­eign wars. However that rep­re­sents only a tiny frac­tion of Amer­i­ca on movie, rather more of which you’ll be able to eas­i­ly dis­cov­er with a vis­it to the Prelinger Archives.

Rick Prelinger discovered­ed the Prelinger Archives in 1982 with the mis­sion of pre­serv­ing “ephemer­al movies.” Accord­ing to the professional­gram of a 2002 collection he intro­duced on the Berke­ley Artwork Muse­um and Pacif­ic Movie Archive a cou­ple of many years lat­er, these are “typ­i­cal­ly edu­ca­tion­al, indus­tri­al, or ama­teur movies,” typically made to serve a “prag­mat­ic and nar­row pur­pose. It’s only by probability that lots of them sur­vive.”

These items of “throw­away media” — of which the Prelinger Archives now has some 30,000 — embody information­reel-type doc­u­males­taries, works of polit­i­cal professional­pa­gan­da, instruc­tion­al professional­duc­tions to be used in colleges and work­locations, and an excellent many dwelling motion pictures that supply can­did glimpses into each­day Amer­i­can lives.

As any enthu­si­ast of mid-twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can cul­ture would hope, the Prelinger Archives additionally has its odd­i­ties: take the 1923 Felix the Cat automobile­toon on the prime of the publish, over­dubbed with voic­es (and a ref­er­ence to “hip­pies”) within the 9­teen-six­ties. Their free on-line col­lec­tions at the Inter­internet Archive (which con­tains 9,229 movies as of this writ­ing) and Youtube, con­tain each­factor from a 1942 professional­file of the artwork scene in San Fran­cis­co (the Prelinger Archives’ cur­lease dwelling); to “You and Your Fam­i­ly,” the form of home-life primer that might be ridiculed half a cen­tu­ry lat­er on Mys­tery Sci­ence The­ater 3000; to “Whereas Courageous Males Die…,” positive­ly the one pro-Viet­nam Battle doc­u­males­tary to fea­ture Joan Baez.

For those who actual­ly wish to see the Unit­ed States, as we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly mentioned right here on Open Cul­ture, you’ve acquired to dri­ve throughout the coun­attempt. What holds true in life additionally holds true in movie, and the Prelinger Archives’ dig­i­ti­za­tion and add­ing have made it pos­si­ble to expe­ri­ence the his­to­ry of the good Amer­i­can street journey by the eyes — or the eight-mil­lime­ter cam­eras — of trav­el­ers who took it within the for­ties, fifties, and six­ties, rolling by websites of inter­est from the Grand Canyon and Mount Rush­extra to the Corn Palace. If a cul­ture is pre­served most clear­ly by its ephemera, then there’s a complete lot extra Amer­i­ca await­ing us in the Prelinger Archives.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Primarily based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His initiatives embody the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the e book The State­much less Metropolis: a Stroll by Twenty first-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video collection The Metropolis in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­e book.