MetaFilter posts tagged with film and archive

Selections from the BFI's collection of early cinema

The Whelk — Thu, 02 May 2013 07:47:57 -0800

The British Film Institute's YouTube channels offer a staggering amount (previously) of content on historical cinema, shorts, and discussion. Some short selections from the early and silent period of note - The Sick Kitten (1903) - How Percy Won The Beauty Competition (1909) - Tilly The Tomboy Visits The Poor (1910) - Suffragette Riot In Trafalgar Square (1913) - The Fugitive Futurist, in which a man on the run shows a device that can see far into the future (1924) - Vaudevillian legend Billy Merson Singing 'Desdemona'. Widely considered Britain's first sound film - (1927) Charley In New Town - part of an animated series from the Central Office, this one explaining the need for "New Towns." (1948) - Growing Girls, a filmstrip guide to puberty for young women (1951).

"An obscure world of celluloid intrigue"

bubukaba — Wed, 09 May 2012 13:02:53 -0800

"At a time when most old films were still protected by copyright and studios were urging the FBI to prosecute individuals owning copyrighted films, movie collecting was a largely underground and somewhat dangerous activity." In 1977, for example, a 20 year old film collector was visited by the FBI. The agents, posing as fellow collectors, entered his home and seized his collection. His case wasn't unique. Even the stars — most famously, Roddy McDowall — were subject to the legal wrath of the very studios they worked for. Still, some collectors got away with it (including one J. D. Salinger). Though the FBI raids still haunt the collective memory of the hobby, the world has become much safer for film collectors, perhaps because the industry realized — as early as the late '70s — that "as tape and other systems of recording proliferate, film companies will gradually lose control over their product". Today, celebrity collectors like Quentin Tarantino and Martin Scorsese are known publicly as such (and non-celebrity collectors with colorful personalities get profiled by The Guardian). Collector-oriented festivals like Cinecon, Cinevent, Cinesation, and Cinefest are thriving. Film archivists — notably, Harvard Film Archive, home of the Doc Burr Collection — are interested in them. And some young collectors [previously] have styled themselves as archivists, complete with home preservation projects [previously]. And of course, they're all over the internet, showing off their collections on YouTube, posting pictures of their sweet set-ups, writing how-to websites, and buying and selling on Ebay and assorted private forums.

Reel History of Britain

Trurl — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 08:38:03 -0800

The Reel History of Britain, a BFI/BBC co-production, brings archive film into the nation’s living rooms. The footage shown in the series has been selected from the hundreds of thousands of films and programmes preserved in Britain’s film and television archives. We are complementing the series by making many of the films featured in The Reel History of Britain available online in their entirety, alongside expert commentary from the nation’s archive curators.

BFI Film Archive

ClanvidHorse — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 04:20:20 -0800

The British Film Institute has a youtube channel with rare footage going back over 100 years, covering many aspects of British life. Highlights include: 'Solarflares Burn For You' (1973) (featuring a soundtrack by Robert Wyatt); Rush Hour, Waterloo Station (1970); London Bridge (1926); Productivity Primer (1964); Today in Britain (1964); Snow (1963); Holiday (1957).

scarcity is no longer an option

dobbs — Wed, 11 May 2011 22:52:12 -0800

Instant Cinema is a comprehensive platform for experimental film, video and computer art, making the best audio-visual work of artists of all generations available to a worldwide audience. Not a tonne in the archive just yet--it's still in rough beta--but still some nice viewing. For instance: Balance Study, or Trying.

The best of Google Video on MetaFilter

Rhaomi — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 13:32:18 -0800

As discussed over the weekend, in less than two weeks the millions of videos uploaded to six-year-old erstwhile YouTube competitor Google Video will no longer be viewable. Though a download button has been added to each video page for easy back-up, that will only be available though May 13th, and the company will not be offering transfer service for users with YouTube accounts. The search giant has been slowly winding down the service over the years since their billion-dollar buyout of YouTube, controversially revoking purchased content (with a refund) in 2007 and disabling new uploads in 2009. The shutdown is a big blow to the web video ecosystem, as Google Video was one of the few major services to allow free hosting of long-form video, including the content for many popular MetaFilter posts. But all is not lost! Reddit users have organized a virtual potluck to share the most interesting and unique videos not available anywhere else, and the Archive Team, preserver of doomed web properties like Geocities (previously), is partnering with Archive.org to back up as much content as possible. In that spirit, click inside for a list of some of the most popular Google Video-centric content posted here over the years. [Note: Oodles of kudos to Mefi's Own FishBike for helping to prepare this post, by scraping the database for all posts linking to video.google.com and sorting by favorites. The list includes some content from before favorites were around, but I surely would have missed lots of good stuff without his handy (meta)filtered list!] Single links are in the title where available, see the (via) for multi-link content on the original post page. Lots of posts were skipped where the video wasn't available, so all of these should work. 2005 * The original Family Guy (via) * Conan's Walker Texas Ranger lever (via) * First-person view of a 14-minute high-speed car chase (via) * Panama Canal time-lapse video (via) 2006 * "Physics for Future Presidents" lecture series (via) * Threads, a horrifying nuclear war drama (via) * A BBC documentary on Texas Christians converting to Islam (via) * Cool guitar solo by Stanley Jordan (via) * Fear of Girls, a 10-minute mockumentary about stereotypical RPG players (via) * Riding a maglev train in Japan (via) * An hour-long documentary on one man's walking tour of Japanese history (via) * The original half-hour demo for Spore that wowed just about everybody (via) * "Flickr: The Musical" by Johnathan Coulton (via) * Footage of Tsar Bomba, the world's largest nuclear bomb test (via) * Don't copy that floppy! (via) * Little Things that Jiggle: Richard Feynman and Atomic Physics (via) * Back to the Future I & II synched (via) * Hundreds of students impersonate molecular motion (via) * WWII aerial footage (via) * The finest tap dancing ever filmed (via) * Tons of UC Berkeley college lectures (via) * Alive in Joburg, the original short film prequel to District 9 (via) * 1955 footage of the star-studded Rhythm and Blues Revue (via) * £10,000 dominoes (via) * Radiohead Live - OK Computer Tour (via) 2007 * Lots of MST3K episodes in this megapost * Tons of George Carlin specials (via) * Classic Marx Brothers (via) * Nosferatu, The Immigrant, and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (via) * Richard Feynman - The Pleasure of Finding Things Out (via) * Documenting the history of atheism (via) * Tons of random Christmas special episodes (via) * Chomsky vs. Buckley (via) * Creepy TV hacking incidents (via) * Hilarious Windows 386 promotional video (via) * Google Research's Videos of the Year (via) 2008 * "The Return of Clockwork Orange" discussing Kubrick's classic film (via) * aubilenon's homemade Rube Goldberg machine (via) * A pair of popular lectures explaining why you shouldn't talk to the police (via) * Classic Abbot & Costello (via) * Four hours of MTV's Sifl & Olly (via) * A collection of full-length film noir classics (via) * "How Buildings Learn," a six-part BBC documentary on architecture (via) * "The Trap," a three-episode documentary on the development of the concept of individual freedom (via) * Super amusing playthroughs of the sadistically hard Kaizo Mario game mod (semi-via) (speaking of which, the Let's Play Archive contains significant Google Video content of narrated classic video game walkthroughs for all systems, which it's likewise racing to preserve before it's too late.) 2009 * "Inside the Chernobyl Sarcophagus," a gripping documentary on the suicidal attempts to contain the nuclear disaster (via) * The Cowboy Bebop movie "Knockin' On Heaven's Door" (via) * An anthropological documentary look at "the human animal" in six parts (via) * Multiple gay history documentaries from Stonewall to the present (via) * High Tech Soul and Pump Up the Volume, electronic music documentaries (via) 2010 * Jim Henson's hour-long film "The Cube" (via) * Videotaped US sea burial of lost Soviet submariners (via) * A lengthy talk from Buckminster Fuller (via) * "The Plague Dogs," a harrowing animated film about escaped research animals (via) * Several links to English anime dubs in this megapost from filthy light thief * The Space Ghost Christmas Special (via) * A multi-part narrated playthrough of Douglas Adams's cult classic video game Starship Titanic (via) 2011 * The complete first season of machinima comedy hit Red vs. Blue (via) * A 42-minute documentary on a survivor's escape from Auschwitz in his own words (via) * From Friday's thread: National Collegiate Debate Championship, Douglas Hofstadter docudrama, 1989 global warming documentary, Kubrick's "Fear and Desire", Parisian bookstore documentary, Douglas Adams interview, BBC on worker co-ops, Adam Curtis's documentaries, a look at humanity's dependence on animals, Joel Bauer describes the contents of his suitcase, David Attenborough on uncontacted New Guinea tribes, 1980s children's puppetry TV, Superman: The Musical! See also: Authors@Google, Tech Talks, and other Google-produced video

Larry Rivers' Archives

zarq — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 08:04:32 -0800

When "Proto-Pop" artist Larry Rivers' died in 2002, he left behind extensive archives of his letters, paperwork, photographs and film documenting the New York artistic and literary scene from the 1940s through the 1980s. They chronicle his friendships and relationships with dozens of artists, musicians and writers, from Willem de Kooning and Andy Warhol to Frank O’Hara. Also included: films and videos of his two adolescent daughters, naked or topless, being interviewed by their father about their developing breasts. Now, one daughter, who says she was pressured to participate beginning when she was 11, is demanding that material be removed from the archive and returned to her and her sister. Per the NYTimes article, the archives have been purchased from the Larry Rivers Foundation by New York University for their an undisclosed amount. They may eventually intend to exhibit the work. Salon.com: Child porn or Coming-of-Age film? More on Larry Rivers: Obit: Barbara Rose on Larry Rivers. She describes him as "...the hostile, affectionate, generous, stingy, gregarious, insecure, serious, superficial, all-American mutt who managed to offend most deeply those he loved the most." View his work online: (Some works may be NSFW. To the best of my knowledge, there are no depictions of child pornography at these links.) * The Larry Rivers Foundation * Flickr * Smithsonian American Art Museum * Hirschorn Museum and Sculpture Garden * Museum of Fine Arts: Boston * The Parrish Art Museum * MOMA * Metropolitan Museum of Art * The Seavest Collection of Contemporary Realism: 1, 2 * "I Like Olympia in Black Face" 1970 / Centre Pompidou, Paris YouTube Videos: Interview: Inside New York's Art World: Larry Rivers, 1978 Archived film: Nobody Home Interview clip: Speaking about his son, Sam

"[The customers] come in here, by my grabbing them and touching them and screaming at them they become human beings."

hydrophonic — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 11:58:18 -0800

Jerry's Deli (starts at 1:02) by Tom Palazzolo, 1976. A short documentary on deli owner Jerry Meyers, who's been screaming abuse at his loyal customers for 30 years. (Clipstream/Java video. Click on lower right corner of the video to enlarge. Or here's a Youtube with out-of-synch audio.) From MediaBurn's Chicago-centric archives of early independent video. More from Palazzolo. There's a lot more of WTTW Chicago's Image Union, which from the late seventies through the eighties introduced many unsuspecting viewers to provocative documentaries, experimental works, low-budget animations, comedy shorts, and seemingly anything else they thought would fit. Previously. Some Image Union highlights, not so Chicago-centric: Fela Kuti (at 1:17) Two films Heather McAdams made from found footage (at 1:03 and 26:28) "Cold Cows" and Frisbee Dog Recollections of vaudeville, with film from the 30s and 40s (at 16:41) "It Ain't City Music" (at 29:12), scenes from the National Country Music Contest, Warrenton, Virginia, in an episode full of amazing music. "The Calypso Singer" (at 1:13), a Stan Freeburg bit, animated Gus Van Sant's "The Discipline of DE" (at 17:49), an adaptation of a William S. Burroughs story about mastering the easy way. Media Burn by the way, is the film where the artists' group Ant Farm drove a 1959 Cadillac through a pile of burning television sets (previously). A clip served as Image Union's closing credits.

We could see such people - no longer as mythical figures, but alive - as alive as their work

Blazecock Pileon — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 01:18:53 -0800

"The people whose stories you watch on Peoples Archive are leaders of their field, whose work has influenced and changed our world as we know it." The archive includes talks by luminaries such as Hans Bethe, Benoit Mandelbrot, Donald Knuth, Quentin Blake, Stan Lee and many others.

The Visual Telling of Stories

carsonb — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 10:53:36 -0800

The Visual Telling of Stories
A lyrical encyclopedia of visual propositions;
a visually orientated taxonomy of the ways in which pictures are used to tell stories. And we, spectators always, everywhere Looking at, never out of, everything ! It fills us. We arrange it. It decays. We rearrange it, and decay ourselves. Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies, the eighth elegy, 1922

Glorious Colour

chuckdarwin — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 14:50:45 -0800

Between 1908 and 1931, French philanthropist Albert Kahn funded The Archive of the Planet. He sent out still photographers and motion picture cameramen who returned with 72,000 Autochrome colour plates, 4,000 steroscopic views, and 600,000 feet of film. BBC4's startling series allows us all to see Edwardians In Colour.

Europa Film Treasures

carsonb — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 15:19:50 -0800

Europa Film Treasures is a new window onto the film archivers of Europe, and "All genres are on the playbill! From comedy to science fiction, from westerns to animation, from erotic to ethnological movies..." take some time to explore the European side of carefully preserved film history.

Australia’s audiovisual heritage online

tellurian — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 08:17:01 -0800

australianscreen launched today. You can view clips from Australian feature films, documentaries, TV programs, shorts, home movies, newsreels, advertisements, other historical footage, and sponsored films produced over the last 100 years, with curators’ notes and other information about each title. [via Margaret and David]

Now that Premiere's Gone

klangklangston — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 16:44:53 -0800

Cashiers du Cinemart. Film Threat's Dave Williams: "a thin, primitive hobby publication with an obvious ax to grind; making it far less interesting than you think it is, and compelling me to conclude it's impossible for you to ever get your shit together...killing one more tree for your pointless, directionless, self-aggrandizing 'zine with nothing to offer is a sad, selfish waste." Best known for the Anti-Tarantino saga, one man's quest to get a director to acknowledge his influences, Cashiers is a great '90s 'zine with archives online.

Archive.org's feature film collection

jiawen — Sat, 05 Aug 2006 01:48:31 -0800

Full films for legal download: Archive.org has a large number of movies with expired copyrights for download. My favorite is 1936's Things To Come. Other nifty things include classic feature films like Battleship Potemkin and His Girl Friday, and shorts such as Max Fleicher's Superman, Three Stooges and Buster Keaton.

The dear green place?

Len — Tue, 17 May 2005 17:03:33 -0800

Best laid schemes? Back in 1945 the Bruce Plan [click on images for video footage] was a radical proposal to knock down, and then rebuild, the Victorian centre of the city of Glasgow. The city’s slums* would be cleared; new towns* would be established; Glasgow would rise again, triumphant, once again the second city of the Empire*. In 1971*, there were grand visions of the Glasgow of the future; the Glasgow of tomorrow would be a bright, shining new city, and the Clyde* would once again be something to be proud of. A fascinating film archive of the Glasgow of the 20th century. *All links contain embedded video goodness.

Broadsword calling Danny Boy

nthdegx — Tue, 17 May 2005 06:53:25 -0800

Channel 4's 100 Greatest War Films as voted for by their (generally more clued-up than average) viewership has plenty for you to disagree with, but much to recommend. Filmsite.org has a history of war films (as does Berkeley) for the completists among you. There are more war films from and about Vietnam and Indochina than you can shake a bayonet at (see also the 1999 NYT article, Apocalypse Then: Vietnam Marketing War Films to learn a little about the Vietnamese government's 1960s and 70s archive of war film). The [British] national archives have archived film from pre-WWI to the Cold War.

BFI presents screenonline

jacknose — Mon, 01 Dec 2003 09:41:59 -0800

BFI presents screenonline | The British Film Institute announces the launch of screenonline: "This new site features an unrivalled collection of archive film and television footage from the bfi National Film and Television Archive.... [It] is the first time the bfi has given the public access online to its comprehensive collection of film and television material, giving teachers, students and film enthusiasts an exceptional opportunity to investigate British history, culture and society through cinema. "

Social engineering!

umberto — Sat, 20 Apr 2002 10:53:47 -0800

Social engineering! Gender labelling! Corporate self-aggrandizement! It's all here in a nice variety of formats on the Internet Moving Images Archive. 'Educational' films spanning several decades in all of their cheezy glory. Now, if only I could find 'Donald Duck in Mathmagic Land.'