This post was written by guest blogger Tanya Goldman. Goldman is a PhD Candidate in Cinema Studies at New York University. The ease with which most of us stream movies and television makes it hard to envision the labor of media distribution. Before home video and streaming, transporting films as physical objects demanded careful logistical … Continue reading How the U.S. Army Served its Movie-Mad GIs during World War II
Los Angeles, the City of Angels, La-La-Land, Tinseltown, no matter what you call it, the city of Los Angeles has long been a center of commerce, culture, and entertainment in the United States. It is a must see on any road trip through California. Still from FC-FC-2434 "Nature has been extravagant in bestowing gifts upon … Continue reading Summer Road Trip: Los Angeles
Today’s post is written by Larry Shockley, Archives Specialist in NARA's Office of Innovation. One of the more rewarding aspects of working for an institution such as the National Archives is our ability to serve archival colleagues at state and local levels. A recent trip to the West Virginia Archives and History provided one such … Continue reading NARA Film Preservation Unit Serves State and City Level Colleagues
This post was written by Andrew Smith and first posted to the National Archives Internal Collaboration Network. Andrew was a records analyst at NARA before departing for another agency. Explosions at the Federal Center Around noon on December 7, 1978, staff of the National Archives and Records Service (NARS) were eating lunch inside the offices … Continue reading Disaster Strikes the National Archives: The 1978 Nitrate Vault Fire
This post was written by Tisha Mondal and Judy Luis-Watson. Tisha is a National Archives Volunteer and Judy is the manager of Volunteer and Education Programs at Archives II in College Park, Maryland. This post is dedicated to the memory of Rabindranath Tagore (May 7, 1861 – August 7, 1941). His words are as meaningful in … Continue reading On Finding Rabindranath Tagore
This post was written by Criss Kovac. Criss is the supervisor of the Motion Picture Preservation Lab. The statistics were overwhelmingly against them. With a million German troops and 40,000 anti-aircraft guns waiting the odds were roughly 50-50 they’d make it home alive. Completing 25 bombing runs lowered those odds to less than 25%. Not to … Continue reading Memphis Belle: The 75th Anniversary of the 25th Mission
Today’s post comes from Marissa Friedman, intern at Historypin. Historypin teamed up with the US National Archives (NARA) to develop the Remembering WWI tablet app, part of the Anonymous Donor Project. You can learn more about the national collaborative Remembering WWI project here. For the past eleven months, I have scoured NARA’s digitized collections of … Continue reading Shifting the Lens on WWI: Stories from the Home Front
This post was written by Criss Kovac. Criss is the supervisor of the Motion Picture Preservation Lab. William Greaves was a prominent African-American filmmaker and producer, working from the 1960s through the 2000s. Greaves began as an actor, becoming a member of The Actors Studio in 1948. He won an Emmy Award for the groundbreaking TV newsmagazine series Black Journal and … Continue reading African-American Filmmaker William Greaves on Booker T. Washington & Frederick Douglass
This post was written by Criss Kovac. Criss is the supervisor of the Motion Picture Preservation Lab. We rely on film and photographs to tell stories every day – from the latest blockbuster, our favorite television series, videos we take and stream, to the cherished photos in our homes. But, sometimes what we see isn’t … Continue reading Forensic Film Archiving: Who Raised the Flag on Iwo Jima?
This post was written by Criss Kovac. Criss is the supervisor of the Motion Picture Preservation Lab. Sometimes you just never know what you’re going to find in a can, or in this case, four cans. What I did know is that it wasn’t going to be good, at least physically, because I could smell … Continue reading Record of a Homecoming: Preserving Interviews with Doug Clower and John McCain
