This post was written by Criss Austin. Criss is the supervisor of the Motion Picture Preservation Lab. I think it’s safe to say that we all agree the last 21 months have been long and trying. During much of this time, NARA staff were working on projects at home which helped to serve our researchers' … Continue reading Back to Work with Puppets: The Wonderful Night of Hercules Brown
This post is by Daniel Dancis, a Textual Records Archivist and blogger at The Text Message. The National Archives Catalog includes digitized posters and graphics with Spanish text that run the gamut from World War II propaganda posters to contemporary public service announcements. Many of the posters were created for use abroad but there is … Continue reading A Survey of Spanish Language Posters and Related Records
A couple of years back, the National Archives Motion Picture Preservation Lab started seeing an uptick in researcher reference requests for one specific series of films: 306-LSS, a group of more than 400 black and white reels of stock footage that ended up in the hands of the United States Information Agency (USIA). As the … Continue reading Searchable Stock Shots: 306-LSS Films Now Online!
Today’s post is written by Joseph Smith, who volunteers at the National Archives at College Park. National Bookmobile Day is April 22, part of National Library Week (April 19-25). A library is a place that stores information, a place where people from all walks of life have the opportunity to obtain textual and audiovisual material … Continue reading Mobile Libraries: Culture on the Go
In the 1970s, the United States Information Agency’s "Vision USA" brought images of American life to television screens across the globe. The program focused on current events, and occasionally, Muppets. Episode 72 of "Vision USA," released in 1978, takes a behind-the-scenes look at Jim Henson's "Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas." Emmet Otter was one of the … Continue reading Season’s Greetings from the U.S. Information Agency: “Vision USA” Visits Emmet Otter
Early this year, a small stack of 16mm film cans came down to the Motion Picture Preservation Lab for a condition assessment. They were wrapped in dirty cloth tape, and marked The Emperor’s Elephant. We were interested, thinking it might be a fun animated film. As we wound through the Kodachrome reels, we discovered beautifully detailed marionettes made … Continue reading “Tales from the Hoja”: Marionettes with a Message
We work on a lot of cartoons in the Motion Picture Preservation Lab. Some were made for military service members. Some were made to illustrate the dangers of drug use. But the most consistently surprising cartoons are the ones we find in the films of the United States Information Agency (USIA). During the Cold War … Continue reading Animatics and Anti-Communism: Payut Ngaokrachang Animates Hanuman for the USIA
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 with Heidi Holmstrom. In the past year, staff in the motion picture preservation lab handled millions of feet of film. Films might come to us for inspection and repair, photochemical duplication, or digitization. To continue an annual tradition, we’ve identified a handful of films that were digitized in 2017 and found their … Continue reading Favorite Film Finds of 2017
This is the second installment in our series about the United States Information Agency’s Young Film Maker Bicentennial Grant Films. In the previous post, we told you about the program and featured a trippy animated short. Today we have Sharon and Thomas Hudgins’ film Homespun and Stephen Rivkin’s Winter Count, both completed in 1975. Homespun When … Continue reading Celebrating the Bicentennial: Crafting the Old Ways
