Prelinger Film Archive and Library

[Daniel D. Teoli Jr.]

Short video on Rick Prelinger and wife on the work they do with preserving history via 8mm / 16mm film archive and Prelinger Library.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/filmmaker-unearths-historical-treasures-in-home-movies

Love his Lost Landscape series!

Unbeknownst to Rick's work, I got started a few years ago along this same wavelength. I knew they had movie film collectors, but nothing along the work that Rick does in this concentrated area of home movies. I call my collection of home movies 'time capsule' material and have about half a million feet in it. But it is not all home movies. I also collect early stag films or anything that I deem as noteworthy. The problem with adult content is you cannot put it on mainstream streaming venues. So they are Internet Archive films.

Still trying to learn the ropes of movie film and digitizing. I just got started with a Retrsoscan scanner trying to digitize this stuff. I had previously collected still photos and ephemera from the last 2 centuries in my Archive, then expanded to small gauge films. My background is in hi-level candid / underground still photography and knew nothing about motion picture film. But every day you learn new things and put more of the puzzle together.

Film is fascinating stuff, I could easily spend 10 lifetimes on it and never get bored. Every time I peel some film off an unknown reel to see what is there...it is like Christmas when I was a 10 years old! Only problem with film is it is a $$ sucking activity to work in. Still photography is bad enough, but film magnifies the $$ needs massivley.