Classic Russian Films On YouTube
posted May 18, 2011
How’s your command of Russian, or at least of the Cyrillic alphabet? If you’re capable, with those, you could instantly be well on your way to watching 50 of the Russian film company Mosfilm’s finest productions, thanks to its ongoing efforts to make its gems freely available on the Mosfilm YouTube channel. By year’s end,
Kookaburra Goes to the Movies
posted May 2, 2011
Who’d have thought? In movies of old, the kookaburra provided the generic “jungle sound.” BirdNote, as heard on public-radio station KPLU, tells the tale.
Filming New York’s Finest
posted April 4, 2011
The New York City Police Museum in downtown Manhattan has artifacts dating from the city’s first settlement by Dutch pioneers, 300 years ago, to September 11 2001. It has early officer-identification forms; it has back issues of Spring 3100, a publication written by and about members of the force; and it has film and video
Skip the AV Geek
posted March 30, 2011
Dear moving-image aficionado: How did you come to be one? Skip Elsheimer, who travels far and wide presenting selections from his collection of 23,000 films, describes how he entered the field, and became an “educational film archivist” and self-style “Skip the AV Geek” in a posting on Reesenews, a multimedia magazine devoted to life at
The Silents That Schooled Soviets
posted March 29, 2011
On Sunday, March 6 2011, National Public Radio ran a segment about 10 “lost” American silent films that were found in the Russian film archive, Gosfilmofond, which gave them to the Library of Congress. The 10 films are part of a stash of some 200 silents discovered at Gosfilmofond. “American movies were, in fact, distributed
Preserving a Moving Revolution
posted March 29, 2011
Revolutions, often great times for freedom, and terrible ones of suffering, also frequently threaten cultural collections. In late February 2011, The Atlantic reported on efforts to preserve Internet content from the Egyptian revolution, including the many moving images that informed and motivated militants and other citizens.
Film Title Design
posted March 16, 2011
Ian Albinson has posted his video presentation for the SXSW “Excellence in Title Design” competition screening, his “A Brief History of Title Design.” Among responses to Albinson’s posting is this full-length Spanish-language treatment of the history of title design, by Ferran Albi.
Concern for Hungarian Archives
posted February 26, 2011
Archivists and historians are up in arms about a Hungarian government plan to destroy records kept by the country's Communist-era security apparatus.
What a Moving Image Archivist Does
posted January 8, 2011
Lance Watsky, the coordinator of the UCLA Moving Image Archive Studies (MIAS) program, is featured in an online interview about the variety of jobs available in the field. And on Friday, January 14 2001, at 4:05pm Pacific Coast Time, he will be featured on “Our Digital Future,” a radio show about libraries and archives that
Twenty-Five Films Added to the National Film Registry
posted December 28, 2010
The Library of Congress has named 25 motion pictures that are "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress.