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Posted by: Mike Mashon
I am guest programmer for April, and this week features the most recent film by my favorite director working today, another representing the great flowering of American cinema in the 1970s when I really fell in love with the movies, and the first silent film I ever saw, the one that set me on my …
Posted in: Motion Pictures, National Film Registry, Packard Campus Theater
Posted by: Bryan Cornell
Folklorist Norm Cohen has astutely observed that “[f]olklore thrives where danger threatens” (The Long Steel Rail, cited below, p. 169). The annals of commercially recorded traditional and popular song provide abundant support for this conclusion. In fact, by the early twentieth century — especially the decades of the teens and twenties — nearly every imaginable disaster or mishap was memorialized in song. Natural disasters are …
Posted in: Early Recording Industry, Jukebox, Recorded Sound, Uncategorized
Posted by: Mike Mashon
I programmed the Packard Campus Theater in April, and rather than pick my “favorite” films and television shows, I chose titles that have some deeper personal significance in my life and career. For example, we’re showing Orphans of the Storm (1921) on April 11 because that’s the first silent film I ever saw, two Les …
Posted in: Packard Campus Theater, Television
Posted by: Karen Fishman
This blog post was co-written with Matt Barton, Curator, Recorded Sound Section, Library of Congress Each year, the National Recording Registry at the Library of Congress chooses 25 recordings showcasing the range and diversity of American recorded sound heritage in order to increase preservation awareness. The diversity of nominations received highlights the richness of the …
Posted in: Uncategorized
Posted by: Mike Mashon
Last November we hosted a visit from Heather Linville, a film preservationist at the Academy Film Archive in Hollywood; the AFA is part of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which is better known as the organization responsible for awarding Oscars. Heather had been processing a collection of nitrate film donated to the …
Posted in: Film/Video, Motion Pictures
Posted by: Mike Mashon
The following is a guest post by Jenny Paxson, an Administrative Assistant at the Packard Campus. Thursday, March 26 (7:30 p.m.) The Catered Affair (MGM, 1956) Bette Davis stars as Agnes Hurley, the wife of a Bronx taxi driver (Ernest Borgnine) who wants to give her daughter Jane an elaborate wedding, despite the fact that …
Posted in: Motion Pictures, Packard Campus Theater
Posted by: Mike Mashon
The following is a guest post by Jenny Paxson, an Administrative Assistant at the Packard Campus. Thursday, March 19 (7:30 p.m.) Public Broadcast Laboratory (1967-1968) Public Broadcast Laboratory (PBL) was the first regularly scheduled educational television program aired nationwide, shown on National Educational Television (NET) stations. It premiered in 1967, offering incisive reporting, examinations of …
Posted in: Motion Pictures, Packard Campus Theater, Television
Posted by: Karen Fishman
This blog post was co-written with Jan McKee, Reference Librarian, Recorded Sound Section, Library of Congress It wouldn’t be St. Patrick’s Day without some sentimental Irish ballads to listen to with our green beer, and the name that is most synonymous with Irish ballads is John McCormack. John McCormack (1884-1945) was an Irish born American …
Posted in: Early Recording Industry, Jukebox, National Recording Registry, Recorded Sound, Uncategorized
Posted by: Mike Mashon
The following is a guest post by Kelly Chisholm, a Processing Technician in the Moving Image Section. Back in December, I posted an entry about three versions of a film I found in the J. Fred MacDonald Collection; today, I return with a story about another film from that collection to illustrate a little more …
Posted in: Film/Video, Motion Pictures, National Film Registry