Our focus this week is on the third edition of the film identification workshop Mostly Lost, including a special, additional Saturday program at the State Theatre. Thursday, July 17 (7:30 p.m.) Linda (First Division, 1929) Mrs. Wallace Reid (Dorothy Davenport) directed this silent drama starring Helen Foster as Linda Stillwater, a bright young girl from […]
I know lots of people whose passion for collecting films—and by that I mean good old fashioned celluloid reels—was inextricably linked to their passion for sharing them with friends and family. We usually associate “living room cinema” with home movies, but back in the day there were also countless numbers of junior impresarios presenting programs […]
This week the Packard Campus Theater presents a fond and howlingly funny triple tribute to actor/director/screenwriter Harold Ramis, who passed away last February. Thursday, July 10 (7:30 p.m.) Caddyshack (Orion, 1980, R-rated*) Harold Ramis made his directorial debut and co-wrote this comedy classic that follows the travails of a young caddy as he gets caught […]
This post was co-written by Karen Fishman and Mike Mashon. Here are some selections from the film and audio collection to help you celebrate The Fourth of July. The audio comes from the Library’s National Jukebox which includes over 10,000 streaming recordings dating from 1900 to 1925, a time when patriotic music was extremely […]
Last week my colleague Daniel Blazek told the interesting story of how the Library came to acquire audio transcription discs of 1960s-era Tonight Show broadcasts via the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service. Of course, the very existence of these discs is, to say the least, unexpected—record discs of TV show audio?—and given the preservation […]
The following is a guest post by Daniel Blazek, Recorded Sound Technician, National Audio-Visual Conservation Center The Tonight Show has become such a cultural institution in America that it is hard to imagine that early episodes were lost, as so many early television programs on tape were erased when subsequent broadcasts were taped over […]
The following is a guest post from Rachel Parker, a Processing Technician in the Moving Image Section. “Welcome to the Packard Campus Theater. Please power up your laptops and portable devices and be sure to speak loudly enough during the film so that everyone can hear you.” Not a usual pre-movie show request, is it? […]
We wrap up our June series of westerns and end the month with a live comedy performance from two very funny women, Jody Kerns and Sonya King. Thursday, June 26 (7:30 p.m.) B Western Double Feature The Utah Trail (Grand National, 1938) Tex Stewart (aka “The Pecos Kid”) and his sidekicks arrive to help out […]
Silent films were never silent. From their earliest days as an exhibition attraction, motion pictures were accompanied by some form of music–typically a piano, a musical combo in more modest sized houses, and sometimes an entire orchestra in movie palaces. In some instances, the pianist was joined by a drummer employing sound effects, something I’ve […]
Imagine looking page by page at magazines devoted to radio, recorded sound, film, and television that previously could only be viewed by a visit to a library or an archive. In the past few years, we’ve been working with the Library’s Document Scan Center to digitize around 1 million pages of public domain media-related periodicals […]