Understanding 9/11
posted September 11, 2012
Last year, the Internet Archive, a California-based organization that collects audio, moving images, and Web pages for historical purposes, built a site collecting more than 3000 hours of television coverage by American networks and others from cities around the world. Titled Understanding 9/11: A Television News Archive, the site is designed as a resource for
Archivist Guilty of Stealing and Selling National Sound Treasures
posted October 5, 2011
A former long-time United States National Archives audiovisual archivist has admitted in federal court that he stole almost 1,000 sound recordings from the Archives and sold some of them on the online auction site, eBay, in September and October, 2010.
3,000 Hours Of 9/11 Television Coverage
posted September 7, 2011
The Internet Archive, a California-based organization that collects audio, moving images, and Web pages for historical purposes, has built a site collecting more than 3000 hours of television coverage by American networks and others from cities around the world. Titled Understanding 9/11: A Television News Archive, the site is designed as a resource for scholars,
Portrait of a Preservationist Lawyer
posted August 26, 2011
The Washington Post describes the work that lawyer Eric Schwartz has done to advance the cause of preservation of classic American film.
Charles Guggenheim’s Archive Goes To Missouri Museum
posted August 26, 2011
The Missouri History Museum has announced the acquisition of the film archive of Charles Guggenheim (1924-2002), a pioneer of public television, the use of archival footage shot on hand-held cameras, and political film, a form he abandoned in disgust at the oversimplifications and negativity of American political campaigning. Guggenheim was called “the Ken Burns of
The Film for which Ken Loach Was Reproached
posted August 24, 2011
In 1969, Ken Loach made a documentary film about the operations of the charity, Save the Children, commissioned by the charity. Officials of the organization did not like what Loach presented them, at all. So much so, that they barred any public showing of the film. But now, to kick off a retrospective of the
Bernard Herrmann Hits 100
posted July 8, 2011
“Herrmann‘s stock in this centenary year is high, celebrated around the world in performances of rarities like his 1951 opera, Wuthering Heights, and suites of his familiar film scores. Yet scholarly work seems oddly scant,” writes Jack Sullivan, the director of American studies at Rider University. Meanwhile, NPR’s Tom Huizenga sings Hermann’s praises. And, more
The War of the Worlds Breaks Up Concrete
posted June 11, 2011
In one its This NOT Just In features, radio station KUOW, in Seattle, reported on the reaction in the town of Concrete, Washington, to the 1938 radio broadcast of War of the World, starring and directed by Orson Welles. KUOW’s Feliks Banel reported that while pockets of panic took hold in the eastern United States,
The Fate of the Original Walk of Fame Footprints
posted June 11, 2011
In 1927, three stars of the silent-film era, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks Jr, and Norma Talmadge became the first three film stars to have their footprints preserved in concrete in the forecourt of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. That memorialization occurred by accident, when the theater’s owner, Sid Grauman, asked the three stars to
The U.S. National Jukebox: How It Rolls
posted May 18, 2011
The Library of Congress recently announced the roll-out of its stunning National Jukebox project, which makes available to the pubic a vast trove of sound recordings, starting from the earliest ones made in the United States. At launch, the Jukebox makes more than 10,000 recordings available for listening, free of charge. The recordings were made