Preserved Film Movies

What goes in to the phrase, "Let's go to the movies"? An off-screen narrator takes us back to the earliest days of film: clips remind us of early star...

An mutoscope motion picture installation commissioned for the 86th anniversary of the Guggenheim museum. Later preserved and turned into a short film....

A description and enactment of the discovery of gold by James Marshall, and the role played by John Sutter. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive.

A documentary about four African-American comediennes set in 1984. Restored in 2021 by the Academy Film Archive. 

Made in an environment and at a time when frequent and gratuitous images of nude women permeated the work of her male counterparts, director Penelope...

Carriage Trade was an evolving work-in-progress, and this 61-minute version is the definitive form in which Sonbert realized it, preserved intact from...

Experimental short film preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2017.

This is a hand-painted step-printed film which begins with slow dissolves of what appear to be decaying leaves, crumpled browns and golds and oranges...

A “found object of paint and mold” given to Brakhage by the poet David Meltzer. According to Jane Brakhage, Stan did nothing to it but see it, splice...

The movements across the 2-dimensional space, and in and out of elevators through 3-dimensional space, suggest a conceptual map of the visible environ...

An instructional video that teaches, through stop-motion animation, how to build a bridge over a gorge that can hold heavy military equipment. Preser...

Dark blood red slow shifting tones (often embedded in dark) / (often shot-thru with parallel wave-like lines) composed of all previous shapes and flow...

A dirge-like hula song illustrates humanity's woes. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2010.

This short on movie sound men starts with a short history of sound in the movies. We then see how the different jobs in the sound department contribut...

"Bump City is a colour film about the symbolic destruction of Los Angeles. It was never a very finished film, but it was about signs and advertising,...

Regrettably, the labour of projectionists is usually only considered by the audience when they ‘screw up’. This film offers an alternative opportunity...

While at his workshop in Puerto Rico, Pablo Casals prepares to conduct a Bach suite for a concert performance. Oscar Winner for the category "Best Sho...

A film exposing the staged commodification and banality of the American "beauty contest" with color overlays of fireworks in reverse-motion. Preserve...

Little Billy wants to buy some ice cream with the dime his mother gave him, but the neighborhood bullies have other plans for that dime. Preserved by...

When his play closes down, an actor returns home to find that his children are gone. He's then notified that a wealthy relative has died and left him...