Ephemeral films, resurrected on the Web

Finally, taking us back to the classroom, a collection of short films, produced by the Department of the Interior between 1916 and 1970, introduce viewers to national parks, reclamation projects, the "conquest of the Colorado River" (i.e., the Boulder Dam), and efforts to reintroduce "Children in the City" to the great outdoors.

The videos themselves are embedded into browser pages, begin playing almost immediately, and once completely loaded, allow the viewer to skip ahead to any point in the narrative. If you prefer viewing offline, or your connection is slow enough that you'd rather have your computer wait for the files while you do something else, download options are available for playback on Mac and Windows PCs, Video iPods, and Sony PSPs. (And for the truly dedicated audience, Google offers the option of automatically playing all the videos in a given category in an uninterrupted multifeature marathon.)

While the Google/NARA films are only recent additions to the Web, those familiar with the Internet Archive will know that that organization's Moving Image Archive has been online for years - and, with material coming from multiple sources, has both a larger collection and a wider variety of material on hand.

The 'crown jewel' of the MIA is the Prelinger Archive, which has been noted in this space before, but whose existence is well worth mentioning again. With almost 2,000 films gathered over 20 years, the Prelinger Archive has a spectacular collection of video artifacts that range from television commercials, to coverage of the Hindenburg disaster, to the infamous cold-war classic, "Duck And Cover" - which has been downloaded nearly a quarter of a million times. From 1940s social hygiene films (Are You Popular?), to a two-part '50s sitcom showing young women how to land young men with the increased consumption of electricity, from the generically inspiring Your Name Here, to the surreal Relaxed Wife (promoting the tranquilizer Atarax), and the equally surreal Design for Dreaming (a 1956 General Motors/Frigidaire production that looks like a cross between "An American in Paris" and an outtake from "Twin Peaks"), the Prelinger Archive presents an almost inexhaustible supply of both motion picture history and amusement.

But there's more to the MIA than the Prelinger Archive. More than two dozen additional collections offer such options as Open Source Movies submitted by the online community, the Election 2004 Video Archive, and the Net Cafe and Computer Chronicles television series. In a theatrical vein, there are collections of vintage cartoons and movie trailers, Cinemocracy and Universal Newsreels for additional wartime footage, and more than 600 short and Feature Films that have made their way into the public domain - including such titles as "Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe," Charlie Chaplin's "The Kid," Buster Keaton's "Paleface," and "Night of the Living Dead." ("Plan 9 From Outer Space" had been posted here as well, but it is currently unavailable due to "issues with the item's content.")

As you might have gathered, this week's article could easily evolve into nothing more than a list of lists, so I'll stop myself here and just say that this small sample should give you some idea of the breadth of material available. In terms of viewing options, the Moving Image Archive offers its content both in streaming MPEG and RealVideo formats, as well as downloadable RealVideo, DivX, and MPEG files of various sizes. As with the NARA films, downloading and viewing offline will be the only practical option for dial-up users, but as long as you're not spending every waking hour on your computer, you can probably schedule sufficient time for a few downloads.

After all, you wouldn't want to miss "Radar Men From The Moon," would you?

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