all right I am a humanities librarian and cinema studies subject specialist at the University of Oregon libraries and I am going to be talking through various things today. What I'd like to start with though is a little icebreaker question. Which of these films won the Oscar for best picture in the year that it came out? I'd like you to see if you can answer this without looking them up and put your answer in the chat. We'll see how many of us can get this right. [Laughter] Seeing lots of "none.
" I have one guess of "Apocalypse Now." Someone says "all of them." "no idea" "...Apocalypse Now..." A few "don't knows." The answer is a trick question, as many of you guessed that actually none of them won "best picture" in the year that they came out, despite having a long reputation now and being on top 100 lists and being the luminaries of our film history. I think also the fact that many of us didn't know at all also kind of underscores the point that I want to make with this question, whi
ch is that many of the films that dominate our film history, or the narratives that we have about our film history, are not always the ones that were most popular at the time they came out. They're not always the ones that have the most documentation about them. They're not the ones that continue to be played on our various platforms and streaming services and come out on dvd later, and more to the point, the movies that we remember are not always the ones that have awards, but our students that
we're working with are often assigned to research films for which they have no knowledge. They have no frame of reference for them, and so the assumptions that we might be able to make about this kind of shared cultural history, we can't make those assumptions of our students as well, because for the average age of students that we're dealing with now an old movie came out in the 80s. To have them do research on films that came out 80 years ago is much more of a challenge. The other issue that
is a theme that I want to emphasize today is that one of the challenges of finding relevant film studies resources is that there are just so many possibilities. The affordances of digital tools and the democraticization of digitization, digital production means, and as well as open access movement have all contributed.... Microphone? Can you hear me? You're back yeah thanks okay. I hope that I was heard when I was making my big smart speech about the abundance of digital tools and digital collec
tions, digital materials, the result of all of this abundance that we enjoy is also fragmentation, so we can't assume that we can just go to our library or to one place and be able to find all of these things. The real challenge lies in our discovery of these materials. There's no one unified search tool for them, and the diversity of sources means that we have to work harder to find them than we would for materials that we purchase or license for our libraries, which we can include in our local
discovery systems. Nonetheless, they're out there and and so I'm going to be covering some of them today, a selection of them. Advancing my slides.... What I would like you all to take away from our session today: I have several goals. My hope is that you will have an introduction to understanding approaches to film studies, that you'll get a sense of how to find credible background information on films, get a sense of how to find digital collections of primary sources for film history, how to
find open access scholarship for film studies and find free streaming video. Just a word about my selection of sources today. I selected them with my kind of evaluation checklist in mind. I'm looking for things that have credibility, that have an academic affiliation, I'm looking for scholars who are contributing to the materials or to the platform itself, adding to authority of it, and I'm also looking for things that will have a stability, that will be persistent. There are lots of fan sites,
lots of crowd sourced kinds of places on the internet. I'm looking for things that have more of a scholarly infrastructure to them, so either an academic affiliation or a an institutional affiliation. First I want to start with approaches to film studies. This is going to frame how I'm going to talk about the sources today and the searching I'm going to be providing. With any kind of research topic or project, you know, we're thinking about what are all the things we need to know to make an arg
ument and what evidence do we need to do that. I wanted to introduce this idea of these basic approaches to film studies, which was written about by David Bordwell, a professor of film studies, a film historian, who coincidentally has a very great authoritative website of his own scholarship that he maintains. He did an article called "Doing Film History" in 2008 where he laid out these kind of basic approaches. These are not the only approaches to doing film studies but they're a helpful way to
think about intentional ways of framing an argument and looking for information about these different areas. A biographical approach would focus on an individual's life history. An industrial/economic approach focuses on the business practices of making films. An aesthetic approach is looking at the film's form and style, what it looks like, what it sounds like, or a genre. A technological approach is going to focus on the materials and machines of films, so cameras, sound equipment. A social o
r cultural, political approach is going to focus on the role of cinema in larger society as a cultural object. These often will overlap, so for example Thomas Edison had a role in technological developments, but we may also look at his life and how those two things intersected. These are as I said helpful ways to kind of think intentionally about how you want to come at working on a topic. The other framing device that I like to think about and that I encourage students to think about too is thi
s idea that every film has a life cycle, so it moves through this chain of moments in its life, starting with its production, which includes pre-production, actual production, and post-production. There's quite a few elements there as I'll go into detail in a moment. Then it moves into distribution so it gets sent out into the world. Maybe it's on film, maybe it's on dvd, maybe it's a digital file. Maybe it starts out in New York and then it gets sent out to the rest of the world. Exhibition inc
ludes the venues where films are seen. That has traditionally been in a theater, but it also includes classrooms and airplanes, and doctors' offices, and lots of other what we call non-theatrical exhibition venues. It also includes our living rooms and our phones. Reception is how a film is received so by audiences, but also by critics and scholars. It also includes awards that films have received. If a film has a longer life beyond its original release and has the benefit of being preserved, sa
y by the studio that created it or an archive, then it has the potential for reuse and then the cycle begins again. Imagine "It's a Wonderful Life" that originally came out in the 1930s / 1940s -- sorry I had the date on there on my first slide -- and then it it it went on to have a life on television and we got to see it every year at Christmas, and so it continues to kind of move through this circulation in our world. Not every film makes it through this cycle. Sometimes it just goes into a va
ult and stays there. What's important about thinking about this life cycle of a film is that for each point in this life cycle, information is being created by the producers who are making the film, the distributors who are sending it out, the theaters who are showing the film, the newspapers that are printing the reviews of the films, the archives that are preserving the films, etc. What I want students to think about is if you were looking at a particular aspect of this life cycle of the film
you want to know how was it received, you want to think about what information would be created at that point, and then where would it be distributed and shared. I want to go a little bit more in detail about the production phase of the life cycle because this is where there's a lot of different aspects that are not immediately straightforward when we think of production. It can involve the screenplay, the adaptation that it might have come from original source material as a play or as a book. I
t involves hiring the crew; deciding locations; equipment that might need to be purchased or rented; choosing what equipment to use; how the film was made so the cinematography; what sound equipment might have been used if it was made during the sound era; costumes, makeup, hair; how a film was promoted to try to attract audiences. There's lots of aspects within just this realm, all of which is creating information. We can find from studio records, from industry publications, from fan magazines,
there are lots of different places to find primary sources related to this, but then also secondary sources that are commenting on it. Again, I want students to be thinking explicitly about all these different aspects and not just this kind of broad production phase. The first source that I want to talk about is the AFI Catalog of Feature Films. This is a tool that was originally published by the American Film Institute in 1972, and it was intended to be a catalog of all of the films -- Hollywo
od films -- made in the United States, starting at the birth of cinema up to 1972 when it came out. These would be profiles and lists of crew and contributors to all films -- all Hollywood feature films -- made in the United States. The contents are written by film scholars using primary sources and it's a wealth of information. It has this kind of authoritative infrastructure that that I'm looking for when I want to recommend this to students to use. It has been a subscription database in the p
ast and the Margaret Herrick Library that hosts this has recently made it all available for free. One of the real strengths of this database -- because you may notice that it seems similar to the Internet Movie Database in terms of it providing all of the credits and crew -- these synopses that it provides. Internet Movie Database is not always very consistent with synopses because because it's crowdsourced, but the real strength of this database is the histories, the production histories, that
it provides. Sometimes you can get these things in Wikipedia, but all of this is in one place in the AFI Catalog, and it's a reliable kind of set of information. The production histories are based on the source citations that are also included there of primary sources, and they were written with information, the sources that were available at the time, so these could be expanded based on the fact that there are more digital collections and digitized primary sources now, but it's a great way for
students and researchers to get an overview of how the film got made. You often hear about how directors were chosen, specifics about the technical aspects of the film, the budgets, any kind of controversies that came about, so this is a little snapshot of the entry on "Rope," the Alfred Hitchcock movie from 1948 which is known for having the look as if it was one continuous take, as if there's no breaks, no cuts, in the film at all. In fact there were were cuts in it, as the production history
describes, but it also talks about how they managed to make it look that way. As I said this entry was written using those source citations. The next step in the research process would be to say, "Let's go find some of those sources and see if they're available and see how well they provide evidence and how a researcher or student might expand on it." The next source that I want to talk about is the Media History Digital Library, which is an amazing digital collection. It was originally started
by a film historian at University of Wisconsin and a developer, and they started it just as a scholarly project of digitizing early film history and film industry publications, including fan magazines, and it's hosted by the Internet Archive and it covers 19th century up to about 1963. It's not comprehensive for every publication in there; there is a moving wall based on copyright status, but it includes publications like Variety, Hollywood Reporter, Film Daily, Photoplay. I'm going to enter som
e examples. It can be used for all different aspects of the life cycle of the film. It's useful for production information, all those different aspects of production. It's useful for distribution and exhibition and reviews. Theater reports, so what was showing in a given theater in any part of the United States for example, and lots of information about publicity and promotion. It's got advertisements for the movies, advertisements for studios, for different kinds of equipment, so it's very ver
y rich. One example I'm going to show here is that article from American Cinematographer about "Rope." What I'm showing you here is the way that it the items display in the Internet Archive where it simulates a kind of print environment where you can flip the pages back and forth. You can search through this entire publication. You can make it bigger, and you can zero in on the specific article. This is a close-up on that article we just looked at, and you can see that this is from American Cine
matographer, so the audience for this article is other people working in cinematography and cameramen. It's talking specifically about how they managed to accomplish the illusion of not having any cuts. They had moving walls, they had dolly shots -- and we'll talk a minute about how we find out what a dolly shot actually is. This is an example of if you were taking a technological approach to studying "Rope," this would be perhaps evidence to support an argument related to that approach. This is
another example of the kind of thing that you can find in the Media History Digital Library. This is a fan magazine, there are a number of them in the database. this is Modern Screen, and this is a close-up of an article that appeared in 1942, "Eatin' out with ease," about a huge star at the time, Bette Davis, who coincidentally had a movie coming out that summer called "Now Voyager." The article is all about how she loves to barbecue in her backyard and she loves to have friends over, it's ver
y informal and she's so great at making hamburgers. If this sounds a lot like "Stars: they're just like us," you're right, this was all over the fan magazines in the 20s 30s 40s 50s as a way to promote a film that's coming out but also to promote the star herself so to make her seem accessible and relatable and knowable and yet still unavailable. I thought it was also interesting -- you see the close-up on the text there near the in the bottom right corner of the screen -- that the article said
"This bids fair to be known as the summer of the stay at homes," which I thought was resonant giving our time right now, and I wondered if there was some restrictions on travel related to World War II, and this is where I would like additional context to know what was going on and how important it might have been to go to the movies to get an escape when you might not have been able to travel farther away from home. Again, this is an example of promotional or publicity material where the audienc
e for this is the average moviegoer. It's also an example of what if you were taking a biographical approach or an industry approach of how you construct a star. Star studies is an important aspect of film studies, how we create stars and how we consume them, how they manage their personas, and in in this era of 1942 information about stars was originally rigidly controlled by the studios during the studio era so an article like this may have actually been written by the studio's own publicity d
epartment and deliberately placed in a fan magazine like this to generate interest in both the film and Bette Davis herself. It's not really there to sell the idea of backyard barbecues; it's there to sell the idea of Bette Davis and the idea of going to the movie, so if one were taking a biographical or an industrial approach this could be a piece of evidence for that, because a star is part of the industry that is Hollywood. The next source that I'd like to talk about is a digital collection a
vailable at the Margaret Herrick Library, which is the special library affiliated with the motion picture arts and sciences in Los Angeles. They have many amazing digital collections, including photographs and manuscript collections which they have digitized and made available through their website which I have here on the slide. The one collection that I want to talk about today is the Production Code Administration. Briefly, the production code was a set of industry guidelines that spelled out
what was acceptable and unacceptable content in Hollywood feature films. This predated our current rating system and it was established in the late 20s / early 30s as a way to regulate the content of Hollywood films. Prior to that there were state and local censor boards. Portland had a very active censor board, for example, but there was nothing national prior to the production code and there was concern from religious groups and parent groups, "concerned mothers" kinds of things, about the mo
vies' representations of sexuality of criminality, of what they considered objectionable behavior. they thought the movies were too sexy, too indecent, harmful to children, and they were able to get the Production Code Administration established and it meant that every Hollywood script that was up for production had to be reviewed and approved by the production code and once they were approved they got a number, the PCA code, and that showed that it was approved to be produced. the guidelines in
the production code, which is also available in full text digitally from the Margaret Herrick Library, included a long list of things such as including no interracial relationships, no homosexuality, no positive representations of criminal behavior -- so you could have criminals they just couldn't get away with it or have a have a nice life -- there could be nothing that would ridicule Christianity, and just some examples: if you've ever wondered why married couples slept in twin beds or why ki
sses were so short in movies from the 50s, that's because of the production code. What is available in these dossiers -- and there are 500 films represented in this collection and it covers 1930 to 1968 when the rating system was established -- is correspondence between the studio and production code administration staff and often very very specific granular feedback requests, demands to change the content of the scripts. The dossiers also include sometimes clippings so digitized reviews from va
rious newspapers. It's much more than just the feed, the back and forth between the producers and the production code staff, this is an example of the dossier from "Rope," the Hitchcock movie. On the left we see the initial letter from a producer, a production assistant, from the studio to Joseph Breen who was part of -- he headed up the production code administration. So he's submitting the screenplay for the movi. This is pre-production, "Here's my script please take a look at it and see what
you think," and on the right side are some blow-ups of samples from the feedback that the producers received about the film, about the script, I should say. The first one: "...in this connection we urged the advisability of omitting entirely the derisive treatments of the ten commandments on pages 62 and 63. This would undoubtedly give great offense to motion picture audiences." The next one: "...in preparing your screenplay we suggest the possibility of omitting a lot of the emphasis on and di
alogue about liquor and drinking." "You agreed that you would be willing to change any specific lines of dialogue that might reflect the homosexual relationship between these two characters." And then the last one, suggesting that we don't want crime to seem too exciting we want we want to make sure that these people who committed this murder in the movie, that they really shouldn't feel too good about it. This is a fascinating glimpse into the ways that Hollywood was was subjecting itself to th
is kind of self-censorship and regulation and how a script might have had to evolve over its process and the kind of objections that would have been raised, but it also can show how a producer or a screenwriter director can work within these constraints to still try to achieve their goals with their films. Moving on the next source I'd like to talk about, it's a background source for folks doing an aesthetic approach to studying a film or to just getting an understanding of what we mean when we
throw around words like dolly shots and tracking shots or any other kinds of those key terms in film studies, what we mean when we talk about the cinematic language of film. This is a project that was created by Columbia University and is hosted by the University, and it is like an encyclopedia of film language with entries written by film scholars. They're authored and they're illustrated with clips that show what they're talking about and then the clips themselves have commentary by scholars.
I'm going to show you an example of one of these. This is a just a snippet from the entry on a close-up -- when we go in close -- and this is much longer than just the snippet that i've provided here. It provides a history and then evolution over time and the entry itself has about five different clips to illustrate this concept. This is just one of them. "A really interesting dialectic in the use of close-ups is the dialectic between on the one hand really getting a sense of the reality of the
performer's face -- and here you see Elmer Booth right there looking at us and looking around the corner -- but also the presence of the camera so it's both realistic and fantastic." The Columbia Film Language Glossary is is not the only thing that does what it does. There are other projects like this out on the web, but as I said, this is one that I choose because entries are authored, the audio commentary is by film scholars, it has excellent metadata, and it's going to have the stability and
persistence of a tool that's hosted by a university. This project is being used right now in our Media Aesthetics classes at University of Oregon. Moving on, these are another collection of digital primary sources. I'm sure you're all aware of Chronicling America, a database of digitized American newspapers hosted by the Library of Congress. Many local state-based newspaper projects are also visible and searchable within the Chronicling America interface. They also can be separate, such as the O
regon Historic Oregon Newspapers Project, which we have at the University of Oregon. You can search both our standalone database, but you can also search within Chronicling America, and the benefit of searching through all of those newspapers all at one time for film studies is the ability to see how for example a film might have been distributed or exhibited in different states across the United States, how films were received in different regions and cities both small and large. The search int
erface is is excellent. It has the ability to make screen grabs and pdfs. The metadata is excellent. Let's look at an example of the potential for film studies with newspapers. When I'm doing instruction with students, I'll often do a primary source analysis activity where I'll just give them an ad from the newspaper and I'll give them information at least where it appeared and when it appeared. You can see from the citation along the side that this is from the Historic Oregon Newspapers Collect
ion. This ad appeared in the Oregon Statesman out of Salem, Oregon, in 1927. Then I asked students to just try to make sense of it. What are they looking at? So, what can we know about this film or about the theater where it showed? What does it tell us about how this film was exhibited? We can know for example up in the left corner of the ad that it appeared at the Elsinore so we can know that there was a theater in Salem called the Elsinore, which is still there. That it played two days, today
and Monday. We can also see that the artwork here may or may not have been created by the newspaper itself maybe it came from the studio. It looks pretty stylized. We can also see what it cost to get into the movies in 1927 at the Elsinore. We can also see that this is a movie that was made in Cottage Grove, Oregon, and that there was an orchestra playing at this on some days and then there was somebody on the Wurlitzer, so it was a silent film but there was musical accompaniment. With a little
bit more context we can make even more meaning out of this ad. Up in the left corner are the actual release dates and then the national release dates which I got from the American Film Institute Catalog. I learned from that that the movie was originally released in December of 1926, and it was released nationally in February of 1927, but you can see the ad for the Elsinore showing was from January, 1927. I don't know what to make of that yet. I need more context and information to help me make
sense of why did we get it before everyone else, in Salem at least. Is it because of the Cottage Grove connection? it'd be interesting to pursue that. Why would a small movie market be able to get this film before anybody else did nationally? We can also see by searching across all of the content in Chronicling America, an ad like like this one from a theater in Tucson, Arizona. This one was from May 17th. This was more part of that national rollout of the film. I interpret this as this is a the
ater that was for the Spanish-speaking community, that "The General" played there, and I'd be interested to know too, were there Spanish subtitles or intertitles in that version of the film. Knowing that this film played to both audiences -- English speaking audiences in Salem, Oregon, and Spanish-speaking audiences in Tucson, Arizona, gives us a sense of that exhibition and audiences and and a sense of reception for this film. We can also see from the ad in Tucson that there was more going on.
There was more programming happening at this theater than just that film. There was vaudeville and then another movie called "Padlocked." "The General" might have been a big deal, but it wasn't the only thing that was going on at this theater. There was lots of other kinds of programming. We can also see how much it cost to see the film at this theater. We can also see ads for one particular film as it was rolled out across the United States. These are ads for "Birth of a Nation," which came out
in 1916, and you can see just visually that they used similar design. Presumably, this was provided by the studio, and not just the design of that circle but some of the same language you'll see in ads no matter where the film was showing. Some of the same language like "Eighth wonder of the world," "a mighty spectacle," "you may never see it again," "the world's greatest, most successful American play." Some of these ads were enormous relative to the size of the page that they appeared on. In
the bottom left corner is a a story that appeared on the front page of the Northern Wyoming Herald when the movie played in town. That was a news story about what audiences apparently thought about the film, but it uses some of the same language -- "this message of peace," "the eighth wonder of the world," that is you still see in these ads that appeared elsewhere in the country. One could create an argument here seeing all of this kind of this data about how the studio that released the film cr
eated this kind of narrative about the film itself that told the story about itself and then it got the country talking about telling the same story about it and the result of that is this kind of dominant narrative about "Birth of a Nation" that it is this amazing technical achievement, that it is this amazing story of peace, and of course "Birth of a Nation" was considered one of the greatest films ever made, until more recently when we really had to come to grips with how offensive and and w
rong the actual story of it is, regardless of its technical achievements, and in fact one of the great benefits of a database like Chronicling America is our ability to see other newspapers that were not part of this dominant narrative. This is an African-American newspaper from Nebraska, and there were many other stories like this in African American press, protesting against the release and exhibition of "Birth of a Nation" in their towns and really trying to resist having this movie in circul
ation, and that occurred in Portland as well, in Oregon. It's really helpful I think to see not just information that confirms what we think our history of a film is but also the ability to see information that would upend those dominant narratives. Moving on to additional digital primary sources, these would be digital books, pamphlets, reports, government documents, I'm sure you're all aware of Hathi Trust. Libraries can have memberships to this, but lots of their content is just free to anyon
e. One example of the kinds of things that you can find in here is this report that came out in 1914 called "Vaudeville and Motion Picture shows." It was an amazing study of theaters and movie going in Portland in 1914. It gives incredible data about how often children went to the movies, for example, and what kinds of things people were seeing in movie theaters in Portland. Just one example of the thousands of things that are available in Hathi Trust, so don't forget about this when you're thin
king about finding primary sources for film studies. And of course the Internet Archive. It has millions of digitized books and pamphlets and directories, and your ability to narrow your search to things just having to do with motion pictures is really great, and you get that same interface that I demonstrated with the American Cinematographer where you can flip the pages back and forth and search across all of the publications. Now I want to move on to open access scholarly sources. We of cours
e have many things available through our local discovery services, but if you're in a library that doesn't have the benefit of a cataloging department that is able to bring metadata from these directories of open access books and journals into your catalog, it's important to know that these are out there, and your ability to search them and search by topic and find specific articles and books. This is an example over on the right of a journal that's available through the Open Library of Humaniti
es. The downside of these kind of standalone projects is we want to be able to search through all of them simultaneously and see all the content that's available. You have to search them one by one, unless you've been able to bring them into your local discovery system. There are is an increasing number of peer-reviewed high-quality scholarly books and journals that are available just out on the free web and also sources like OASIS which provides open education resources, so courses and course m
aterials that can be freely reused for anyone. Some examples of the extent and quality of materials available in these platforms and the Directory of Open Access Journals, there's really great international representation. This is Cinema Comparative which is a European journal. Down in the bottom left corner is an example from the Directory of Open Access Books. Great variety from university presses that are all freely available, and then up in the right corner a screenshot from OASIS which has
the free course materials, two examples of open courseware related to the study of cinema from different points of view, all freely available. Now free streaming video -- I suspect some of you may have come just for this part of the presentation! It's it's a big question, something that I get asked all the time. I get asked "where is the specific film?" but I also get asked "where's all the films?" So this is the streaming video aspect of the life cycle of films, would be you know as the film ha
s moved through its initial release and then it has this afterlife, so a movie that's now streaming on Turner Classic Movies, so that's in an archive and has been digitized and is now available, and these would be non-commercial platforms, so we're not talking about Netflix or or HBO Max. These are places where you can find free streaming video and so it can start to feel like, "Oh my gosh everything is locked away in these commercial platforms, where can I where can I find what I need?" And in
fact, there are almost so many that it can feel overwhelming like wow actually everything is out there, but in fact "everything," there's no such thing as "everything" in any of this. There is this incredible abundance, but there is still -- everything is not out there, so I think it's important to be thinking about, when we're looking for streaming video, to know that people again are looking for an individual film so "where can I find 'Casablanca'?" and "where can I find just like a list of re
commended places to go?" I rely on other experts. There are librarians and there are libraries and websites that are really trying to keep track of all of the places where streaming video is being collected, so collections of streaming video but also individual movies. For example the Video Round Table group in ALA maintains a website where they're up to date and they maintain a list of collections, and so this is a way to try to like navigate through what exists and what might be relevant for m
y users. I've just included four right here. There are some really great libguides out there that that list other kinds of things. The top two are the ones that that i go to most frequently to keep track of new collections that are coming out, and the Video Lib listserv is also excellent, as well as the Association of Moving Image Archivists as a good way to become aware of new collections and new videos and new archives that are coming out. The abundance of free streaming film, which often is n
ot hollywood films, so "Casablanca" for example is not easy to find free because it is still benefiting from the economic industrial context of hollywood, so it still has an economic long tail; in other words they can still profit off of it by licensing it to Turner Classic Movies or Netflix, but the abundance of of streaming video out there really represents the scope and variety of filmmaking that goes far beyond Hollywood feature films. It's educational films and training and advertising film
s, home movies, travel travelogues, scientific films, documentaries, newsreels, news, public service announcements, all these kinds of films that represent our film heritage but that are not necessarily what we think of when we think of like "the movies," so it's important to be thinking about that as you're navigating where the video might be. The other challenge with any of these curated lists is you still have to drill down to the specific. For example you might start by looking at the list p
rovided by the Video Round Table group, and within that list you'll see a link to the American Archive of Public Broadcasting, and then within that collection you might browse down to the news public -- sorry -- public news events commentary show called Black Journal, which was an amazing show that came out in 1968 that was public affairs programming. It had interviews and conversations -- and within that collection then you would drill down further to a specific episode, for example one called
"The Black Woman," which came out in 1970, and then you might drill down even further to a specific clip within the Black Journal, so a researcher might be looking for something that leads you eventually to that clip. There isn't an easy way to start your search by searching for that clip you kind of have to go through the top level collection and and then drill down. So those are all of the challenges, but it's worthwhile. I recommend you browse some of the lists that are there to get a sense o
f the scope and variety. I thought I would show a couple of clips for your viewing pleasure, to show you some of the examples that are out there. this one is From a film called "Calling Blighty," which was produced during World War II of soldiers overseas in World War II to send home and shown in local theaters. These were messages that were recorded for folks at home. "Hello and hello mom. I hope you're keeping fit and well. also Peter and Joan. As you can see for yourself, I'm okay. Give all m
y regards to all relations and friends. Cheerio for now and all my love. Well here's Bob to tell you how he's been. Come on, Bob." [Music] "Hello Lightning, hello Mother. I bet you are surprised. I'm in the pink that you can see. I hope you are the same. My mail is good as possible. Cheerio, thanks and love. Here's Perry who wants to speak to you." [Music] Hiya darlings, hiya Sis, I hope you're well. You can see for yourself that I'm okay, you lucky people. tell Uncle Georgie to keep his pecker
up and by gosh can I do the bullets now! Well there's one thing whatever I say to you now you can't ask me back, can you? All right cheerio, keep smiling, I'll be seeing you. Come on, Billy!" "Hello Mom and Dad, it's great to have this opportunity of saying hello to you. I'm keeping pretty well myself and i trust you are also. Give my love to Sister Bet and Brother Tom and also my darling Pat. So God bless you all and may we meet again soon. Now we have Vic to see you." "Hello darling, how are y
ou, it's a great thrill to be able to talk to you like this. How's Patricia? I'm getting your mail very regular, keeping pretty fit and well, so don't worry too much. God bless you, dear. Love to Mom and Agnes. God bless you all. Come on, Stanley!" [Music] I love these movies. There were several of them. I love these movies so much because of the intimacy of the speakers and the [Music] the way that we've been all having to be remote for the last year, imagining what it must have been like at th
is time to get these kind of messages in your own local theater. Another one I'd like to show. This is from the UCLA Film and Television Archive. This is a a comedy variety show called "In the Life," which was made by and for LGBTQ folks in the early 90s. UCLA Film and Television Archive has preserved it and digitized the episodes and this is they made -- like Saturday Night Live they would make these spoof commercials as well as having stand-up comedy routines and interviews. I wanted to show y
ou this one as an example of what's available in that collection. "Has this ever happened to you? '...she's buying tofu, has short hair and she's wearing birkenstocks...' or this: '...he knows all the words to Cabaret...' Now you can kiss those embarrassing moments goodbye forever with new 'Gaydar,' the patented detection system that lets you know for sure just who is and isn't gay. Gaydar goes everywhere: to your favorite restaurant, [Music] to the movies, to the office, even to family reunions
. [Music] Wear it when you're exercising [Music] or just wear it around the house! New Gaydar! Handy, lightweight, foolproof, and available in 12 fashion colors! Order Gaydar now and join a family of satisfied customers! 'I found a lover! 'I found a softball team!' Don't spend another second wondering! Get Gaydar now! Only 49.95. (Not available to right-wing senators or television evangelists.) new gaydar because after all, we are everywhere." The last one I want to show is a campaign commercial
that's available as part of the Living Room Candidate presidential campaign commercials collection at the Museum of the Moving Image. "Think about it: when the decisions of one man can affect the future of your family for generations to come, what kind of a man do you want making those decisions? [Music] Think about it: who is the one man who has the experience and the qualifications to lead America in these troubled, dangerous times? Nixon's the one!" That concludes my overview. Before we paus
e to take questions, I do want to point out, as you see, the url here. I have created a libguide that has links and descriptions of things that I've covered today, and I'd be happy to show that to the group if necessary. You can just write it down. I wanted to make sure that that these things would be available to you after we leave today.
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