I was reading my buddy Nathaniel’s recent blog entry on a rad fan-made video for the Atlas Sound / Stereolab collab (rhymes lol) “Quick Canal,” featuring lots of retro kitsch stock footage. Broadcast, you need to find the dude who made this video. Anyway, seeing the video reminded me of something Lana discovered not too long ago called The Prelinger Archives. As Regis Philbin used to say in the Mr. Phipps Tater Crisps commercials: “I LOVE ‘EM!”
The Prelinger Archives is a mindblowingly expansive collection of public domain films from pre and post-WWII America – most of which could be categorized within educational videos, infomericals before there were infomericials, instructional videos, and public service announcements. All of which are could be categorized as “relatively campy and amazing.”
Go to the Internet Archive splash page and browse around. You cannot go wrong with any of these ephemeral films of the atomic age. I tend to gravitate toward the Coronet Instructional Films, which provide the fatherly guidance that made our parents better people I suppose, and the Jam Handy Archive, which is just a grab-bag of awesome. The emphatic narration and general mores displayed are, in many ways, so far removed from how the world is today that you can’t help be feel compelled. The Prelinger Archives is one of my absolute favorite offerings of the Internet right now.
Below are some of the Prelinger videos that made it to YouTube. The last video is the classic “Duck and Cover” classroom film that you’re probably already familiar with but may not have actually seen. The videos from the collection itself are too big to embed on this blog, so you’ll really want to go to the IA portal to explore for yourself! Go here, mach schnell!
