I have been working in the moving image field virtually my whole life. First it was via movie theatres, then video stores, and for the past 10 years or so it has been working in film archives. I guess I should really call them moving image archives, but let’s face it, most of us work there because we love film, not because we are excited about archiving the latest HD format, so to me they will always be film archives.
Within this past month I switched from being one of the lowest men on the totem pole at one of the largest archives in the country to be in charge of a much smaller one at USC, which is known as the Hugh M Hefner Moving Image Archive thanks to a generous endowment by its namesake. Many archivists in the field might believe that going from the largest to a smaller institution may seem like a step backwards, but for me I am growing more and more excited about the possibilities this presents. The first thing one should learn about any archive is the collection. Identifying the strengths and the weaknesses are crucial to being able to promote the archive and this is what I have been trying to do since starting two weeks ago.
The bulk of the collection at USC are the student films that date back to the late 1940’s/early 1950’s. USC has one of the (if not THE) oldest film programs in the country dating back to 1929 when it first began preparing students for work in the field. While the school started in 1929, the film production did not begin until a bit later.
The rest of the collection is made up of quite a number of non-student productions ranging from one of the largest single groupings of educational programs to an extensive amount of Hollywood type fare originally used for class screenings. Finishing it all off is what may very well be the single best collection of motion picture technology ever assembled under one roof.
Over time I intend to learn and share as much as I possibly can about all of the different collection areas, but I thought I would first explore one of the sections that has lost the majority of its access interest since many of the screening areas at the school have gone digital only. That section is the Hollywood films since the perception nowadays is that all commercial films have been released on DVD. How wrong that perception is.
Personally I am a big fan of silent films so that was the area I investigated first, and imagine my surprise to find out that in my new small archive I was holding thousands of 16mm silent films including many rare ones that have never been released on any format. I figure I will start watching some of them to see what I could find. Some of the titles that have immediately jumped out at me are:
Shooting Stars (1927) – a British silent melodrama about a married couple of silent film stars
Power (1928) – William Boyd and Jacqueline Logan in the follow up to Skyscraper.
The Pearl of Paradise (1916) a Harry A. Pollard, Margarita Fischer collaboration the year before their excellent The Devil’s Assistant.
The King on Main Street
Feu Mathias Pascal (1926) a film by Marcel L'Herbier starring the great Ivan Mosjoukine
Thomas Graals bästa barn (1919) Mauritz Stiller comedy
