"You're in..."

by Richard Ledes

"Ephemeral Films 1931-1960"
by Rick Prelinger
CD-ROM, $ 29.95
The Voyager Company
(212) 431-5199
http://www.voyagerco.com/

Anxious hands awaiting
miracle cure in the 50's.

Cultural historians and artists interested in US popular culture will find Ephemeral Films by Rick Prelinger an essential source of some of the most revealing and fascinating examples of what was intended for the junkpile of history. Archivist Prelinger has placed on this CD a selected set of excerpts from films created for some specifically limited purpose, usually by a particular company or industry. Having outlived their usefulness, the films take on a second life, revealing a way of making sense of the world that is retrospectively as hilarious as it is poignant. The films span the period of 1931 to 1961; Prelinger provides a brief commentary for each selection suggesting historical context. To give a few examples: a film from 1936 entitled "We Drivers" makes its point about safe driving by exhibiting a paternal hand counting out a driver in a boxing ring as a stentorian voice offscreen names ten things every driver should remember. Prelinger's commentary points out how such films placed the burden for accidents on individuals and simultaneously erased any possible culpability on the part of industry for the accidents associated with technological changes. In another excerpt from a 1950 film entitled "A Date With Your Family" particular tips are given on how to make dinner a pleasant time for every member of the family. These tips include a reminder that "pleasant, unemotional conversation helps digestion."

The CD represents only a small sampling of a much larger collection that Prelinger has been able to preserve and that makes up the Prelinger Archives. In 1994 Prelinger presented a larger selection of his work, entitled Our Secret Century, during three weeks of screenings held at the American Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, New York. In the preface to the catalogue for that show Prelinger made clear the reasons for his choice of title. His contention is that these works do indeed bring into focus a secret part of American culture at midcentury. Prelinger provides his audience with an opportunity to concentrate on works of cinema of which they might otherwise have been unaware, or to which--without Prelinger's dedication to the preservation of these films--they would never have gained access. He displaces our attention onto what might seem inconseqential works of cinema. This allows us to look at how these films present a kind of make-believe; this make-believe appears constructed out of imaginary solutions to broad underlying sources of conflict and anxiety circulating among different members and groups within the nationally defined culture. The immediate fascination that these excerpts can hold for anyone with some interest in this period in American culture can lead to insights that may make us reconsider the enduring importance of the ephemeral.