Field Guide to Sponsored Films - National Film Preservation ...

Rick Prelinger is the founder of the Prelinger Archives, a collection of 51,000 advertising,
educational, industrial, and amateur films that was acquired by the Library of Congress in
2002. He has partnered with the Internet Archive (www.archive.org) to make 2,000 films
from his collection available online and worked with the Voyager Company to produce 14
laser discs and CD-ROMs of films drawn from his collection, including Ephemeral Films,
the series Our Secret Century, and Call It Home: The House That Private Enterprise Built.
In 2004, Rick and Megan Shaw Prelinger established the Prelinger Library in San Francisco.
National Film Preservation Foundation
870 Market Street, Suite 1113
San Francisco, CA 94102
© 2006 by the National Film Preservation Foundation
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Prelinger, Rick, 1953–
The field guide to sponsored films / Rick Prelinger.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-9747099-3-X (alk. paper)
1. Industrial films—Catalogs. 2. Business—Film catalogs. 3. Motion pictures in advertising.
4. Business in motion pictures. I. Title.
HF1007.P863 2006
011´.372—dc22 2006029038
CIP
This publication was made possible through a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation. It may be downloaded as a PDF file from the National Film Preservation
Foundation Web site: www.filmpreservation.org.
Photo credits
Cover and title page (from left): Admiral Cigarette (1897), courtesy of Library of Congress;
Now You’re Talking (1927), courtesy of Library of Congress; Highlights and Shadows (1938),
courtesy of George Eastman House.
Page 1 and back cover (from left): The Stenographer’s Friend: or, What Was Accomplished
by an Edison Business Phonograph (1910), courtesy of Library of Congress; Tomorrow’s
Drivers (1954), courtesy of Prelinger Archives; A Continent Is Bridged (1940), courtesy
of Prelinger Archives.
Typeset by David Wells
Copyedited by Sylvia Tan
Printed in the USA by Great Impressions