Rick Prelinger is an American

archivist An archivist is an information professional who assesses, collects, organizes, preserves, maintains control over, and provides access to records and archives determined to have long-term value. The records maintained by an archivist can cons ...

, writer, and filmmaker. He is also professor emeritus at the

University of California, Santa Cruz The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California, United States. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of C ...

. Prelinger is best known as the founder of the Prelinger Archives, a collection of 60,000 advertising, educational, industrial, and amateur films acquired by the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is a research library in Washington, D.C., serving as the library and research service for the United States Congress and the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It also administers Copyright law o ...

in 2002 after 20 years' operation. Rick has partnered with the

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American 501(c)(3) organization, non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including web ...

to make over 6,000 films from Prelinger Archives available online for free viewing, downloading and reuse. With the Voyager Company, a pioneer new media publisher, he produced fourteen

LaserDisc LaserDisc (LD) is a home video format and the first commercial optical disc storage medium. It was developed by Philips, Pioneer Corporation, Pioneer, and the movie studio MCA Inc., MCA. The format was initially marketed in the United State ...

s and

CD-ROM A CD-ROM (, compact disc read-only memory) is a type of read-only memory consisting of a pre-pressed optical compact disc that contains computer data storage, data computers can read, but not write or erase. Some CDs, called enhanced CDs, hold b ...

s with material from his archives, including
Ephemeral Films
'' the ''Our Secret Century'' series and ''Call It Home: The House That Private Enterprise Built,'' a laserdisc on the history of suburbia and suburban planning (co-produced with architect Keller Easterling). For Prelinger, "archives are a primary weapon against amnesia."

Life

Prelinger worked at The Comedy Channel from its startup in 1989 until it merged with the comedy network HA! to become

Comedy Central Comedy Central is an American Cable television in the United States, cable television channel, channel owned by Paramount Global through its Paramount Media Networks, network division's Paramount Media Networks#MTV Entertainment Group, MTV Ente ...

. He then worked at Home Box Office until 1995. Prelinger has taught in the MFA design program at New York's

School of Visual Arts The School of Visual Arts New York City (SVA NYC) is a private for-profit art school in New York City. It was founded in 1947 and is a member of the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design. History This school was started by Silas ...

and lectures widely on American cultural and social history and on issues of cultural and intellectual property access. He sat (2001–2004) on the National Film Preservation Board as representative of the

Association of Moving Image Archivists The Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) is a 501(c)(3) Nonprofit#USA, not-for-profit organization established to advance the field of Film preservation, moving image archiving by fostering cooperation among individuals and organizations ...

, was Board President of the San Francisco Cinematheque (2002–2007), and is a board member of the

and a professor in the Department of Film & Digital Media at UC Santa Cruz. With spouse Megan Prelinger he is co-founder of the Prelinger Library, a reference library located in

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

, California.

Works: films and writings

His feature-length film '' Panorama Ephemera'', consisting of 64 self-contained segments from various ephemeral films, opened in Summer 2004. He has also produced such archival

home movie A home movie is a short amateur film or video typically made just to preserve a visual record of family activities, a vacation, or a special event, and intended for viewing at home by family and friends. Originally, home movies were made on ph ...

compilation films ''Lost Landscapes of San Francisco'' (15 annual films, 2006–2020), ''Lost Landscapes of Detroit'' (three films, 2010–2012 and a fourth and fifth, ''Yesterday and Tomorrow in Detroit'', 2014 and 2015) and
All-Is-Well
' (2016). He received the

Creative Capital Creative Capital is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization based in New York City that supports artists across the United States through funding, counsel, gatherings, and career development services. Since its founding in 1999, Creative Capital has co ...

Award in 2012 to make the

compilation film
No More Road Trips?
'' which premiered in

Austin, Texas Austin ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of Texas. It is the county seat and most populous city of Travis County, Texas, Travis County, with portions extending into Hays County, Texas, Hays and W ...

, at

South by Southwest South by Southwest (SXSW) is an annual conglomeration of parallel film, interactive media, and music festivals and Convention (meeting), conferences organized jointly that take place in mid-March in Austin, Texas. It began in 1987 and has conti ...

in March 2013. A summary of his 2019 film
Useful Prophecies
' states that:

"While the distance between cinema and truth is often impossible to bridge, some films reveal more than we might think any films could. Such is the case with the long-neglected body of useful cinema —films produced because they had jobs to do, like sponsored, educational, and industrial films— and home movies, sometimes revelatory works that seem to spring from the unconscious. Built from the collections of Prelinger Archives, one of the world’s largest collections of nonfiction films and home movies, this program builds a prophetic portrait of futures to come as proposed by filmmakers who let these visions speak through them."

He wrote ''The Field Guide to Sponsored Films'' (2007) which "describes 452 historically or culturally significant motion pictures commissioned by businesses, charities, advocacy groups, and state or local government units between 1897 and 1980." It is available as a printed book and also available for free download from the National Film Preservation Foundation.''The Field Guide to Sponsored Films''
on NFPF website

References

External links

Prelinger.com

Prelinger Libraryblackoystercatcher, Rick Prelinger's blog
*
Prelinger Collection
on

Prelinger Library
on

Films

''Lost Landscapes of Detroit'' (2010)
on

*
Panorama Ephemera
' on

Vimeo Vimeo ( ) is an American Online video platform, video hosting, sharing, and services provider founded in 2004 and headquartered in New York City. Vimeo focuses on the delivery of high-definition video across a range of devices and operates on a ...

Writings

Search result of texts by Rick Prelinger
in