Prelinger Archives
6,625–6,672 of 10,345 films, free to watch, from the world's open archives.
Where these films come from, and who sees what
Every film here plays from the archive that keeps it: the Internet Archive, Wikimedia Commons, the NASA Image and Video Library, the Library of Congress and Open Images (the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision). Nothing is copied to this site. Each film's page names its archive, links to its page there, and states its licence or status as the archive does.
Archive films carry no age ratings, so each is placed from the collections it sits in and the subjects the archive gives it, cautiously. Sexual content and nudity are left out altogether.
| Little Ones | Films for young children by name: nursery rhymes, lullabies, preschool. |
|---|---|
| Kids | Cartoons and animation, children's and family films, and educational films, unless they deal with war, propaganda, crime, horror or drugs, or carry racial caricature. |
| Tweens | Documentaries, science, nature and space, classic comedies, newsreels, commercials and lectures. |
| Teens | Everything else, including anything we cannot tell about; war, crime, horror and westerns go no lower. |
| Adult | Sexual themes (such as the old "sex hygiene" films), gore, surgery, slaughter, atrocity footage. |
Internet Archive
Home Movie: 97516: Richmond, William & Mary
To come.
Internet Archive
Home Movie: 096556
Festive fall and winter family days in the 1950s filled with child-oriented activities including Halloween costumes and rituals, children playing in snow, and…
Internet Archive
Home Movie: 97175: Square Dancing
To come.
Internet Archive
[Home Movies: Old West, Cowboys and Indians, Arizona and New Mexico]
Skeletal Entry
Internet Archive
Mode-Art Can 2003
Outtakes from an industrial film, showing scenes of large industrial motorized equipment digging and moving tons of rock underground. Can: JM 2563 Orig. &…
Internet Archive
Home Movie: 010374
Gardens at the Huntington Library in southern California and a brief segment of a market in Tijuana, Mexico. Note in can states: "B&W Huntington Library Jap.…
Internet Archive
[Home Movies: Williamsburg]
Internet Archive
Social-Sex Attitudes in Adolescence
Social-sex development of Bill and Mary and how they came to meet, fall in love and marry.
Internet Archive
[Gould can 5165.4]
San Francisco, California: Tonalda Douglass trains seal at San Francisco Zoo.
Internet Archive
Making of a Newspaper
Internet Archive
Song of the Voodoo
Internet Archive
Report in Primary Colors
Internet Archive
United Means...You!
some good social-service footage, vintage 1950s
Internet Archive
Home Movie: Rick Laubscher Collection: 010251
Content advisory: Sign posted on street in a mountain town includes hate language. A San Francisco family that knows how to camp in style makes several trips…
Internet Archive
McCall's Magazine Kitchen
Cake decorating demonstration.
Internet Archive
Holland Carries On
Internet Archive
Home Movie: 97082: Houghton Lake, 1967-68
To come.
Internet Archive
Home Movie: 98228: Chicago Transit Authority
Label on can reads: "CTA - #36 Broadway - State - 10-9-56"
Internet Archive
Home Movie: Slabaugh Collection: 010354
Members of a Mennonite community in Ohio document their education, farming, and religious activities as well as social and cultural activities including a…
Internet Archive
Wildwoods-By-the Sea, The
Internet Archive
Al Mismo Tiempo...
"Coincidencias Aldredor de 1880...
Internet Archive
Home Movie: Dill Collection: 004074
Dill family celebrating Christmas and New Year's Eve. Can notes: "C11 / Xmas & New Year - '66"
Internet Archive
Home Movie: Hirota Collection: 071160
Pre-World War II footage of a Japanese American family and friends spending time together in and around San Francisco, celebrating birthdays and holidays and…
Internet Archive
Home Movie: Calvin M. Kershner Collection: 010037
Content advisory: Moving images may contain offensive, outdated and even harmful content. This 1928 film holds multiple instances including uninvited…
Internet Archive
[Home movie: 098662: 1939 New York World's Fair, Lavery Prod.]
23 minutes, color. 1939 New York World's Fair sequences professionally filmed by J. A. Lavery Productions. Scenes include pavilion exteriors, national…
Internet Archive
Home Movie: 10054: Lake Scenes and Patriotic Parade, 1950s
Scenes of recreation around a lake (possibly in Michigan) and a patriotic parade, ca. mid-1950s.
Internet Archive
Home Movie: 010262
Sightseeing in Egypt, Italy, and France circa 1932, with street scenes, laborers, the ruins of Pompeii with steaming Mt. Vesuvius in the background, markets,…
Internet Archive
Our Four Footed Helpers (Ruminants)
Internet Archive
Home Movie: Genter Collection: 003516
This is a home movie duplicated in an amateur laboratory and hand-processed with a rough-hewn look. It depicts a family visit to Disneyland and Marineland of…
Internet Archive
Mode-Art Can 2291 R1
Footage demonstrating the deposition and deformation of sediments in the development of salt dome-graben structures. Note: the same sequence repeats over…
Internet Archive
Home Movie: Janet Dill Collection: 004056
Sports through the seasons at Millbrook Academy, a private school in upstate New York. Can notes: "B5 / Hadley Pond" New York state Albany area family, winter…
Internet Archive
Home Movie: Nicholson Collection: 004272
A family celebrating their older son's third birthday, Christmas, and the birth of their second child. Note in can: 11 V Portland '48 - 3rd birthday, Craig…
Internet Archive
Home Movie: 004191
Color and black and white footage of family gatherings and western travels. Note on can: "1945-1947-1951 Seattle to Calif 1945. Ruth McCamey, Ellsworth…
Internet Archive
Home Movie: 98937: California, July 1961
To come.
Internet Archive
Home Movie PA 097843
Home Movie PA 097843
Internet Archive
0493 Rush Hour Space Age
to come
Internet Archive
Stillman Fires Collection: Glimpses Of Greater Alarms
from Stillman Fires Collection.
Internet Archive
Mode-Art Can 1235
Outtakes for the Mode-Art Pictures production number 368, "Building in Stainless." Includes footage of steelworkers, manufacturing steel building materials,…
Internet Archive
Mode-Art Can 1612
Outtakes from Mode-Art Pictures production number 1518. Footage of teenage boys traveling to the 25th annual American Legion Mountaineer Boys' State…
Internet Archive
Power Of The Clouds
Silent short film looks at how rain makes its way to hydroelectric dams.
Internet Archive
Disciplined Story, The
about new "disciplined" (wrinkle and stain resistant) fabric
Internet Archive
[Home movie: 098763: An Ohio family in the mid-1950s, boating and a lakeshore cookout]
An Ohio family together with many friends have a lakeshore cookout in the mid-1950s; good image quality; boating on a lake, motor boating, canoeing, camping,…
Internet Archive
Man In The Doorway
About how important chemicals are to our everyday lives.
Internet Archive
Duplate Safety Glass Co.
Time-based study on improving methods of assembling safety glass and automobile windshields in industrial production. Notes on can: A. Cut Windshield Panels…
Internet Archive
The White Pelican
Educational film about the white pelican. "A color film showing over 2,000 birds in great colony. Eggs and young cover the beach. There are interesting shots…
Internet Archive
Home Movie: Hirota Collection: 012108
Japanese American men play golf and eat at a big outdoor cookout in California, circa 1946. From reel: "Golf [Pictures]"
Internet Archive
Home Movie: 004089
A marching band field show in West Virginia (0-21:33) and a series of adult immersion baptisms in rivers (21:34-35:03).
Internet Archive
Mode-Art Can 1897 (Reel 2)
Outtakes of an industrial film, probably YOUNG MAN RIVER, featuring many scenes of riverside recreation and industry. Leader: Corps of Engineers TR/D- 1891,…