Panorama Ephemera

About

PANORAMA EPHEMERA (2004, 89:35 min., color and black and white) is a collage of sequences drawn from a wide variety of ephemeral (industrial, advertising, educational and amateur) films, touring the conflicted landscapes of twentieth-century America. The films' often-skewed visions construct an American history filled with horror and hope, unreeling in familiar and unexpected ways.

PANORAMA EPHEMERA focuses on familiar and mythical activities and images in America (1626-1978). Many creatures and substances that we hardly notice because we feel so used to them take center stage, including pigs, corn, water, telephones, fire, and rice. At first resembling a compilation, it soon reveals itself as a journey through the American landscape over time, and the story begins to emerge between the sequences.

The film consists of 64 self-contained film sequences ranging from 5 seconds to 4 minutes in length arranged into a narrative. Unlike many films made using archival footage, it's primarily a combination of sequences rather than a collage of individual shots.

PANORAMA EPHEMERA is populated by American children, animals, farmers, industrial workers, superheroes, pioneers heading West, crash test dummies, and many others.

PANORAMA EPHEMERA is released under a Creative Commons

"Attribution-NonCommercial" license, and may be freely shown, copied, or distributed according to the terms of this license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/1.0/).

NEW: If anyone wants to do a serious remix of this movie, here's a copy of my Final Cut Pro project (less the movie files, which you'll have to load yourself):

http://www.prelinger.com/PanoramaDV20040512

BitTorrent download here (thanks, Simon!): http://www.legaltorrents.com/index.php?fuse=42

NOTE ADDED May 21, 2021: This was my first real film. Since then I have made many more, but this is my best.

Archive

Internet Archive, in Prelinger Archives

Licence or status

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, as the Internet Archive states it.

Credit

Rick Prelinger

Subtitles

Automatic captions

Who can watch

The archive gives no rating. Invisible Network shows it to Teens profiles and older, judged from its collection and subjects. How films are placed