Sponsored film

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Sponsored film, or ephemeral film, as defined by film archivist Rick Prelinger, [1] is a film made by a particular sponsor for a specific purpose other than as a work of art: the films were designed to serve a specific pragmatic purpose for a limited time. [2] Many of the films are also orphan works since they lack copyright owners or active custodians to guarantee their long-term preservation.

Contents

Types of sponsored film

The genre is composed of advertising films, educational films, industrial videos, industrial musicals, training films, social guidance films, and government-produced films. [3] [4]

While some may borrow themes from well-known film genres such as western film, musicals, and comedies, what defines them is a sponsored rhetoric to achieve the sponsor's goals, rather than those of the creative artist.

Sponsored films in 16mm were loaned at no cost, except sometimes postage, to clubs, schools, and other groups. [5] America's largest companies - AT&T, DuPont, Ford, General Electric, General Motors, Republic Steel, Standard Oil, and Westinghouse Electric Company - were for decades active sponsored film producers and distributors; others included airlines who offered travelogues on their destinations.

In the early years of commercial television, local television stations often used sponsored films as "filler" programming. Specialized distributing agents packaged films from various sponsors into TV programs with titles like Compass, Color Camera, Ladies' Day, and Adventures In Living.

In the 1950s, almost every American city of any size had at least one sponsored film studio. Cleveland, Ohio, for example, was home to over a dozen sponsored film studios. [6] From 1951 to 1973 Business Screen magazine listed U.S.-based sponsored film studios by city and region. [7]

Theatrical film studios in "Hollywood" produced sponsored films along with hundreds of studios that specialized in the genre. Significant collections of sponsored films exist from the Jam Handy Organization in Detroit, Michigan, Wilding Picture Productions in Chicago, Illinois, the Calvin Company in Kansas City, Missouri, and Cinécraft Productions, Inc. in Cleveland, Ohio.

Awards

The 1948 Cleveland Film Festival was the first American film festival dedicated to recognizing the importance of sponsored films. [8] By 1956, dozens of cities and organizations were running sponsored film festivals, and the organizers of the Cleveland Film Festival stopped running the festival. Sponsored film festivals continued on but never regained their popularity or influence. [9]

A number of sponsored films have been nominated for Academy Awards, and several have won Oscars, mainly in the Documentary Feature and Documentary Short categories. [10]

At least a dozen sponsored films have been selected for the Library of Congress National Film Registry because they are "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." [10] [17]

Usage

Sponsored films are often used as B-roll in documentary films, for instance, the social guidance film The Terrible Truth (1951, Sid Davis) appears, desaturated, in Ron Mann's Grass (1999) as an example of what he perceives as hysteria over drug abuse, as well as an example of the slippery slope fallacy.

Prelinger and other film archivists [29] generally consider the films interesting for their sociological, ethnographic, or evidentiary value: for instance, a mental hygiene film instructing children to be careful of strangers may seem laughable by today's standards, but the film may show important aspects of society which were documented unintentionally: hairstyles, popular fashions, technological advances, landscapes, etc. [10]

Prelinger estimates that the form includes perhaps 400,000 films and, as such, is the largest genre of films, but that one-third to one-half of the films have been lost to neglect. In the late 20th century, the archival moving-image community has taken greater notice of sponsored film, and key ephemeral films began to be preserved by specialized, regional, and national archives. [10]

A number of British films in this style were re-evaluated and released commercially by the British Film Institute in 2010 as part of its Boom Britain / Shadows of Progress project.

Examples of sponsored films include Design for Dreaming , A Touch of Magic , [30] and A Word to the Wives (the latter film which dealt directly with the growth of suburban capitalism). [31] Technicolor for Industrial Films is a sponsored film about sponsored films.

See also

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References

  1. ↑ EPHEMERA: The Prelinger Archives (March 2013 Edition) on Vimeo
  2. ↑ Prelinger, Rick (2006), The Field Guide to Sponsored Films, San Francisco, California: National Film Preservation Foundation , retrieved 10 July 2023
  3. ↑ Learning to Love Sponsored Films|Arts & Culture|Smithsonian
  4. ↑ Godfried, Nathan (2014). "Labor-Sponsored Film and Working-Class History: The Inheritance (1964)" . Film History. 26 (4). Indiana University Press. doi:10.2979/filmhistory.26.4.84. JSTOR   10.2979/filmhistory.26.4.84.
  5. ↑ Navigating the well-curated, deeply weird Sponsored Films online archive-The Verge
  6. ↑ "Sponsored Films". Encyclopedia of Cleveland History. Case Western Reserve University. Retrieved 16 November 2024.
  7. ↑ /Business Screen magazine Hagley Digital Archives/
  8. ↑ Cleveland’s Film Festival Surprise Hit, Business Screen, 1948, vol 9 no 8 (December 1948), pg 26-27. https://digital.hagley.org/BusinessScreen_1948_V09_N08
  9. ↑ [Cleveland Sponsored Film Festival, Encyclopedia of Cleveland History https://case.edu/ech/articles/c/cleveland-sponsored-film-]
  10. 1 2 3 4 Prelinger, Rick (2006), The Field Guide to Sponsored Films, San Francisco, California: National Film Preservation Foundation , retrieved 15 November 2024
  11. ↑ "A Time for Burning". Internet Archive. The Internet Archive, a 501(c)(3) non-profit.
  12. ↑ "" SKYSCRAPER " CONSTRUCTION OF 666 5TH AVE. NEW YORK CITY". Internet Archive. The Internet Archive, a 501(c)(3) non-profit. Retrieved 10 December 2024.
  13. ↑ "The House I Live In". Internet Archive. The Internet Archive, a 501(c)(3) non-profit. Retrieved 10 December 2024.
  14. ↑ "The Redwoods". Internet Archives. The Internet Archive, a 501(c)(3) non-profit. Retrieved 10 December 2024.
  15. ↑ "To Be Alive! (1964)". National Film Preservation Foundation. National Film Preservation Foundation. Retrieved 10 December 2024.
  16. ↑ "Why Man Creates (1968)". National Film Preservation Foundation. National Film Preservation Foundation. Retrieved 10 December 2024.
  17. ↑ "Library of Congress: Complete National Film Registry Listing". Library of Congress. Retrieved 9 December 2024.
  18. ↑ "A Time for Burning". Internet Archive. The Internet Archive, a 501(c)(3) non-profit.
  19. ↑ "All My Babies (1952)". National Film Preservation Foundation. National Film Preservation Foundation. Retrieved 10 December 2024.
  20. ↑ "Internet Archive". Internet Archive. The Internet Archive, a 501(c)(3) non-profit. Retrieved 10 December 2024.
  21. ↑ "Master Hands (4K)". Internet Archives. The Internet Archive, a 501(c)(3) non-profit. Retrieved 10 December 2024.
  22. ↑ "City, The (Part I)". Internet Archive. The Internet Archive, a 501(c)(3) non-profit. Retrieved 10 December 2024.
  23. ↑ "The Forgotten Frontier (1931)". National Film Preservation Foundation. National Film Preservation Foundation. Retrieved 10 December 2024.
  24. ↑ "The House in the Middle (1954)". National Film Preservation Foundation. National Film Preservation Foundation. Retrieved 10 December 2024.
  25. ↑ "The making of an American". Library of Congress. Library of Congress. Retrieved 10 December 2024.
  26. ↑ "To Fly!". Hagley Library Digital Archives. Hagley Museum and Library. Retrieved 10 December 2024.
  27. ↑ "Inside an American Factory: Films of the Westinghouse Works, 1904". Library of Congress. Library of Congress. Retrieved 10 December 2024.
  28. ↑ "Why Man Creates (1968)". National Film Preservation Foundation. National Film Preservation Foundation. Retrieved 10 December 2024.
  29. ↑ Ephemeral Films by Rick Prelinger on Vimeo
  30. ↑ EPHEMERA: POPULUXE on Vimeo
  31. ↑ Teaching History with Newsreels and Public Service Shorts - Google Books (pg.90)
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