Prelinger Archives

The news of an upcoming Australian version of the Creative Commons licence reminded me to head over there and check out what's available in their video archive. I recently grabbed the Wired CD: Ripped, Sampled and Mashed, which was a great way to taste test some new sounds (and be invigorated by old ones).

Anyhow, I stumled across the Prelinger Archives at Archive.org - a "collection of over 48,000 "ephemeral" (advertising, educational, industrial, and amateur) films". There are some true gems in here. One of my particular favourites (and ironically one of the most downloaded) is "Are you Popular?", a 1947 educational flick for teenagers. It's commentary includes such timeless insights as "Girls who park in cars are not really popular...".

Download today. As with most Archive.org movies, it comes in all sorts of MPEG sizes and formats.