There’s a Festival of Old Archival Footage of San Francisco

The people at the Long Now Foundation have been putting this on for 13 years and it keeps getting bigger each time. This year it’s happening over two nights at the Castro Theatre. The info below is from the Eventbrite page, which is where you can also buy tickets.

The Long Now Foundation’s Seminars About Long-term Thinking presents:

Rick Prelinger, Lost Landscapes of San Francisco, 13

Our annual Lost Landscapes of San Francisco show with Rick Prelinger will run for 2 nights this year and a portion of the proceeds are going directly to support the Prelinger Library!

The thirteenth year of Lost Landscapes of San Francisco, the annual archival film program that celebrates San Franciscos past and looks towards its future.

Combining favorites from past years with this year’s footage discoveries, this feature-length program shows San Francisco’s neighborhoods, infrastructures, celebrations and people from the early 20th century to the 01970s

New footage this year includes the dune-dotted blocks of the Outer Richmond in the 1920s; Native activists riding to the Alcatraz occupation; family life in the Crocker-Amazon district; unseen images of the wartime Port; men walking cables on the unfinished Bay Bridge; elementary-school students doing science projects in 1957, the Year of Sputnik; surreal parade floats on Market Street; baseball crowds at Kezar Stadium: the 1962 World Series at the two-year-old Stick; the Human Be-In in 1966; newly discovered Cinemascope footage of 1950s SF; building Sunset houses in 1941; African American tourists in 1960s SF; and a Japanese American family living atop a semi-rural Rincon Hill in the 1930s.

For the first time ever, a short subject precedes the show: the world theatrical premiere of a new 4K super-high-resolution scan of the legendary pre-quake A TRIP DOWN MARKET STREET (filmed April 1906) made from the best existing material, showing detail that no audience has seen in over one hundred years.

As always, the audience makes the soundtrack at the glorious Castro Theatre! Come prepared to identify places, people and events; to ask questions; and to engage in spirited real-time repartee with fellow audience members.

The Wednesday showing will also feature a presentation on the Prelinger Library, San Francisco’s famed experimental research library that supports artists, historians, community members, and researchers of all kinds. On both evenings you can purchase $50 Prelinger Library Patron Tickets, which includes reserved seating in the theater.

Founded by Megan & Rick Prelinger in 02004, the Library contains over 60,000 books, periodicals, maps and ephemeral print items available for research and reuse. Prelinger Library is a community-supported resource open to the public, keeping regular hours in the South of Market neighborhood.

Doors open at 6:30pm

Long Now’s Seminars are curated and hosted by Stewart Brand. These monthly talks were started in 02003 to build a compelling body of ideas about long-term thinking. Long Now members hear about Seminars first & receive 2 free tickets to each Seminar. Become a member today to access your tickets or view our livestream of Seminars and Interval events online.

To follow the series, you can watch the videos online, subscribe to our podcasts, and read the summaries on Medium.