 Welcome, everybody, to our first panel, Government and the Land in the Films of State Conference. My name is Josh Glick. I'll be the moderator. I'm an assistant professor of English film and media studies at Hendricks College. And I'm very pleased. It's an honor to be moderating the panel today. I'm just going to quickly introduce the panelists. We read their bios. And then we'll see all the presentations and then have a Q&A in discussion at the end of the panel. So if everyone could put their questions, comments in the Q&A, and then also read them and then we'll go from there at the end. So first up, Steve Graybill. Steve Graybill worked for more than 25 years with the Moving Image and Sound Branch of the National Archives and as an archives technician and archivist. Jennifer Peterson. Jennifer Lynn Peterson is a professor and chair of the Department of Communication at Woodbury. She is the author of Education in the School of Dreams, Travel Logs, and Early Nonfiction Films in Duke University Press. And she's currently working on a book titled Cinema's Ecological Task, Film History, Nature, and Endangerment Before 1960. Then we'll hear from Oliver Bacon, who is an associate professor in the Department of English and a core faculty member of the Film Studies program in the Program in Comparative Literature at the University of Maryland College Park. He is the author of Devices of Curiosity, Early Cinema, and Popular Science from Oxford University Press. Then Martin Johnson is an assistant professor of English and Comparative Literature at UNC Chapel Hill. He's the author of Main Street Movies, A History of Local Films in the United States from the University Press. Then Lauren Tilcher. Dr. Tilcher is a lecturer of film and media studies at Georgia College. The research focuses on non-theatrical and documentary film with an emphasis on gender, race, and sexuality in the US and the American South. Currently, they're working on a project about government films produced in mid-century Georgia and their contemporary reverberations in state visual cultures. We'll also be hearing from Ellen Mulligan. Ellen Mulligan is the chief of the Moving Image and Sound Branch and has served as a supervisor in the branch for five years. Prior to joining the Moving Image and Sound Branch, she served as NARA's cartographic branch and Philadelphia field archives. Now for the presentations. See you all soon. So my name is Steve Graybill and I'm an archivist with the Moving Image and Sound Recording Branch with the National Archives located in College Park, Maryland. I'm honored to provide this presentation on the Moving Image and Sound Recording Records at the National Archives Holds from the National Parks. Before sharing about the records at the National Archives Holds, I will begin with a brief history of the National Park Service. Then we can move on to the records at the National Archives Holds from this agency that so many people appreciate and love. In 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant signed a bill that created the first National Park which was Yellowstone. However, the creation of Yellowstone preceded the establishment of the National Park Service. The National Park Service would not be established until more than 44 years later when President Woodrow Wilson signed the Organic Act on August 25th, 1916, creating the National Park Service as an agency under the Department of Interior. The photograph shown on this slide is of Lori Yellowstone Falls and is part of the still-photograph branch of the National Archives. I intentionally chose this photo because it is not a National Park Service record but what is from Record Group 57, which are records of the U.S. Geological Survey. My intention with sharing it is to highlight the common intersection between federal agencies. A few other record groups for Moving Image film from the National Parks can be found are Record Group 48, which are records of the Office of the Secretary of the Interior, Record Group 115, which is records from the Bureau of Reclamation. And you can also find some films of the National Parks in one of our donated collections, The Floor Collection. And there are other series as well. The National Park Service has 63 protected areas that are known as National Parks. However, and I'm using quotes here, National Park is just one of more than 15 designations that make up the 423 units of the National Park System. Examples of these other designations are units include National Seashore, National Memorial, National Monument and National Battlefield. I consider myself incredibly fortunate to spend a good part of my work processing the records of the National Parks as they intersect with three areas that I am personally passionate about. Nature, History and the Performing Arts. For nature, here in the upper left hand corner of this slide is an iconic photograph taken at the Grand Ries, which is located in Grand Canyon National Park. And this is a special place for me as it is where I propose to my wife. Then in the middle, we see Frederick Douglass juxtapose next to his house in Anacostia, which is in Washington DC. And this is part of the Frederick Douglass historical site. And then finally, in the lower right hand corner, Wolf Trap is one of the performing arts sites. There are not many performing arts sites within the National Park System, but there are a few others. Others include Ford's Theater as well as the Blue Ridge Music Center located in Galax, Virginia. Now that we know a bit about the National Park Service history, let's take a look at what records the National Archives holds from this wonderful agency. The National Archives currently holds and protects National Park Service records in nine audiovisual series at our facility in College Park, Maryland. The bulk of our audiovisual records from the National Park Service resided for series. Three of these series are from an accession from the Harper's Ferry Center, and the fourth are the records of the Bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Presently, we have three moving image series, however only two of them contain film. The first of the two moving image series that contain film is 79HFC, which contains both edited and unedited footage. The edited productions that the Harper's Ferry Center produced were usually created to be shown at a specific National Park site. The Harper's Ferry Center also set the National Archives films that they acquired throughout the years. The unedited films include but are not limited to reenactment footage, interviews, documentation of park activity, and camera rolls that were shot for edited productions. Some of the acquired films that we discovered during the processing date all the way back to the 1930s, and presently we have processed more than 500 moving image titles from more than 130 National Park units. The second series of moving images is 79LECL, and this series contains video recordings from the Bicentennial of Lewis and Clark Expedition, which we will cover shortly. 79GENERAL is a small series of less than 30 titles, and this series includes edited and unedited films predominantly from the 1930s of three National Parks, Shenandoah National Park, Great Smoky Mountain, and Mount McKinley. Since the Harper's Ferry Center makes up the majority of our National Park Service records, I want to provide some quick background. The Center located in West Virginia opened its doors for business on March 2, 1970, and its primary function is to provide interpretive assistance tools for the National Park Service field interpreters to fulfill the mission of the National Park Service, which is to preserve, unimpaired the natural and cultural resources and values of the National Park System for the enjoyment, education, and inspiration of this and future generations. While our conference here is focused on film, I think it will be helpful to discuss two of the six audio series of the National Park Service records. Both of those series are from the Harper's Ferry Center records. And before discussing the lowercase A that you see at the end of the series designators on the slide, I think it will be helpful to clarify that if there are separate synchronized sound elements that accompany a film, those sound elements remain in the moving image series as part of the moving image title that they accompany. So moving on, we can see here that the audio series designators end with the lowercase A. This lowercase A indicates that the series is audio, and we have added the lowercase A to all of our series since there are occasions when our local identifiers for moving image series and audio are duplicated, and the lowercase A helps us to distinguish between moving image and audio series. This happens to be the case for the Harper's Ferry Center records with 79 HFC, lowercase A, and 79 HFC. The 79 HFC lowercase A series consists of sound recordings that have a direct correlation to the film, such as source interviews and original music. One example of this is the moving image film 79 HFC 244, Pavlita Valarde, an artist in her people. And you can see here that there are two associated audio recordings with this 79 HFC lowercase A 244, which are interviews from Pavlita Valarde, an artist in her people, which is an interview with Pavlita herself, and 79 HFC A 244 X1, which is Indian flute music from Carlos Nikai. The X1 is used here as a way for us to retain the original item number while creating multiple titles associated with the moving image title. Here we have a screenshot from our online catalog of the 79 HFC S A series, and this series consists of standalone audio recordings. This series includes oral histories and interviews, recordings for audio stations at national parks, as well as travelers information system messages, or TIS for short. For anyone who has done a road trip, you are likely familiar with the signs like the one that is shown here. Well, some national park units also have these TIS messages. However, these TIS messages for national park sites are not traffic information, but information providing guidance on one's visit to the national park. For example, some sites have limited access based on the season, and these messages will share what locations are open and what locations are closed. The processing for the Harper's Ferry Center items is ongoing. Most of the moving image items have been processed, but there are still more than 1,000 cubic feet of audio recordings that still need to be processed. I feel as though I would be remiss if I were to give this presentation and not share a couple of examples of national park films that are holdings. One of our most popular films across all series, not just national parks, and one of my personal favorites is One Man's Alaska about naturalist Richard Pernicki, and Pernicki himself actually shot a good percentage of the footage that is used in this film. Another of my favorites in our holdings from the Harper's Ferry Center records is the color-moving images of George Washington Carver shot by his personal friend, Dr. Cornelius Allen Alexander. And this film was recently added to the National Film Registry. And a question for everyone here, how many people are aware that this gifted scientist was also a gifted midder? The other substantial set of records is the moving images related to the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. This series consists of close to 600 recordings on mini-DV video, sorry, no film in this series, that present a re-enactment of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The recordings consist of meetings with Indian tribes to discuss the impact of the expedition on the tribes, as well as music, lectures, and interviews. So I want to thank you for allowing me to share with you a bit about the treasure trove of audio-vision records for the National Park Service, preserved here at the National Archives. Today's presentation is obviously a 10,000-foot view. If you have further questions or want to dig down a little bit deeper, my contact is here. Please feel free to reach out to me. Hi, I'm Jennifer Peterson, a film scholar working on a book about American film history and the environment before 1960. My book alternates between Hollywood films shot on location in wilderness lands and government films about national parks and forests. For the past few years, I've been coming to the National Archives to research its films and paper records. Although environmental politics are often associated with progressive traditions of protest and revolt, many of the large-scale material successes of environmental conservation, such as habitat preservation, environmental law, and economic policy, have been imposed through the forces of state hegemony. The National Park Service is one example of a massive state institution that has preserved large swaths of land for conservation. As this 1930s WPA poster advertises, it has indeed preserved wildlife and ecosystems. But at the same time, the national parks also systematically removed Native American tribes from their ancestral lands. The Park Service has served a symbolic function as an emblem of American nature conservation. In turn, its model of indigenous displacement has been copied by other national parks around the world. This 10-minute presentation will briefly introduce some elements of my project, analyzing government films from the 1920s and 30s. The federal government began making films about its national parks in the 1910s. These films articulated what I call a state ideology of nature that used the rhetoric of the early 20th century conservation movement to justify and promote its land management practices. These practices can be understood through several frameworks being developed in the environmental humanities today, such as resource extraction, petro-culture, and settler colonialism. National parks have always been bound up with forms of art and media. When the concept of setting aside vast areas of land to be spared from commercial development began to gain traction in the mid-19th century, it was the landscape paintings of Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moran, along with photographic images by Carlton Watkins and Edward Moybridge that helped secure public support for the first two national parks, Yosemite and Yellowstone. These influential images in painting and photography initiated the tradition of visualizing federally managed wilderness lands and indeed wilderness itself in terms of landscape. The term landscape is not equivalent to land. Landscape is an expanse of land seen from a particular point of view, and it binds together artistic concepts of composition and framing, as well as larger issues of power such as ownership and nationalism. In contrast, the government viewed its land as territory to be managed. My research on federally produced national park films explores the ways in which the US government used film to depict wilderness lands on behalf of the economic, political, and symbolic interests of the state. The idea of national parks was invented in the city, created by urban elites and shaped by the 19th century parks movement. With the establishment of the national parks, scenery became a new form of commercial value. I argue that the process of turning land into landscapes and landscapes into tourist attractions can be understood as a form of second order resource extraction, harvesting scenery in the service of marketing and public relations on behalf of the state. By the mid 19th century, land use was defined in terms of commercial interests, ownership, cultivation, extraction, and development. But through the invention of scenic resource extraction, national parks and state parks were saved from traditional development. National park lands were still defined as property, marked off by boundaries and subject to some commercial exploitation, but this was dramatically less invasive than the dams and clear cutting that took place in many of the national forests. The 19th century wilderness as landscape tradition was modernized by motion pictures. Films have been made in national parks since emerged in the 1890s by companies such as the Edison Manufacturing Company and American Mutoscope and Biograph. Beginning in the mid 1910s, the federal government began making films about its national parks. These government films served multiple purposes. Within the government, the films documented and justified the work of the park service and the forest service, making a case for the continuation or expansion of federal funding. For the public, these films promoted the parks for tourism and they served a public relations function to educate viewers about the parks and to make citizens feel proud of the government's work to preserve these magnificent lands. Like the parks themselves, these films participate in a form of scenic resource extraction. The first federal film producing unit was established by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 1913. The USDA Extension Services Filmmaking Studio and Lab in Washington D.C. produced hundreds of educational films, which were distributed by the department's Extension Service to non-theatrical venues such as schools, lecture halls, libraries, and so forth. Here's USDA Chief Cinematographer George R. Gorgens later in his life, shown in 1943, one of the figures I am researching in the National Archives papers. The USDA began issuing its annual catalog of educational motion pictures in 1920, which lists hundreds of film titles on topics ranging from animal husbandry to forest service maintenance. A great many National Park films were made during this period, but the park service itself did not have complete control over how the parks were depicted until 1935. Rather, my research shows that National Park films were produced across several different government units, sometimes in collaboration with outside corporate interests. In November 1935, the Department of Interior launched its own division of motion pictures. Before World War II, this unit produced hundreds of films, though I haven't yet been able to complete a filmography from this period. One of these was The Land of Lofty Mountains, a film from 1936 depicting Rocky Mountain National Park. The film foregrounds tourist infrastructure, roads, cars, boats, tents, mountain lodges, as much as the scenery of the park. The film gives no indication that native Ute and Arapaho people once lived on this land. Instead, the mountains are presented as an unoccupied, pristine wilderness, easily accessible as a playground for modern tourists, even women shown bathing here in the freezing water next to a snow bank. One of the principal ideas advanced by these films is that wilderness lands should be managed through the development of infrastructure, specifically through the building of roads. When the National Park system was established in 1916, car culture was still in its infancy, but by the 1920s, American car ownership was expanding rapidly to the middle class. Indeed, automobile tourism and the National Parks grew in tandem with each other, and the history of the National Park Service is inseparable from the history of the automobile. Stephen P. Mather, the first director of the Park Service, was an auto enthusiast who believed that automobiles were important not only for expanding access to the parks, but for building public and political support for the park system. In 1916, he exclaimed, quote, no policy of national park management has yielded more gratifying results than that which guided the admission of motor-driven vehicles, end quote. By 1921, 65% of visitors to national parks were arriving in automobiles. In 1924, Congress allotted $7.5 million for road construction in the parks and another $51 million in 1927. Mather was not alone in this appreciation. In postcards and snapshots, automobiles were a popular national park trope in the 1910s and 20s, evoking a contrast between technological modernity and primeval nature. The same is true in motion pictures. Although they are ostensibly about wilderness scenery, one of the most striking aspects of these films is their relentless focus on roads and road building. Films such as roads in our national parks are examples of infrastructural cinema, films that foreground the construction and functioning of physical systems. I use infrastructural cinema as a descriptive term to signal that these government films lay bare the fact of infrastructure whose existence is usually masked at the same time that they present infrastructure as necessary for progress and indeed for modernity itself. These films can also be understood within the framework of petro culture as films that promote the interests of fossil capitalism working hand in hand with the state. In Around the West by Forest Roads, for example, wilderness tourism is described in terms of gasoline distance from the national forests. These films constitute an important part of the history of the national parks, but today as we face accelerating crises caused by global warming and its catastrophic side effects, these films also resonate with the present. In their depiction of wilderness and roads, I argue that these government films are significant for constructing a history of global warming. As ecological theorist Andreas Malm argues, fossil capitalism deserves special focus from historians not only for understanding what happened in the past but for showing how we might switch tracks in the present. Malm writes, quote, natural scientists have so far interpreted global warming as a phenomenon in nature. The point, however, is to trace its human origins. Only thus can we retain at least a hypothetical possibility of changing course, end quote. Emphasizing a contemporary perspective in our historical analysis, these government films of federal lands take on a surprising significance, underscoring the importance of state actions for both the creation and mitigation of climate change. Hi, my name is Oliver Geichen, and I'm an associate professor in the English department at the University of Maryland College Park, where I'm also a core faculty member in the cinema and media studies program and the comparative literature program. Title for my paper today is the National Archives as local archive films of the Chesapeake. As we will see over the course of this conference, the National Archives open out onto the world containing films from a vast variety of locations. And indeed, one would expect a top level federal organization to have a collection that reflects the global reach of the myriad agencies that have contributed to its holdings. This global view, however, is built up from individual instances that are always located in a specific time and place. A particular instance of this local dimension or films made about the greater DC area, or if you prefer a slightly larger circle the Delmarva region. My presentation will provide a brief overview of two films about the Chesapeake Bay held by the National Archives. Heritage of the Chesapeake from 1964 and Waterman of the Chesapeake, which in the catalog is listed as circa 1980, although I found evidence that it was around as early as 1972. And probably it was made a little bit before then judging by the style of the film and clothing and things like that. Together these films can provide a sense of what it means to think of the National Archives in relation to its immediate surroundings. Heritage of the Chesapeake was made for the United States Information Agency by the Naval Photographic Center and distributed by Norwood Films, both of which are good examples of the unsung and understudied production units in and around DC. The former was founded as the Naval Photographic Science Laboratory in the midst of World War II for military filmmaking and photographic evaluation. By the mid 1960s the Photographic Center located at the Anacostia Naval Air Station in southwest DC had expanded its scope to include filmmaking that fell outside of an immediate military context and here's a great behind the scenes stage behind the scenes photo of sound synchronization editing session. Norwood Films, which seems to have been a short lived company specialized in government filmmaking as we can see from this advertisement in business screen. Heritage of the Chesapeake is a portrait of the Skipjack oyster fleet, which are the last sail powered commercial fishing boats in the US. The film not only celebrates these boats as part of the Mid-Atlantic's heritage but also strikes elegiac notes as in the end of this opening sequence where the narrator remarks that these boats are quote slowly disappearing. The Skipjacks that dredge oysters from the bottom of Chesapeake Bay have been a part of Maryland's way of life for more than 100 years. These picturesque boats which have evolved as the best type for dredging oysters under sail are slowly disappearing. The first part of the film details this process of oyster dredging focusing on both useful information and poetic details but then it goes on to include in its account of the watermen their town Cambridge, Maryland, which we see in this sequence. At home the families of the oystermen wait for the boats to return. Cambridge, Maryland is one of the small Chesapeake Bay towns that has harbored sailing ships for more than 100 years. The oyster industry is a principal source of livelihood for the people of Cambridge. This tour through the town makes it clear that the filmmakers took pains to highlight a kind of racial equality although the question of whether this editing constitutes wishful juxtaposition is a question that merits further research. Indeed the task of reconnecting these films with the communities in which they were made, a practice exemplified for me by the work of Northeast Historic Film in Bucksport, Maine and the home movie community more generally is one that I very much would like to undertake. A final clip from Heritage of the Chesapeake allows for an appreciation of the full impact of the film's somewhat peculiar attention to obsolescence. On weekends the harbor holds its dwindling collection. The skipjacks moored together speak quietly. They speak of salt spray and sun, of icy wind and battering rain, of sparkling waves and strong breezes that have healed them over until their rails sliced through the water. They speak of the men who built them to do a job and of the men who sail them, of nights crisp and clear, of the smell of countless oysters on their decks. They speak of early mornings when their ancient silhouettes move slowly toward the bay and of the gentle evening winds that have brought them back so many times. And they speak of years long past when their numbers were so great that a man could walk from one boat to another across the harbor. Every season one or two are retired. Of the Chesapeake is similar to Heritage of the Chesapeake in celebrating certain traditional practices such as the skipjacks, but differences in tone and scope abound. Waterman adopts a more enthusiastic embrace of government and its promise of expert guided progress, a stance that is likely to at least impart to the fact that it was produced by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency. A related difference is Waterman's elaboration of the larger economic networks in which seafood products are enmeshed, as in this sequence that follows the fresh catch through initial processing and into the cold chain. And I'll mention also that this is a part of a series about commercial fisheries. So here is the sequence. Part of the Waterman's catch is shipped alive, part just refrigerated and part processed, making life easier for the housewife. Bay products can be bought alive, freshly iced, frozen, breaded, canned and smoked, ready for preparation in mouthwatering ways. Spiced hard shell crabs are one of the many popular ready to serve bay products. Many methods of refrigerated transportation are used to bring fresh Chesapeake Bay products to market. In the interest of time, I'll skip over an early morning sequence in a fish market and pick up with how the film concludes its story of how Chesapeake seafood finds its way to its consumers. And before the sun is up, Chesapeake Bay products are on their way to stores, schools, restaurants and homes all over the country. You don't have to be an expert chef to prepare an excellent meal. Just don't overcook fish and shellfish. They're quick and easy to prepare and easy on your food budget, too. Because fishery products are so nutritious, they play an important part in school lunch programs. Helpful services and information are available from the Department of the Interior's Fish and Wildlife Service. The Bureau of Commercial Fisheries prepares recipes for housewives, gives advice on storage and displays to retailers, and provides information for all on how to lower food costs by taking advantage of bargain fishery products. The integration here of the private in the scene of the couple's fish dinner and the public with the fish-based school lunch, as well as the overlapping governmental informational campaign, all testify to a vision of government's involvement in most aspects of everyday life. And while some aspects of the film are problematic from a contemporary perspective, such as its gender politics epitomized in the repeated references to housewives, other aspects can strike us as refreshingly advanced. The final sequence that I will share for today is just such a moment, presenting an argument for the importance of basic scientific research as a part of a healthy Chesapeake. Recent basic research and laboratories on the water and land is necessary to solve problems as they develop. The federal government and the governments of Virginia and Maryland, as well as the fishing industry, support research programs in order to learn more about the Bay. There is still much to learn, and this requires comprehensive research. The chemical, physical, and biological data being gathered now will make the Chesapeake more useful to future generations as more and more people come to the Bay Area. The emphasis here on how science will make the Bay more, quote, useful for what it envisions as a growing population can certainly give us pause, but it is worth noting that a researcher at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, which is the same institution that operates the research vessel in the film, was responsible for the creation of a genetically modified local oyster that has revived the decimated stocks of this crucial component of the Chesapeake's ecosystem. So to conclude, I hope that these films can serve as an initial indication of the rich connections between the past and the present that unfold when considering the part of the nation in which the National Archives reside. Thank you. Greetings. I am Martin Johnson. I teach at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. And my talk today is titled The Politics of Distribution, How the Bureau of Mines Used and Reused Motion Pictures. I will be focusing on the United States Bureau of Mines, which was one of the largest producers and distributors of government film in the early 20th century. And I will focus on four questions about the Bureau of Mines and Motion Pictures. So first, why was the Bureau of Mines interested in film? Second, how do they acquire films? Third, what kinds of films did they make? And fourth, where were their films shown? So for the first question, the Bureau of Mines is created in 1910 by an act of Congress to oversee mining in the United States. So they have both a kind of regulatory function as well as a kind of function to promote mining. In 1913, this act is modified to include this language charging the agency with disseminating information concerning these subjects. The Bureau of Mines quickly interprets that to mean that they should promote mining using all media available to them at the time, including motion pictures. So for example, in 1915, when the Bureau of Mines launches this very large exhibit at the Panama Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, we can see in their model here, for their exhibit, they include motion pictures. And this is the theater that they had, kind of simulating an underground movie and picture theater that they would presumably want to set up in mines, so it would be able to teach mine workers safety kind of while they're on the job. We can see in this much later catalog from 1927 that the Bureau of Mines continues to use this language from this 1913 congressional act to justify its work in the motion picture industry as seeing it as the reason that it is able to distribute and make films at such a wide basis. So the second question is kind of how did the Bureau of Mines acquire films? And very early on the Bureau of Mines did not have its own film production capacities. And so what they started doing was to look for films made by others. And those they were seeking out films that they thought were kind of accurate because they didn't want to be promoting films that were inaccurate and also films that depicted the mining industry, I think, in a favorable light. So we can see, for example, they acquired this film from Mind the Molder, which is made by the Rogers Brown Company, and started kind of releasing it using their own kind of apparatus that they were building. And so we can see here in this slide just an example of how much money they were expending. So $2,500 was a lot of money in 1914. And this is to pay for both the kind of company that produced it as well as kind of paying the Bureau for developing kind of negatives they could use from here on. We can see also in this slide the kind of efforts to buy lamps to be able to kind of film in the mine, as well as other kind of demands that they had and trouble kind of getting these resources together. So very early the Bureau of Minds was thinking kind of that others would make the pictures and they would merely supervise them. By 1918 the Bureau had a pretty robust catalog and they had a range of films, some films that they made, but mostly films made by others. And so we can see, for example, an example of one film, An American in the Making, which was made in 1913 by the National Association of Manufacturers, and really made as kind of a pro-safety, pro-capitalist kind of film. And the Bureau of Minds was very interested in kind of releasing this film kind of on the behalf of the National Association of Manufacturers. And if we look at this list from, again, 1918, we can see that early on most of the films that the Bureau of Minds is releasing are not property of the Bureau of Minds, which means that they do not have authority to show them to anyone other than their employees. But by the end of this period they begin to kind of make more of their own films and have more control over them. And then after World War I they are able to kind of expand, not just showing films to their employees, but showing films to all sorts of people. And I'll get more into that in a minute. And so the second question is kind of what kinds of films the Bureau made. And the Bureau was really interested in making all sorts of films. And I think this charge, again, from 1915 kind of shows the kinds of films they were interested in thinking about. So again, making a permanent historical record of the methods and processes involved in the industry. So that's one kind of objective. The second, more educational to show how the mental industry is important economically, sociably, and financially. And then third, to kind of teach people in the industry safe methods of going about their work and creating kind of promoting both safety and efficiency. And so we can see in these images some images of the Bureau making films. Again, shooting in a copper mine, shooting on a ship. We can see here I think this is MF Leopold, which was for a long time head of the Bureau of Mines motion picture operations. The Bureau of Mines also cooperated with the Rothiker Film Manufacturing Company, which was based in Chicago, and essentially contracted with them to make most of the Bureau's films that were produced from 1919 forward. Including this film, The Story of Coal, which was one of the most popular subjects offered by the Bureau of Mines. So we can see a bit of the beginning of this film here. And I think what's interesting too is this title, The Story of Coal, that becomes the kind of framework for every film going forward. So we have The Story of Petroleum, The Story of Steel, and so on. And I also wanted to emphasize that these films were intended to be kind of mining safety films, at least in part. But they were also films that were trying to use cinema to kind of replace other forms of regulations. So we can imagine someone watching this film, The Story of Coal, seeing a message like this and seeing, coming away with the understanding that their safety is their own responsibility rather than that of the mining company. And the Bureau of Mines was very closely kind of tied with the mining industry. So they were the regulators of the industry, but they were also responsible for kind of promoting it to kind of various bodies. And the cinema became really one site where they were able to kind of show the industry as it was supposed to be working and also ensure essentially doing kind of public relations for the industry when there was a mishap, because people would be able to see these images, not just the headlines they saw of mining disasters. And as we go forward, these are two films from 1928. And we can see, again, the continued kind of interest in Bureau of Mines in both showing its own films, like through Oil Fields in Mexico, as well as films like How Jimmy Won the Game, which was produced by the Exposives Manufacturers and then kind of made, re-released by the Bureau of Mines to reach a wider audience. And again, you can see the kind of sponsorship is very clear at the beginning. The Bureau of Mines is joining with industry to present these films. And then finally, asking where were Bureau of Mines films shown? And they were really shown all over. So we can see, for example, here, they were shown in steel mills, they were shown in high schools, they were shown in even movie theaters in Rapid City. And it was a very, I think they were very successful at getting their films out there. This is in part because they made the films available for free, I think often just charging the concert interpretation. So that was appealing. And they also offered subjects that audiences wanted to see because they were showing how industrial processes that were either the important to people because they were engaged in these occupations and they wanted to see kind of how their own work was kind of displayed in motion pictures or they were kind of communicating to people who were not familiar with those industries how they worked. And so I think there was a growing awareness of the kind of relationship between mining and other kind of American, the general American public. And so the mining films then became popular in that way. We can see here in this chart from 1914 to 1918, an example of kind of the growth of the Bureau of Mines kind of output. Again, each subject day, the number of films that we're seeing in a particular day kind of really is at its peak in 1918. And you can see that safety films, coal mining films, and then these sanitary films were the most popular, the films that were more focused on particular things, a bit less so. And these are some images of the Bureau of Mines kind of film inspection operations. So we can see here a film inspection and repair station. Again, this is 1925. So a few years later, we can see here some of the boxes of films that they were sending out. The Bureau of Mines film operations were based in Pittsburgh. So they were running the film from there. We can see here films being loaded onto a truck. The Bureau of Mines also was very interested in exporting films internationally. So this letter from 1923 shows the Bureau of Mines planning to send films to Poland. And I want to kind of close with this kind of image of approval. Again, placed on the Bureau of Mines kind of work and thinking about the kind of importance of the government in justifying the distribution of films, even those that it did not make, a practice that the government continues to kind of carry throughout the 20th century. So with that, thank you for your time. Good afternoon. Thank you all for attending. I'm Lauren Pilcher, a faculty member in Film and Media Studies at Georgia College. As part of this government and the land panel, I'd like to talk here today about a film I've been working with recently, Men of the Forest, a 1952 film produced by the United States Information Service, which was the foreign component, the foreign propaganda arm basically of what became the United States Information Agency in 1953. The National Archives holds the film as part of the USIE records and they made it digitally accessible on their YouTube channel in 2017. My interest in Men of the Forest stems from a larger project on government films produced in mid-century Georgia and the ways in which they represent race and gender during Jim Crow as part of larger visual cultures with lasting influence today. Men of the Forest depicts the Hunter family, a Black family who owned land and a forestry business in rural, segregated Georgia. The film raises specific questions about the federal government, particularly the US Information Services, vision of Black land ownership and agricultural labor in the South during the Cold War. To give a little background on the film, the United States Information Service who produced the film in 1952 was initially the foreign component of the Office of War information that had been established in 1942. The service continued operations in some capacity after the war and was eventually revitalized in the late 1940s for Cold War propaganda. Men of the Forest is one example of the types of information about the United States being distributed abroad in response to Soviet propaganda and pro-communist anti-American sentiment. The film was shot on location near Guyton, Georgia, not too far from Savannah. It meets the Hunter family at their home, a farm that they own, that the narrator of the film tells us has been in the family for 80 plus years. As we meet the family, the three men in the family are starting or off to a day's work, foresting pulpwood, the family business. They soon realize as they're at work that they need a mechanical saw in order to keep up with the other loggers in their area. So the film's narrative picks up here and follows the family as they work to save money together for this mechanical saw. Conflict challenges meet them along the way, a forest fire causes them to lose profits in a climactic sequence later in the film, but ultimately profits from their cotton crops on their land provide that last push and restore the momentum of their effort. The film ends as the family purchases a saw soon after they also purchased a sewing machine for mom and their family bond at the end of the film is solidified as is their future, their future prosperity. The historical background of Men of the Forest is one of the first directions to dig into and more depth in order to make sense of the film. And in doing that, what comes out is the reality that the film is produced in a period of transition and development for United States propaganda. After World War II, the operations of the service as part of the war Office of War information are reduced and without sort of clear direction. Until 1948 when the Smith month act is packed, Smith month act is passed, which sanctions a post war quote information or propaganda program that's under the control of the Department of State. The funding for this programming is double to $31.2 million. And the program is tasked with this overt product of propaganda programming across a variety of media film, television, eventually exhibitions exchange programs, radio print, all that. And the goal at this point in time and the late 1940s into the early 1950s is to maintain this image of the US policy of containment that's portrayed as a defensive reaction to Soviet expansion. And this is in contrast to what is actually going on with covert operations of the CIA, which are actually more aggressive than is being presented in this in this particular image. So this programming picks up increases and gets more funding and the years that follow the Smith month act and eventually by 1951 and 93 countries are being targeted by this for this programming. And what also emerges in the timeframe of the production of men of the forest is this large scale psychological strategy that's beginning to develop as a way of organizing propaganda efforts for the US. And basically this approach aims to organize these efforts more proactively with orchestrated action and policy and an implication that Americans are to be involved and a part of this effort to combat the Soviet Union. So private citizens, not just foreign policy professionals become crucial to communicating propaganda messages in a variety of moons from being directly involved in the production of that propaganda and directly involved to targets of that propaganda directly and directly. So the effort the international effort becomes domestic in focus as well on the tour linked in the line between the two becomes blurred. And so this strategy is emerging here in this time period and is solidified later in the mid 50s, as I said how it takes office. This historical context behind influencing in the backdrop of men of the forest. Obviously prompts a variety of avenues for research that help us to make sense of the film in its immediate environment. For me what stands out about this context is that these images of black owned land in rural segregated Georgia seem particularly rich. The federal government here is acknowledging the hunter family for foreign propaganda, they're using their land and labor to create an image of American democracy one is one that is psychologically strategic and a variety of ways, but removed from its local context in rural Georgia. So as I'm thinking about how to make sense of this film I'm left with questions. As I'm looking at it about why and how was black owned land and agricultural labor in segregated Georgia depicted in the film. How is it depicted as local as global. Also, how does this representation of black owned land and agricultural label agricultural labor. What does it tell us about the Cold War propaganda and propaganda for foreign audiences. What was the government trying to do with that propaganda, how was being framed for appeals for audiences. But I'm also left with questions of what it sort of means in a domestic sense what is the representation of land and labor tells us about how the federal government valued and use the film to interact with black communities. What, what can we glean about the federal governments approach those communities and what they were attempting to do with film. And looking at the film as a record of that interaction. How can we interpret the hunter families presence in the film. In what is ultimately government image of their land and labor that validates to an extent their experience, but also the presence in this propaganda campaign that decontextualizes their land and labor or consumption propaganda consumption abroad. Considering the background historical background of the film. It's also hard for me personally not to wonder how this film connects to today. Especially as I watch it on YouTube, removed from its immediate context, yet I'm just a couple hours dry from the land on which this film was shot. I was engaging these links across time and space to make sense of men of the forest, which is a film that is already destabilizing these notions as part of its production and distribution. It seems difficult, but yet the same time for me also necessary. We have today public access to the film as a National Archives artifact embedded in a contemporary context. The material and ideological landscapes referenced in the film that were never fully contained or controlled within its frame have lived on. They reshape its meaning as they as they have changed and as they continue to change. So I'm also interested in as I think about what we do what to do with this film. How do we engage men of the forest in a way that acknowledges this this part of the reality, the current situation environment in which we encounter it. And in closing here I'm left also thinking about what that said. Just this week, the Atlanta Journal Constitution published a piece detailing the reaction in Georgia to recent federal aid perceived as writing quote century old wrongs of systemic racism against black farmers that resulted as resulted in just decades of millions of lost acres of land and impoverished agricultural livelihoods. The federal aid is politically divisive today, even as Georgia with, which has the fifth highest number of black farmers in the US, even as that average income though for those black farmers in Georgia. In 2017, that was just over $8,000, whereas the average income in 2017 for white farmers was $69,000. Obviously men of the forest belongs to a different time and space realities have come into play and changed that are outside the scope of that 1952 film. Yet, it seems to still somehow have a place here and now in this context. One that we need to also spend some time with, if we want to make sense of this government film that we encounter as a National Archives artifacts text today. Thank you. All right, thank you, everybody. I think what we'll do right now we see a bunch of questions in the Q&A, I'll just direct some of those questions to the panelists and we'll take it from there and other additional panelists want to come jump in on the question we can do that too. This one's just a short one for Steve Gray bill. Where can we find collections of films that have been shown in National Park Service visitor centers for the past 100 years. Thanks Doug, that's a really, I feel like your question raises another question with the time span that you've given offers very center open 50 years ago so for the last 50 years. The answer to that question is going to be primarily in the 79 HFC, HFC series that I highlighted, but you raise another question, when did the Park Service starts showing films in the National Park and that's actually not a question that I have an answer to but it's something that I'm going to research afterwards. Perhaps prior to 1970 Jennifer Peterson's presentation highlights the intersections that I also highlighted in my, in my presentation, perhaps Record Group 48, which is the part of the interior and she also highlighted agricultural records or which are Record Group 16 that perhaps the Park Service collaborated with those parks and maybe they were shown in the parks but I don't I can't say that for sure. Next one is for Jennifer, Jennifer Peterson. Can you expand on the term of land management and how it connects to the discourse of management at the time. We specifically interested if there is a difference concerning the more quote unquote fuzzy object nature compared to industrial or social forms of management, and perhaps how this is reflected in the films. And I think it's important to compare it for example to industrial films that show processes of extraction and commodification. That's a great question with kind of a complex answers will try to keep it short. I'm really interested in industrial films, but I would say these films about national parks represent the creation of a different kind of commodity which I'm trying to argue as tourism, right. So, the big debates in in the early 20th century and actually the whole century is that versus conservation versus preservation, right. And this can be kind of epitomized by the Forest Service, headed by a different pen show which epitomizes conservation or the wise use of the earth and its resources for as many humans as possible. So in the Forest Service is original mandate, you know, mining, logging, etc, are allowed versus the National Park Service kind of epitomized by the philosophy of John Muir, which is more romantic idea that land should be preserved from use. So this has been the debate. I think both of these are now being superseded by new concerns in the face of global warming. So that each has its own good parts and bad parts, and there isn't any simple answer to this. But what I find fascinating is the way these early films from the 20s and 30s show actually creating a new form of value for the land so that it could be preserved and I think that was in general a very good thing. Thank goodness this was done. But part of the John Muir vision, the romantic preservation from use vision also excluded indigenous people and that is problematic. Next question for Oliver Geiken, a kind of clarifying question. What was the year of heritage of the Chesapeake, what year was it released, and any information you can share on production credits but also be appreciated. This person has a personal connection to Norwood films. Thanks. I was hoping for a question like this. It was 1964. And as I said, my suspicion is that Norwood films was short lived that it was a company that came about, and was around for the life cycle of like a single government contract basically. But the more interesting and promising lead is that the filmmakers name was John M. Gordon, who at the time was working with the, he was in the Navy, and then he went on to found his own, his own educational film company. As far as I know, he's still alive. He has a listed address in North Carolina, he's turned to writing mystery novels. So he has like an Amazon author page I've tried a couple of times now to get in touch, and have not had any luck. I want to keep trying. And I would love to know more about Norwood. So, to whomever asked that question or actually I can see who asked it, I will, I will follow up with you and I would love to know more about it. Thank you for your question, I guess both for Steve Grabo and Jennifer Peterson. In more recent filmic representations of national parks. Have you seen these visual or thematic tropes of older national park moving images employed inversely to articulate the concepts of modernity over crowding and or fossil capitalism, or as themes of infrastructure and an unbound freedom to explore, or maybe once celebrated in the films are these signifiers used within or alongside images of national parks today to indicate the need to protect or to preserve the land. I'm going to go first on that one because you're probably more familiar with the recent national park films that I am. I was actually going to pass that off to you. I'm an archivist I'm not an academic. And I'm privileged to be able to sit here with everybody today that is actually that our academics that actually get to interpret the films my job is not the interpreter films and my job is to provide access to the amazing people here. So Jennifer, let me go ahead and put that to you. Sure. Nonetheless, I'm sure you've seen more of the recent ones than I have and and I would say yes, the answer is yes and even that starts in the 1960s kind of rise to the popular environmental movement by the late 1960s early 1970s you see images that, you know, you see forestation and you know road building and stuff used in a slightly different way, not so much taking the old footage but using new footage in this more critical way even in some government films which is very interesting. But, so short answers, yes. Lauren, are you, are you planning to expand on the Q&A jumping around a little bit as people are putting more questions in for Lauren are you planning to expand your research into black farmers depicted in films in other southern states, and how many films and government holdings examine black farm families specifically or in contrast perhaps to white families. So, as I said in my presentation, I came across this film, because I'm doing other work on basically agricultural extension films in Georgia, which are exclusively were segregated at the time so very white focus I'm looking at all those white films. And there's a ton of them comparison to just thinking about looking at Georgia productions to this sort of one film. But to also track try to track down the, if there were films made from the basically black extension service at the time, I think that'd be where a place I'd like to start and then see federal wise if there were other films like this film. So looking at them across the South to, I mean I'm focused on Georgia right now but I think it would be, especially in this time period. Really interesting to see what what that looks like across the South that it looked different different states. And just to get a sense of what's going on because this film in particular, I mean the forestering is for the paper mill, they were basically paper mills on the coast of Georgia so it has sort of relationship to that industry so I would wonder what that might look in different regions of the South where industries are different farming industries are different so. This is a question for, perhaps for Martin but maybe other panelists as well may you might want to reflect on it. Have you seen examples of other government departments are reusing or rebranding films in some way. It's pretty common and I think we saw a bit in Jennifer's presentation as well. And what I wonder and this is a question that might be answerable but it would require lots of digging and kind of archives. It's just, is there a, it seems like there's a pattern where an agency becomes interested in film distribution or interested in film, and then they realize well first we can distribute, and then they move into production. And then they do it over time or maybe they do exhibition first and then distribution and then production, but thinking about that relationship, and I've seen many letters again I showed one from the Bureau of Minds that they received from the Commerce Department. So the Commerce Department asking the Bureau of Minds, do you have any films you can give us to share in Poland and there's a couple of other letters asking for other kind of diplomatic missions and so I think that's a really interesting way to think about government film is it's not even though in the archive they're separated into categories, many of these films do could traverse various agencies various time periods. It's a very different kind of film practice that we're used to on the commercial side of things. I'll just mention that I saw on one of Martin's slides. The catalog there are a couple of titles that I know from popular science film making the fly past which was a film that Charles Urban made like 1910. Basically, and then the war on on the mosquito and there were a variety of different filmmakers who made a film with that that could have had that title and so that's interesting and I think you're right Martin there is a real probably fascinating alternate media ecology of how these how these both discrete films but then probably also scenes or sequences circulate historically and then you know the final thought about it is that one of the kind of interesting connections among the panel here is not just about sort of the the contemporary circulation but really about the the resonance between the films when they were originally made and and and what they mean now, or what they might mean now, which wasn't something that I was really expecting to come out of the conversation but I just want to note it because maybe we can talk about in a little bit. Let me fill up on that I think that's exactly right. I think these films have a really important resonance now. Perhaps, it's like they were alive and they sort of maybe went dormant or something for a while and then to me they're just totally filled with rich information every single presentation here is absolutely exciting to look at these films. And I think our audience will probably agree although we're a self selected audience here but I think these films really really resonate with this current moment and I think you're certain that there's a pattern within the government agencies, first they are interested in distribution this is what I've seen in the park service in the 20s. They distribute some films about national parks made by other government units, and and also by corporations and amateur filmmakers but it's not until they get their own money from the federal government to make their own films that then they can kind of control things. So it's so interesting that you make this point I think that's really smart. Actually, I have a sort of light bulb go off when you said that distribution first then production. Thanks. Just if I could maybe even ask a kind of follow up question to that for just pitch it to all the panelists. I'm just thinking about issues, not just distribution but perhaps reception as well and how that maybe has factored into some of your recent archival research drawing some connections between different institutions within or beyond government agencies and I know reception can always be a challenge but also a very fruitful area of research it sounds like for a lot of the questions that you all are asking. Yeah, I'll just say I agree with that and it's, and that's something else. Again, the government's interested in capturing information about reception they I've seen surveys from 1910s, and they are trying to determine like how many projectors are in use in various schools and kind of factory settings and other things and the government has the resources to actually go and count that material and the resources and the investments to figure out what are people watching these films what do they think about them. And so a lot of those those surveys and other material are in the archives is just a matter of kind of finding the way into that work and gives us I think a lot of valuable valuable information about how films were received and kind of used at the time. And for me, I feel like, as interesting as that layer is for me right now, maybe even more interesting and this is very much in line with what both Lauren and I know Jennifer has worked on this in other contexts is the question of, you know what, what happens when you reconnect with audiences. You know, for for me it's a very sort of specific question because there was a, you know, a single town where, where at least the first film was was made and I really want to go back to that place and show that film. And it makes me wonder Lauren, if your film has been reconnected you know is the hunter family. So the film now, and Jennifer I was thinking of you know your, your work with your presentation at orphans and this sort of question of like the ecological resonance of these images which I see is also part of one of the questions that that is going to come. So we can look back to it but I was thinking Lauren about that. You know, films film changes they age not just physically but everything around them changes and so the final bit of your presentation made it especially kind of salient this this this question of you know, is this a different film now, or in what ways is it different from from the early 50s. Totally. And just that's something I was actively thinking about what you know what's where's the family today what's the situation today. So that would be my next step is to sort of actually try to get in touch with them. And, and, yeah, get a sense of that but I also came across when I was looking into the film that someone has made like just like a local documentary someone from the area that interviews everyone in the film, and just people in the small town and so it was kind of screened in that in the town and in Savannah. So yeah, it is the sort of response I think the family didn't initially see it, where they had didn't really have a copy of it or anything. So, I was kind of rediscovered. And for them, and the way that the documentary is sort of framed an important record that speaks to the town and history into 100 family. So, that's definitely an important component of it. This is a question for pitch to everyone all the panelists can maybe react to it. Thanks for the really interesting talks everybody. Nice, getting out of affirmation there. I would like to ask about the ways films by made by state organizations, ostensibly to boost their own purposes and perhaps exploitation of natural resources, nevertheless seem to also deliver images of the destructive implications. I would like to see say road building national parks piles of discarded oyster shells on dangerous mine carts for example. Is this nearly hindsight or do you think these films did serve to bring about an awareness of the environmental impact of these activities in some way. I can start actually the piles of discarded oyster shells are not a bad thing, because they can be reintroduced into the bay and serve as the bed for young oysters. So that's a kind of a weird. I mean it's an image that I may have read the same way before I learned a little tiny bit about oyster biology. But yeah, so I'll just I'll just conclude. I won't go on about about that particular thing, but it does seem to be an overarching issue with the, I mean, totally connected to what we were just talking about the, the, the importance of the sort of long tail or the long after life and in I think this is an interesting model for a new form of kind of outreach or engagement with government film and with non non fictional non non theatrical film more more generally. Yeah, because I would say you have to put these in the context of what I call environmental awareness. So, so this question is coming more from our perspective that post 1960s perspective where we see the damage very clearly that humans have done and continue to do to the environment but when these films were made, especially the ones in my talk from the 20s and 30s. These were seen as lands being democratized and opened up to access to the people right so building a road in the 1920s is about democratic access, which is a valuable thing I believe in that. On the other hand, now I'm presenting these films are looking at them and exploring them as a trace of the history of global warming and what people didn't realize that they were doing then, but we know now that they were literally paving the United States to prepare it for, you know, global warming, but they didn't know right. So there's an interesting way that you can trace through the films, a kind of attitude about nature and how it changes over time, because by the 1960s government films themselves are starting to reflect popular environmentalism as well. So there's a sort of two pronged way to look at these films from the moment it was made and from our own perspective. Just on that point one thing that's really interesting about your mind's films is they took them out of circulation so they've numbered them sequentially 1234 but then as films perceived to be outdated or otherwise less useful they would try to get them out. They would come across correspondence from like 22, and they're already concerned that the story of cold made two years earlier has some bad information and a bad safety kind of examples. And so I think thinking about kind of when a film books comes perceived as no longer useful. And the fact that government films do stay in circulation for a long time but then can be come potentially incriminating in various ways. And discussion that have about that possibility. And Jennifer Peterson just sort of follow up questions something that listener was asking struck by the imagery of a lot of these films in terms of cars and resonates strongly with a lot of imagery by say car manufacturers are on you know on or on behalf perhaps of car the persistence of it is striking in the 30s even to now. The person was wondering if you could say more about that or even things like trains buses shuttles and presence of those technologies in these films. Absolutely one of the more interesting 1920s films was sponsored by the white motor company which was the company that made the buses in Yellowstone National Park so this was literally an advertising film for the white motor companies buses. This is a film that goes to three national parks. And it's not a film that's yet been digitized though hopefully it can be soon because it's beautiful and this was the most popular film in circulation for the park service even that was made by a commercial company. And it was made by Rossifers the white company got Rossifers to make the film. So yes, and of course they're the Ford Motor Company films that Lee Greaveson has written about. So, absolutely cars buses trains as well more in the earlier period there's a real intersection between government and corporate making any films. There's one image of the sort of student Baker car upon that rock formation it was just, you know so similar right like the machine in the garden it was kind of perfect trouble in that moment. A question for Martin, there seems to be a pickup in Bureau of mind films in the 1920s. After a post war decline. Is that correct. It might be related to labor strife in the 1920s. I think that could be one explanation, as I mentioned before this concerns about changing mining safety procedures I haven't done the kind of mapping of kind of how mining regulations change and whether the Bureau of films changes a result. So if this demand internationally also impacts their production, and then no other manufacturers are investing more resources and making films 1920s is also of course an important period for the growth of educational film and showing films and all sorts of scenarios with 60 millimeter being introduced 1923 etc. So I think on the demand side, there's a strong strong demand for these films, and I think the beer binds might just be kind of growing resources and making more films and circulation in part to kind of meet that demand. Thank you for Steve Steve Gray bill. Can you elaborate a bit about the National Park Service or the Harper's very collection and how it sort of in some ways documents, cultural and arts performance, maybe even with raw unedited footage. And this question also sort of points to the sick sound material if you could talk a little bit about that. Yeah, that's great. Thanks for the question less. So, I think the, let me just give two examples of where this is actually happened. The blue rich Parkway, I discovered that they were intending on creating a documentary and they never did finish the documentary for that but it was a documentary in the blue rich. The blue grass musicians from that area, Galex is kind of the hotbed for blue grass and one of the common locations of it. Actually, there's a blog post on that within the record. And I don't write many blog posts and that's one of them and then there's also with respect to the sync sound, most of the sync sound is just film on a magnetic film. But there's one aspect one record that we found with the Gettysburg site. It was 150th anniversary of Gettysburg. And there I Carl Sagan gave the keynote speech at this event, and we only had the footage on film and then all of a sudden I realized that we actually had quarter inch mag that went with those films. And we don't quite have all that all the audio I think they take I'm speculating that the tape ended, and they had to switch another tape in to get it really quick. But we're actually able to do a little bit of syncing the lab Audrey, Audrey worked on that to get it synced so we actually have most of Carl Sagan's speech, but the moving image on film, as well as the audio that we're able to get with the quarter inch. I just have a question for Ellen Mulligan. We're talking about a lot of really rich material in this panel and curious, are there particular narrow collections of the material that might like to highlight or points in the panelists to or the listeners out there as well we have a robust crowd of about 121 plus participants. Nice, I mean I would say that a lot of the relevant collections have been highlighted in the presentations today. The Secretary of the Interior and the extension service are great sources for some of the earlier films related to lands, the use of land. For service we have a number of collections from the Forest Service that I'm not sure have been discussed much and we have a lot of more recent Forest Service materials that are maybe less interpretive and less for visitors or to encourage tourism and more about the use of the resources and documentation of projects. So that's actually another whole swath of films is you know documentation of projects. So like Corps of Engineers films might also be relevant there. And we have some collections in that record group from that agency which is 77 that we've been working on processing and we have quite a bit that's unprocessed from the Corps of Engineers as well so depending on your particular research interest I think there are you know avenues and approaches in addition to the like more popular distributed films. I hope that's addressing the question Bureau of Mines as Martin talked about Bureau of Reclamation that's another another good record group to check out. There are a couple of films from the Works Projects Administration as well. And yeah, further questions if you have more specific questions you can shoot an email to our reference staff. That's mopix at nara.gov, and we'll be happy to send you more information. I just wanted to chime in real quickly and it seems like partly what Ellen is saying here resonates with something that Steve mentioned that I thought deserves highlighting in part because it will get picked up later in the in the conference. So Steve you talked about how some of the, you know your Yellowstone photo, which was not part of the Parks collection but actually is you know should be or could be considered. And I think that that is a characteristic of the National Archives collections more more broadly. So we have a session later on on Friday about textual records, because it's one of the really sort of distinctive amazing elements of National Archives is that there's so much, you know, sort of documentation, both pre pre production production and then distribution and exhibition materials, and, and that there are these, you know, sort of maybe unexpected connections among agencies, which are often kind of surprising for researchers but which NARA staff are often familiar with and can point you toward. So I just wanted to highlight that aspect of the of the conversation today. Yeah, I'd like to follow up a little bit on that to Oliver. Thanks for mentioning that one of the reasons that there's that overlap is because you know as archivists we maintain the records in the original order. So we don't rearrange records if an agency transfers a film to us that was produced by another agency. Sometimes we merge the titles together but in most cases will leave it with the agency that that sent it to us. And that's because it's evidence of government activity it's evidence of how the records were used by those various agencies. So it's a case by case decision sometimes whether we transfer it or not if we have like original production elements from one agency and another agency sends us a copy, maybe we will merge them together and document it in the accessioning paperwork, but in some cases will leave the copy with the agency who sent it to us even if they were not the producers. All right, I just want to thank all the panelists for those amazing presentations a great way to kick off. It was starting the panels for the conference. And yeah, stay tuned for more. Yeah, don't forget to tune in tonight at 730 for the for the screening and and hope to see you then and tomorrow and on Friday. Thank you.