Rick Prelinger Presents Lost Landscapes of San Francisco 4 at The Long Now Foundation

photo via The Long Now Foundation

Guerrilla archivist Rick Prelinger, who runs the Prelinger Library in San Francisco, will be presenting Lost Landscapes of San Francisco 4 this Friday, December 4th at the Herbst Theatre in San Francisco. Rick’s talk is part of The Long Now Foundation’s monthly Seminars About Long Term Thinking by hosted by Stewart Brand.

Rick Prelinger, a guerrilla archivist who collects the uncollected and makes it accessible, presents the fourth of his annual Lost Landscapes of San Francisco screenings. As in past years, Lost Landscapes 4 will be an eclectic montage of rediscovered and rarely-seen film clips showing life, landscapes, labor and leisure in a vanished San Francisco as captured by amateurs, newsreel cameramen and industrial filmmakers.

This year’s Lost Landscapes will include much new and unseen material from Prelinger Archives and other collections, including newly discovered films shot by longtime San Francisco residents. Unlike most film screenings, Lost Landscapes relies on audience members for the soundtrack — we encourage viewers to interact with the film, shout out questions and identify mystery scenes.

How we remember and record the past reveals much about how we address the future. Prelinger will preface the screening with a brief talk on how historical memory is shifting away from mass culture towards individual expression, and what consequences will arise from the emerging massive matrix of personal records.

In the first talk of the series, Rick presented “A Trip Down Market Street”, featuring beautiful public domain footage of San Francisco’s Market Street in 1905, prior to the big earthquake in 1906.

photo by Cory Doctorow

Jeff Diehl recently interviewed Rick Prelinger on Spots Unknown.