Time for a semi-annual social media break. ✌️

This is my humor.

Gut punch. THE WAR GAME is my (favorite?) horror movie.

Feeling dorky so let’s add some media studies hashtags #timeshifting #VCR #lineartelevision #rerunnation #videotape What did I miss?

This #Halloween 🎃 costume is dedicated to my mom who taped re-run episodes of Scooby-Doo off television for me for months literally every time we needed to miss the daily 📺 showing in the early 1990s. Love you June! 📼

You know you’ve found “your people” when you can send a photo of an undated 20th century trade paper page (that you’re blanking on) to a pal and they can instantly tell you what publication it is based on layout and typeface. Anyway, love you @labuzamovies.com!

it's not even hyperbolic at this point to say that the Internet Archive is more or less the only thing standing between us and the burning of a hundred Alexandrias

Seeing this prompts my regular demand—more mid-20th century Latin American films need home movie releases with Eng subtitles! VICTIMS OF SIN was a victory. Plenty are already restored, Janus has rights on this, ENAMORADA, etc. To its credit, Flicker Alley has been rolling out some noir gems...

In the mood for some weird horror-y cartoon viewings for Halloween? Check out my new post highlighting 20 animated shorts from Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks.

In the mood for even more creepy cartoon viewings for Halloween? Here's my rundown on 24 animated shorts from the Fleischer studio. I have an immense love for the cartoons of Betty Boop, Bimbo and Koko, and ramble on for nearly 5000 words about it here.

I don’t live in NYC anymore but if I did I would RUN to @lightindustry.bsky.social on November 4 for their screening of Alberto Gout’s AVENTURERA. Ninón Sevilla slays. See also SENSUALIDAD (1952) and VICTIMS OF SIN (avail on home video via Criterion). www.lightindustry.org/aventurera

“Drop Dead” is generally considered one of the two most memorable headlines of the last half-century, along with The New York Post’s 1983 gem, “Headless Body in Topless Bar.” (Gift article) #journalism www.nytimes.com/2025/10/30/n...

Film hive: best writing on Jacques Tati?

Still time to apply!

I find it v difficult to put into words how honored and lucky i feel to have edited this issue on feminist historical methods, to have had so many important pieces of writing and thinking entrusted to me over these last few years. 1/ online.ucpress.edu/fmh/issue/11/4

Preparing to teach I Live in Fear tomorrow by watching this 1956 documentary about the hibakusha (survivors of the bomb). I highly recommend it. It's beautiful and disturbing. Wish I could watch The World is Terrified: The Reality of the “Ashes of Death” (1957) too, but unfortunately I can't find it

Inspired by conference talk by my colleague Joshua Glick, I’ve designed a new assignment for my “Documentary Storytelling” students. They’ll select a recent(ish) political documentary and produce a written report and presentation about the film and its impact guide to their peers. 1/

I really agree here! For higher ed, we’re all trained researchers in our respective subfields and we need to bring the same level of rigor and originality to our assignments. I also think with AI it is necessary to develop more inventive and creative assignments.

The Academic Film Archive of North America is a wonderful resource and its founder Geoff Alexander is a tireless champion for preserving legacy of educational film. Glad to see his collection has found at home at Johns Hopkins! afana.org

Celebration of 1 Trillion Webpages! People are awesome. over 1 billion people over the last 30 years have wanted to share what they know with the world. @archive.org show video with tabs to jump around:

Thanks to #MHDL and @archive.org's digitized Business Screen magazine, I can see that Harwald also made an Inspect-O-Film station and that the Natl Education TV & Radio Center in Ann Arbor got the "Mark IV" version in 1961. It used Protect-O-Film liquid to coat their prints.

A vital part of archiving history is creating descriptive metadata so that it remains discoverable. On our blog, UCLA student Marley Saldivar-Lozano discusses “Reflecciones” (1972–4) and her work with the Archive to create accurate, ethical metadata for the series, which is online 📺 ucla.in/3JuET8G

Alpha School, which promises to educate kids using an "AI tutor" in two hours a day, is a budding national empire and a darling of the Trump administration. According to some parents who spoke to @wired.com for this investigation, it's had nightmarish effects on their kids.

Saw this circulating on other social so sharing here. From the CBS News Archive: 1962 televised tour of White Hour by Jackie Kennedy. Includes footage of East Wing. m.youtube.com/watch?v=pjlu...

Bleak. BLEAK. www.wired.com/story/ai-tea...

𝐍𝐞𝐰 𝐭𝐨 𝐖𝐅𝐏𝐏: Bart G. Moens's overview essay "Casting Shadows: Women’s Work at the Projection Department of Maison de la Bonne Presse (1895-1920)."

A year ago I had the pleasure of writing about Lionel Rogosin’s oeuvre for @criterion.bsky.social Current. His films are still available on the Channel; check them out if you haven’t! H/t to @milestonefilms.bsky.social for bringing his work to a wider audience. 🎉 www.criterion.com/current/post...

Aaaaarrrggh

Adding insult to injury ew.com/white-house-...

Looney Tunes remained popular for decades precisely because it was airing in widespread syndication on TV all the time. Old cartoons should be FREE to find new audiences, ESPECIALLY when their rights holders don't even care enough to platform them anymore.

“I am not interested, nor will I ever be interested. I'm 61, and I hope to be able to remain uninterested in using it at all until I croak. ... The other day, somebody wrote me an email, said, ‘What is your stance on AI?’ And my answer was very short. I said, ‘I'd rather die.’” 🫡

Exciting new documentary entering circulation! ELVIRA NOTARI: BEYOND SILENCE about Italy’s first woman director + journey to bring her work back to life. Trailer (w/ English subs) here. First learned of Notari via Giuliana Bruno’s classic monograph STREETWALKING ON A RUINED MAP vimeo.com/1125241996

Happy Internet Archive Day to all who celebrate. The Internet Archive is hitting its trillionth webpage archived, and - as a long time collaborator and historian of both web archiving more generally as well as the Internet Archive specifically - am happy to join them for this milestone.

Suffice it to say showing Santiago Álvarez’s NOW!, Josh Begley’s BEST OF LUCK WITH THE WALL, and Marshall Curry’s A NIGHT AT THE GARDEN in “Documentary Storytelling” was very cathartic today!

A publicly-sourced archive of more than 10,000 national park signs and monument placards went public as part of a massive volunteer project to save historical and educational placards from around the country that risk removal by the Trump administration. 🔗 www.404media.co/save-our-sig...

Define “Perfect Ending”?

Take note of all these people turning out for protests in small towns in red states. Remember them the next time you’re inclined to write an area off because “they voted for this.”

A powerful visual.

Love the text treatment on this printing of Andrew Sarris’ THE AMERICAN CINEMA: DIRECTORS AND DIRECTIONS, 1929-1968

This is an insane take, and the problem is simply using the term AI to mean hundreds of different things. If you're talking about the copyright infringement engine, you're a moron. Do you mean generative AI? Are you talking about applications in different tech? Enough with this false dichotomy.

Calling all cinema and art history scholars! The CinemArts Scholarly Interest Group is gathering ideas for activities in the coming academic year. Whether you’re a longtime member or newly curious about joining, take a minute to fill out our short survey: forms.gle/CYXrxWamip1d...

Are you part of the Critical Media Pedagogies SIG? You should join our Discord server. It's a streamlined space for communication amongst SIG members to ask questions, stay engaged, & build community with other pedagogy-minded scholars! Join us on Discord: discord.gg/tnSHe5Jw

I’ll bring the 🍿! @orphanfilm.bsky.social @nontheatricalscms.bsky.social @amianet.bsky.social

I also DIY digitized about five mini DV tapes from late ‘80s to mid ‘90s from my childhood and burst into tears at the moment I heard the voices of my deceased grandparents. TL;DR — save your home movies, especially when they are on videotape. Two of the other mini DV tapes had already degraded.

I'm taking the opportunity of this circulating to reshare my Media+Environment essay on the history of the beef industry's depictions of ots own effects on the land: mediaenviron.org/article/1236...

The creation of this list is slow going, welcome to feedback & suggestions go.bsky.app/ASePLKt

PSA! Preserve your family’s #homemovies no matter the format (yes, this includes smart phone recordings). Pictured here: screen grabs of digitized videotape of my dad, uncle, grandparents in Brooklyn (and maybe Catskills) circa 1955. Original format was 16mm (or 8mm?). Alas, reels were tossed.

We actively are seeking hosts for future Women and the Silent Screen conferences, including WSS 2027! A helpful potential host info sheet & the application form can be found here: www.wfhi.org/about-wss. If you are interested in hosting WSS 2027, please submit a proposal by 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫 𝟏𝟕, 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟓.

154 years ago today, the Great Chicago Fire started to burn. And 70 years ago, Walter Cronkite recorded this mock news report about the fire for CBS's "You Are There," a series that reenacted events from history as breaking news. From a 16mm reel collected by Chicago filmmaker Margaret Conneely.