UCLA film archive to screen rare Earhart footage at free preservation festival

The UCLA Film & Television Archive opens its 22nd Festival of Preservation this weekend, offering free screenings of restored films including newsreel footage of Amelia Earhart recorded 10 days before she vanished over the Pacific.

The three-day festival shines a light on how much moving-image history the public has never seen: the archive holds half a million items — the nation's largest such collection outside the Library of Congress — and nearly all of it remains unknown to audiences outside academia.

The UCLA Film & Television Archive holds more than 500,000 items — enough film to wrap around Earth four and a half times, according to director May Duong. It is the largest moving-image collection in the United States outside the Library of Congress. Yet most of that footage has never been seen outside an archive screening room.

"Everyone thinks that all moving images are on YouTube, and that all film exists and they've seen it, and they haven't," Duong told ABC7 Los Angeles. "That's because a lot of it [is] tucked away in our archives. A lot of it is ready to be discovered."

The collection includes 180,000 reels of chemically unstable nitrate film from the late 1800s through 1950, stored in climate-controlled vaults maintained at 38 degrees Fahrenheit. The $220 million facility, built by David Packard and the Packard Humanities Institute on 65 acres outside Los Angeles, equips each vault with its own fire suppression system because nitrate film can spontaneously combust if improperly handled.

This year's festival features rare newsreel footage of aviator Amelia Earhart speaking about repairs to her aircraft in Burbank, filmed just 10 days before she disappeared over the Pacific in 1937. "This footage is rare. It's unique. It shows her talking about the operations of her flight, and yet 10 days later, she would leave to go around the world and never to return," Duong said, according to ABC7.

The program also includes "& Beautiful," a restored 1969 television program about Black life and culture. "Black audiences watching a Black-directed show with a Black advertising initiative was groundbreaking at the time, and it's a celebration of Black life," Duong said, as reported by ABC7. The title, she explained, riffs on the phrase "Black is beautiful."

The festival features 11 feature films, four television programs and 30 short works including cartoons and newsreels. All screenings are free.

The 22nd UCLA Festival of Preservation runs May 29 through May 31. Admission is free; tickets are distributed on a first-come, first-served basis at the door.