Uploaded December 2022 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Filmmaker Rick Prelinger is joining us live on chat to engage in spirited real-time repartee with you and fellow viewers. Let us know if you have a comment, question or anecdote about any of the footage!
This year's LOST LANDSCAPES pictures the infrastructures, peoples and landscapes of California, centering on San Francisco’s everyday past and the futures we have tried to build. Casting an archival gaze on San Francisco and cities, towns and places throughout California where nature and culture meet, the film recalls moments in the history of our state's resources, the scars of settlement and its backbones: transportation, extraction, communication, travel and labor — all intersecting in a panoramic city/state symphony documenting the past and suggesting possible futures in an age of systemic uncertainty.
As always, this year's film (the 17th!) combines home movies, government-produced and industrial films, feature-film outtakes and many other surprises (including many newly discovered San Francisco historical images). As with all LOST LANDSCAPES events, the audience makes the soundtrack, and you are cordially invited to identify people, places and events, pose questions to one another and to the host, and engage in spirited conversation as the film plays.
Rick Prelinger is the founder of the Prelinger Archives in San Francisco, whose moving image holdings may be found online at www.archive.org. With Megan Prelinger, he co-founded Prelinger Library, a publicly-available collection of historical periodicals, books, print ephemera, maps and government documents.
Filmmaker Rick Prelinger is joining us live on chat to engage in spirited real-time repartee with you and fellow viewers. Let us know if you have a comment, question or anecdote about any of the footage!
This year's LOST LANDSCAPES pictures the infrastructures, peoples and landscapes of California, centering on San Francisco’s everyday past and the futures we have tried to build. Casting an archival gaze on San Francisco and cities, towns and places throughout California where nature and culture meet, the film recalls moments in the history of our state's resources, the scars of settlement and its backbones: transportation, extraction, communication, travel and labor — all intersecting in a panoramic city/state symphony documenting the past and suggesting possible futures in an age of systemic uncertainty.
As always, this year's film (the 17th!) combines home movies, government-produced and industrial films, feature-film outtakes and many other surprises (including many newly discovered San Francisco historical images). As with all LOST LANDSCAPES events, the audience makes the soundtrack, and you are cordially invited to identify people, places and events, pose questions to one another and to the host, and engage in spirited conversation as the film plays.
Rick Prelinger is the founder of the Prelinger Archives in San Francisco, whose moving image holdings may be found online at www.archive.org. With Megan Prelinger, he co-founded Prelinger Library, a publicly-available collection of historical periodicals, books, print ephemera, maps and government documents.
