January 13 @ 6:30pm – 9pm Internet Archive, 300 Funston Avenue, San Francisco Buy Tickets
This year’s LOST LANDSCAPES OF SAN FRANCISCO (the 19th!) casts an archival gaze on the lives of San Franciscans and Bay residents. Drawn from over 400 newly scanned archival films plus a few old favorites, this year’s film revels in the textures and activities of everyday life, labor and celebration, replaying known and unknown historical moments, daylighting lost and found infrastructures, revealing the scars of settlement and pointing to more hopeful futures. Highlights include intimate views of the Mission District, recently discovered BART films, coverage of Western Addition redevelopment and displacement, and much more. Almost all of the footage has not been shown before.
As always, the audience makes the soundtrack. Please come prepared to raise your voices; identify places, people and events; and ask questions of others in the audience.
By attending, you’ll directly contribute to supporting the Internet Archive. Rick Prelinger will be presenting as per usual. Don’t miss this opportunity to be a part of truly special evening!
Doors open at 6:30 pm. Film starts at 7:30 PM
No one will be turned away due to lack of funds!
January 13 @ 6:30pm – 9pm Internet Archive, 300 Funston Avenue, San Francisco Buy Tickets
How do we create a universe of truthful and verifiable information, available to everyone?
The Internet Archive, Library Futures Foundation, and Creative Commons invite you to join us for a virtual book talk with Peter B. Kaufman, about his book The New Enlightenment and the Fight to Free Knowledge.
Peter is joined by Catherine Stihler, CEO of Creative Commons, as they discuss how to create a universe of truthful and verifiable information. The conversation will be followed by a Q&A.
Peter B. Kaufman is a writer, teacher, and documentary film producer, Peter B. Kaufman works at the Office of Open Learning at MIT. He previously served as Associate Director of Columbia University’s Center for Teaching and Learning. He has served as president and executive producer of Intelligent Television; a founder of the Audio-Visual Think Tank at Sound & Vision in the Netherlands; co-chair of the JISC Film & Sound Think Tank in the United Kingdom; co-chair of the Copyright Committee of the Association of Moving Image Archivists; a member of the Scholar Advisory Committee of WGBH’s American Archive of Public Broadcasting; a member of the American Council of Learned Societies Commission on Cyberinfrastructure in the Humanities and Social Sciences; and a consultant to the Library of Congress’s National Audiovisual Conservation Center, the largest archive of moving images and recorded sound in the world. The author of numerous articles on media and education, and a member of the editorial board of The Moving Image, he lives in northwest Connecticut and Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Catherine Stihler OBE has been an international champion for openness as a legislator and practitioner for over 20 years. Born in Scotland, Catherine was educated at St Andrews University, where she was awarded a Master of Arts (MA) with Honours in Geography and International Relations, and later a Master of Letters (MLitt) in International Security Studies. She also has a Master of Business Administration degree from the Open University. She stood for election as a Member of the European Parliament for Scotland in 1999, representing the Labour Party. At the European Parliament she became one of Scotland’s longest-serving and most respected legislators. Catherine was elected Vice-Chair of the European Parliament’s Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee, founded the Campaign for Parliamentary Reform and the parliament’s All-Party Library Group, and was instrumental in securing graphic health warnings on cigarette packets across the EU. In 2019, Catherine was awarded an OBE by Her Majesty the Queen in recognition of her services to politics. In 2019, she stood down from the European Parliament to become Chief Executive Officer of the Open Knowledge Foundation. Catherine transformed the Open Knowledge Foundation in just 18 months, redefining its vision and mission to produce a new strategic direction, reengaging its global chapters and increasing the worldwide profile of the organisation. In August 2020, Catherine was appointed chief executive of Creative Commons, a non-profit organisation that helps overcome legal obstacles to the sharing of knowledge and creativity to address the world’s pressing challenges.
PRAISE:
“Peter B. Kaufman’s call for a new Enlightenment couldn’t be more timely, or more necessary. His polemic against those who purport to own knowledge shows that knowledge is freedom and can belong to all or to none. The choice is ours.” —Edward Snowden
“Mellifluous, intelligent, erudite—a pleasure to read.” —Charles Nesson, William F. Weld Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and founder of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard
“Kaufman’s brilliant exposition of the need for an online Fifth Estate and his ardent support of an online creative commons are both timely and convincing. Everyone who draws on the web for research and intellectual inspiration should read this book.” —Michael Scammell, author, Solzhenitsyn: A Biography and Koestler: The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth-Century Skeptic and founding editor, Index on Censorship
“Rigorous and eloquent … a passionate proposal.” —Kathelin Gray, Los Angeles Review of Books
Please join us on June 14th at 11am PT for a virtual book talk with Richard Ovenden, about his book Burning the Books: A History of the Deliberate Destruction of Knowledge, which has been shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize.
Richard is joined by Abby Smith Rumsey, writer and historian, as they discuss the history of intentional recorded knowledge destruction. The conversation will be followed by a Q&A.
Richard Ovenden is Bodley’s Librarian at the University of Oxford, the senior executive officer of the Bodleian Libraries, a position he has held since 2014. His previous positions include Deputy Head of Rare Books at the National Library of Scotland, the Head of Special Collections and Director of Collections at the University of Edinburgh, and he held the Keepership of Special Collections at the Bodleian from 2003 to 2011, when he was made Deputy Librarian. He has been active in both the worlds of rare books and the history of photography, serving as Chairman of the Rare Books and Special Collections Group of CILIP, and Secretary of the Scottish Society for the History of Photography. He is currently a Trustee of the Kraszna Kraus Foundation, and of Chawton House Library. He is the author of John Thomson (1837–1921): Photographer (1997) and co-editor of A Radical’s Books: The Library Catalogue of Samuel Jeake of Rye (1999) and has contributed essays to the Cambridge History of Libraries, The Edinburgh History of the Book in Scotland, and the History of Oxford University Press.
Abby Smith Rumsey is a writer and historian focusing on the creation, preservation, and use of the cultural record in all media. She writes and lectures widely on analog and digital preservation, online scholarship, the nature of evidence, the changing roles of libraries and archives, and the impact of new information technologies on perceptions of history, time, and identity. She is the author of When We Are No More: How Digital Memory is Shaping our Future (2016). Rumsey served as director of the Scholarly Communication Institute at the University of Virginia and has advised universities and their research libraries on strategies to integrate digital information resources into existing collections and services. For over a decade, Rumsey worked with the Library of Congress’s National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP) in the development of a national strategy to identify, collect, and preserve digital content of long-term value.
REVIEWS:
“A call to arms to protect and preserve knowledge. A fine and moving book which ranges widely across time and acts as a reminder of the importance of libraries to our culture.” — Wolfson History Prize judges
“Essential reading for anyone concerned with libraries and what Ovenden outlines as their role in ‘the support of democracy, the rule of law and open society.”―Wall Street Journal
“[Burning the Books] takes a nightmare that haunts many of us―the notion of the past erased―and confirms that it is no fiction but rather a recurring reality. In the process, Ovenden stays true to his calling, reminding us that libraries and librarians are the keepers of humankind’s memories: without them, we don’t know who we are.”―Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian
“Chronicles how libraries have served as sanctuaries for knowledge under constant threat, and what that means for the present and the future…Shows that when knowledge in print is threatened by power, it’s people pledged to the printed page, rather than armies, who step in…Made clear to me just how vulnerable libraries really are. When we don’t properly fund them, we risk lies becoming the truth, and the truth becoming a joke.”―Slate
Update, 3/10/20: We’re very sorry to announce that due to public health concerns around the coronavirus, Ms. Solnit has decided to cancel her tour. Consequently, we’ve been forced to cancel this event. Booksmith will refund all previously purchased tickets, and you may still purchase a copy of the memoir through their site. Thank you for your understanding.
Original article:
Please join us on Monday, March 16th for an evening with Rebecca Solnit as she reads from and discusses her new memoir, “Recollections of My Nonexistence”. In conversation with author Andrew Sean Greer, Solnit will explore her development as a writer and a feminist in San Francisco from the 1980s and beyond, as well as the lessons that our larger society can draw about women’s voices.
Rebecca Solnit has written fourteen books, including A Paradise Built in Hell, River of Shadows, Wanderlust: A History of Walking, As Eve Said to the Serpent: On Landscape, Gender, and Art (which was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism), and Men Explain Things to Me. She received the Lannan Literary Award in 2003, and has published essays in a variety of well-known publications.
In “Recollections of My Nonexistence”, Solnit describes her coming-of-age in 1980s San Francisco. She tells of the city in which she transformed herself; of how punk rock gave form to her raw emotions; of the spacious landscapes of the American West, of the gay men around her who offered alternative visions of gender and identity. She recounts the epidemic of violence against women around her, the disbelief of authority figures, the voicelessness that was and still is the condition of so many women. Solnit explores the forces that helped her find her own voice, liberating herself as she learned how to write. That voice has resonated with and empowered many others, shaping society-wide conversations about gender, respect, and equality.
Booksmith is hosting the reading and conversation at the Internet Archive on March 16th; doors will open at 6pm. The discussion will start at 7pm and will be followed by an audience Q&A. Afterwards there will be a signing by the author, with copies of the book available for sale. Come join us for an evening of dialogue and empowerment!
Date: Monday, March 16, 2020 Time: 6:00-9:00 pm Where: Internet Archive 300 Funston Ave. SF, CA 94118
The public domain is our shared cultural heritage, a near limitless trove of creativity that’s been reused, remixed, and reimagined over centuries to create new works of art and science. The public domain forms the building blocks of culture because these works are not restricted by copyright law. Generally, works come into the public domain when their copyright term expires. This year, works first published in 1924 including such favorites as “Rhapsody in Blue” by George Gershwin, the Dia de los Muertos Mural by Diego Rivera, and “The Man in the Brown Suit” by Agatha Christie, entered the public domain for all to share.
Join creative, legal, library, and advocacy communities to celebrate the public domain and our shared cultural heritage, and come network with an amazing lineup of people and organizations who will help us welcome a new class of public domain works.
COMBINING a year of exciting archival discoveries with evergreen favorites from past years, this feature-length program shows San Francisco’s people, neighborhoods, infrastructures and celebrations from the early 20th century through the 1980s. New sequences this year run the gamut from the noirish streets of downtown San Francisco in the 1940s to life in the lively Mission, Richmond, Sunset, Bernal Heights and Ingleside Terrace districts.
ALSO IN THE WORKS: Bits of San Francisco bohemia, psychedelia and punk; newly discovered footage of the late, lamented Sky Tram and the unlamented Bayside Motel and Embarcadero Freeway; workers horsing around on the Rainier Beer loading dock in 1937; transit infrastructure; snowball fights; a hobo by the zoo; newly discovered amateur Cinemascope footage from the 1950s; the building of I-280; San Francisco’s publicly owned electrical generation system; San Francisco’s cemeteries emptied of their dead; and many intimate glimpses of family life in Latinx, Filipino, Chinese, Japanese, African American, and European communities in San Francisco.
AS ALWAYS, the audience makes the soundtrack! Come prepared to identify places, people and events, to ask questions and to engage in spirited real-time repartee with fellow audience members
Join us on June 18, 2019 at the the Internet Archive for a book reading and panel discussion about — and with — some of the original hacking supergroup, the Cult of the Dead Cow. Modern security owes much to this irreverent group, whose members pioneered both smart independent security research and hacking for human rights.
The event is in celebration of the new book by veteran technology reporter, Joseph Menn, entitled Cult of the Dead Cow: How the Original Hacking Supergroup Might Just Save the World. Light refreshments and small snacks will be provided, and books will be available for purchase. Tickets are free, but donations are greatly appreciated. The event will also be live-streamed on our YouTube channel.
Speaker: Joseph Menn – author of Cult of the Dead Cow: How the Original Hacking Supergroup Might Just Save the World
Panel: MC: Cindy Cohn – Executive Director of EFF Chris Rioux – BO2k (Back Orifice 2000) author and Veracode founder Window Snyder – cDc fellow traveler and former core security staffer at Microsoft and Apple and now Square Omega – formerly anonymous cDc text file editor
Internet Archive is excited to present the 13th annual event in Rick Prelinger’s series of LOST LANDSCAPES OF SAN FRANCISCO, which just filled the Castro Theater for two nights in December.
Combining favorites from past years with this year’s footage discoveries, this feature-length program shows San Francisco’s neighborhoods, infrastructures, celebrations and people from the early 20th century through the 1970s.
New sequences this year include a spoof of San Francisco’s advertising industry in 1953; Native activists riding a boat to the Alcatraz occupation; family life in the Crocker-Amazon district; a hilarious film promoting the new Union Square Garage; men walking cables on the unfinished Bay Bridge; African American tourists in 1970 SF; elementary-school students doing science projects in 1957, the Year of Sputnik; surreal parade floats on Market Street; the Human Be-In in 1966; a whirlwind ride down Geary Boulevard, 1968; model rockets in Ingleside Terrace; the Stoneson organization building houses in 1941; a 1930s Japanese American family living atop a semi-rural Rincon Hill; and much, much more.
AND, FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER: a short subject precedes the show: the world theatrical premiere of a new high-resolution scan of the legendary pre-quake film A TRIP DOWN MARKET STREET BEFORE THE FIRE (filmed April 1906) made from the best existing material, showing detail that no audience has seen in over one hundred years. As always, the audience makes the soundtrack! Come prepared to identify places, people and events, to ask questions and to engage in spirited real-time repartee with fellow audience members.
Monday, January 7 Doors Open and Reception Starts: 6:30pm Show Begins: 7:30pm
Tickets: Sliding scale starting at $15, but no one turned away for lack of funds.
Internet Archive
300 Funston Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94118
Please save the date and join us for our annual bash on October 3rd, 2018! This year we’re working to build a better web, one that is useful and reliable, and we hope you will come to celebrate with us!
Fake news, the rewriting of history, power that is too centralized — we know the problems. Now let’s build a better web, together.
Join us as we demonstrate how the Internet Archive is rising to this challenge. Meet others in the community who, like you, are trying to help.
We’ll kick off the evening with cocktails, tacos and hands-on demos.
Let’s bring everything online and make it accessible;
Let’s make what is digital permanent and reliable;
Let’s build a decentralized web that we can trust.
Bring your visions for a better web and your dancing shoes, and together let’s build a stronger and more reliable digital commons.
Wednesday, October 3rd
5pm: Drinks, food trucks, and hands-on demos
7pm: Program
8pm: Dessert and Dancing
Location: Internet Archive, 300 Funston Avenue, San Francisco
Tickets start at $15. If you are moved to donate more in support of Universal Access to All Knowledge, we appreciate your support. We will provide tax receipts for all donations made.
Since 2006, film historian and archivist Rick Prelinger has presented twenty participatory urban history events to enthusiastic audiences in San Francisco, Detroit, Los Angeles, Oakland, and at festivals throughout the world. Now, for the first time, LOST LANDSCAPES visits New York City.
The 83-minute program, which is filled with rare and stunning views of the city shot on 35mm, 16mm, and 8mm film mixes home movies by New Yorkers, tourists, and semi-professional cinematographers with outtakes from feature films and background “process plates” picturing granular details of New York’s cityscape. The combination of intimate moments, memories from many New York neighborhoods, and a variety of rare cinematic perspectives forms a 21st-century city symphony whose soundtrack will be provided by the audience. Viewers will be invited to comment, to ask questions and to interact with one another as the screening unfolds.
Lost Landscapes of New York spans much of the twentieth century, covering daily life, work, celebration, social change, and the city’s changing streetscapes. Almost all of the footage in the film has never been shown publicly. Highlights include: the streets and people of the Lower East Side, Harlem, Brooklyn, and Queens; a 1930s train ride from the Bronx to Grand Central; a visit to pre-demolition Penn Station; street photographers in Times Square; 1931 Times Square scenes in color; Spanish Harlem in the 1960s; housing shortages and civil rights protests in 1940s Harlem; Manhattan’s exuberant neon signage; elevated trains in the 1920s and 1930s; garment strikes in the 1930s; Depression-era hoboes and “Hoovervilles”; crowds at Coney Island in the 1920s; “cutting the rug” at the 1939 New York World’s Fair; Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia reading the comics over the radio during the 1945 newspaper strike; the lost Third Avenue “El”; and much, much more.
“Like an archaeologist, Mr. Prelinger has uncovered…different New Yorks — layer upon layer — and put them together for a singular, complex film experience. It’s an ideal project for this collector extraordinaire, who is one of the great, undersung historians of 20th century cinema.” (Manohla Dargis, New York Times)
Friday, June 15 Doors Open and Reception Starts: 6:30pm Show Begins: 7:30pm
Tickets: $10-$25 suggested sliding scale,
but no one turned away for lack of funds.
Internet Archive
300 Funston Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94118
