Help Uncommon Ephemera Save an Almost-Lost Film Format

Of all the analog audiovisual formats, only one has been entirely ignored by preservationists, archivists, and people interested in lost media. It is filmstrips, and as far as I can tell, I’m the only person on earth preserving them. Filmstrips were used in education and industry for most of the 20th century. Unlike motion pictures, filmstrips had a series of still images that were projected onto a screen for an audience to view.

From the 1950s to the 1980s, most filmstrips were printed on a film stock called Eastmancolor that is notorious for uneven dye fading, leaving most a strong shade of red. The chemical binder on Eastmancolor also breaks down over time, causing complete loss of the film if it isn't digitized in time.

Unfortunately, nobody bothered to preserve filmstrips the way they did 16mm industrial films or even VHS, and the vast majority have simply been thrown away. Of the remaining filmstrips that are out there, they’re either in the hands of people who don’t know they need to be saved, or worse yet, they’re sold as high-priced antiques for collectors, with neither the seller nor the buyer seeming to realize they're at risk for complete loss.

Because filmstrips were printed on 35mm film, there are no great tools for preserving them in the consumer market. Machines made for archiving 35mm film are marketed to Hollywood and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. The only way I can preserve them is by cutting them into pieces and scanning them with a flatbed scanner designed to scan 35mm photo negatives. Each frame takes about three minutes to scan. Each filmstrip can have 100 or more frames, and thanks to an amazing donation in late 2022 , I still have more than 2,000 left to scan.

If a filmstrip still has its soundtrack, I can also do a full restoration. For this to happen, scanned frames have to be manually cropped and straightened. The soundtrack record or cassette has to be correctly digitized on good equipment. Then they need to be put together in a video editor. If a filmstrip was printed on Eastmancolor I need to attempt to color-correct it, though some are so faded no amount of color correction will make them look new again.

Finally, a video can be produced simulating how a viewer would have experienced it at the time.

Hollywood, universities, prominent archivists, and the Library of Congress have deemed filmstrips not worthy of saving. The items they do save are often not easily available to the general public, left to disintegrate, or be lost due to human error or natural disaster. The filmstrips I preserve will be available to view online for free at the Internet Archive with select titles on YouTube , anytime you want.

Like all historical artifacts, these unique industrial and educational films help to tell the story of people and put history in perspective, unaffected by gatekeepers, or the potential biases of historians and content aggregators. They deserve to be remembered as much as motion pictures, VHS, vinyl, and other media.

Your support allows me to continue dedicating my time and energy to saving this format, covers operational expenses, and helps raise awareness of this endangered piece of history. I’m asking for the bare minimum I need to cover operating expenses for the rest of 2024. If you give more, I can do more.

There’s no reason filmstrips deserve to be forgotten in a rich, diverse community of people who love film, history, kitsch, or nostalgia. With your help, we can save what’s left of this unique and endearing piece of the past.