Browse Exhibits (178 total)

Indiana University Libraries Moving Image Archive has curated this exhibit of government-produced educational, propaganda, and training films from its archival collection of war-era 16mm film prints. 

Over 200 of these war-era films have been digitized by IULMIA and are available for streaming viewing. All films in the WWII Propaganda Films and IU exhibit are here organized into topical categories for browsing and viewing. 

All Digitized War-Era Films Organized By Category:

As a communal resource, we have been working on consolidating and adding to various existing lists of film laboratories still in operation around the world with all relevant contact information, websites, country and when relevant, the formats supported. The focus of the updated list is primarily photochemical labs. This list includes commercial film labs, film archives' in-house labs, and community or artist-run labs. To the best of our knowledge, this list is accurate as of 15 January, 2021.

This list is the result of a consolidation and revision of data from previous similar efforts by FIAF (2013 film lab survey), AMIA's Film Advocacy Task Force, Mick Newnham (Australia National Film and Sound Archive), Andrew Oran (Fotokem), Christian Richter (Kodak), and the many FIAF affiliates who responded to our request for updated information on lab closures.

Offered below are several pages that may help you visualize and organize your search. The first offers an interactive Google Map showing the locations and details of all listed labs, followed by labs organized by continent, and finally a comprehensive list of all film labs.

Should you hear about the closure of a film lab or know of a lab left off this list, please let us know by emailing Rachael Stoeltje, Director of IU Libraries Moving Image Archive, at rstoeltj@indiana.edu.

In 1951, Maurice Frink opened Frink Studios in Elkhart, Indiana. Frink’s studio produced industrial films and TV ads for the next 30 years. The ads produced during the 1950s provide a nuanced glance at quotidian life, and concerns, particularly in Northwestern Indiana during the Cold War with building international tensions, the rise of suburbia, a new-found importance of cars, and the competitiveness of ‘keeping up with the Joneses’. Due to the empheral nature of TV ads, which were made to be screened and then disposed, it is rare to have such an expansive collection of region-specific ads. Within these ads, ranging from 14 seconds to a full 20-minute promotional film, we see home improvement and development of family highlighted; we see dating and gender role expectations; we see the cult of cars and car culture; we see the Midwest in the 1950s being driven out of a WWII zeitgeist towards the 1960s—with all of the social problems, explorations, and experimentations that that decade will entail. Some of these films represent Frink’s personal interests in humanitarian aid, which he developed during his military work in Europe during WWII. 

During his time at DePauw University, Frink received acclaim as a photographer and some accolades as a writer. After his graduation in 1942, he joined the Office of War Information and was stationed in the Gold Coast, and later in Italy and Germany, where he took photos of Jewish refugees and organized newspaper publications. In 1949, he married Jenny Lodahl, a Polish woman who became naturalized in 1949.

By 1954, Frink Film Studios, located in a now demolished building on 1414 Thornton Street, Elkhart, Indiana, was included in the Business Screen catalogue, an annual compendium listing new techniques for film and TV production as well as a comprehensive listing of operating film studios in the US. Over the course of the decade, Frink Film Studios produced TV advertisements for businesses based in St. Joseph County as well as ads for regional and national products. While his film studio continued production long after the 1950s, this collection focuses on his work during this decade. 

The Frink Collection, held by Indiana University Moving Image Archive, has digitized approximately 125 of a total of 243 reels. The digitized films represent unique holdings and reels which have not been digitized are iterations. The collection has been organized in to eleven sections to represent different facets and groupings of ads. 

The Alka Seltzer group represents the social guidance-driven selection of thirteen ads for this effervescent medicine. Frink Studios worked with local businesses to produce ads, including seven of them for banks and drug stores, some of which still exist in South Bend today. The largest of the groups at forty-seven ads, Cars, contains ads primarily for gas and maintenance products, such as Zephyr and White Rose, but these ads do occasionally feature specific cars such as the Chevrolet, Plymouth, Edsel, and Chrysler Plymouth. Twelve ads for clothing and fashion show South Bend-based stores, such as Gilbert’s, as well as some regional stores in Michigan. The ten slots for Christian Rural Outreach Program is interesting perhaps for its documentation of lesser-represented areas in the world during this time. The grouping of seven family-centered ads focuses on fun for parents and children in the form of games or recreation. Food and Wine, with twenty-six items, features ads for the Michigan-based winery, St. Julians, as well as the nationally distributed Archway Cookies, which had a partnership with Zephyr Gas’ coupon program; Archway’s ads draw upon the popularity of the Cisco Kid, as he and his companion, Poncho, are the spokesperson for the children’s coupon program. Five political ads show a snippet of the Congressional campaign of Shep J. Crumpacker, as well as a speech by Governor George Craig. O’Brien’s Paint of South Bend, IN, as well as products such as Zephyr Awnings, Goshen Furniture and Red Brand Fences, comprise nine ads which show Midwestern suburbia and house upkeep. Finally, there are eleven reels which were produced by Frink Studios but represent Miles’ (of Miles Laboratories) possibly more experimental interests: these films include a recording of a couple singing the Sweetheart song, as well as one showing floating hats and Easter lilies blooming in fast motion.

This collection continues to develop as IULMIA processes the digitized collection. As of May, 2017, over 100 reels were sent out for digitization. These reels will be incorporated into this exhibit and will populate the existing pages, as well as creating new pages which are discussed above. 

Ripples was a thirty-six part educational television series for 5-7 year-olds and was initiated and coordinated by National Instructional Television (NIT) and produced by the Northern Virginia Educational Television Association. The creators of the series prided themselves on creating a televisual educational experience that was focused on helping children process their encounters with everday people and places, with an emphasis on play and an understanding of human feelings. The concept for the program grew out of a consortium of child educators and television producers, who met in Bloomington in 1969. Their conversations about the future of educational TV broadcasting, with regards to content creation, distribution, and the use of moving image technology as an important teaching tool, marks an important period in the history of educational media, as well as Indiana University's role and continued presence in that history. The following pages highlight some of the materials related to the Ripples program, which are held at the Indiana Libraries Moving Image Archive and are part of a collection that was received from the Agency for Instructional Technology (AIT), which closed in 2015. Individual episodes of Ripples can be viewed at Indiana University Libraries Media Collections Online or by clicking on the "Ripples Episode Gallery" link further down below.