
24 Aug 2020

The Donut King
Cambodian refugee Ted Ngoy builds a multi-million dollar empire by baking America's favourite pastry: the doughnut.
To popularize the idea of automobile travel, Ford Motor Company produced Ford Educational Weekly, a film magazine distributed free to theaters. One 1916 series featured "Visits to American Cities." In this episode, Los Angeles is featured at the very beginning of the boom created by oil, movies and aircraft. On the occasion of its centennial in 1953, Ford donated its film to the National Archives and Records Service; this copy derives from a fine grain master printed from the Archive's preservation negative. Music by Frederick Hodges.

24 Aug 2020

Cambodian refugee Ted Ngoy builds a multi-million dollar empire by baking America's favourite pastry: the doughnut.

30 Sep 2024

A unique hybrid of documentary, silent film, drama and dance, 'Breaking Plates' puts revolutionary women of the past on the screen with present day filmmakers. Contemporary women talk to characters from 100 years ago, reanimate their antics and emulate their mayhem moves. As early 21st century performers step into the clothes of their early 20th century counterparts, battling their haywire machines, exploding gags, and eruptive bodies, they learn to wield humour as a weapon against the structures that contain them today.
01 Nov 1985
A documentary about Dr. Barbara Myerhoff and Los Angeles's Fairfax district.

03 Jun 1925

Sports enthusiast Ernest is to cover 6,000 kilometers on his motorcycle in 15 days, crossing Austria, Italy, Switzerland, the Balkans and Czechoslovakia.

12 May 1929

A cameraman wanders around with a camera slung over his shoulder, documenting urban life with dazzling inventiveness.
The history and enduring legacy of one of the world's biggest and most influential radio stations.

11 Jun 1922

This pioneering documentary film depicts the lives of the indigenous Inuit people of Canada's northern Quebec region. Although the production contains some fictional elements, it vividly shows how its resourceful subjects survive in such a harsh climate, revealing how they construct their igloo homes and find food by hunting and fishing. The film also captures the beautiful, if unforgiving, frozen landscape of the Great White North, far removed from conventional civilization.

02 Mar 1983

A woman narrates the thoughts of a world traveler, meditations on time and memory expressed in words and images from places as far-flung as Japan, Guinea-Bissau, Iceland, and San Francisco.

14 Mar 2019

Egypt's only modernist architect Hassan Fathy (1900-1989) was committed to ecology and sustainability in his architecture. This film takes us with slow steps, in still images, to two villages he created. Fathy's historically grounded, forward-looking designs prompt us to reflect on the past as well as contemplate new solutions for the future.

01 Sep 2006

Ric Burns unearths rarely seen footage and offers keen observations on the life and artistic influence of Andy Warhol. [Made for and aired on PBS's American Masters series.]
David Lloyd George tours Germany, escorted by Nazi government officials, while his chauffeurs lark about with an SS Officer. Lloyd George was pro-German from the mid-1920s, and met Adolf Hitler in 1936. However, by 1938 he had become a leading opponent of appeasement with Germany. This film is believed to have been shot by George Ryder, Lloyd George's chauffeur.

01 Jul 1981

The Los Angeles punk music scene circa 1980 is the focus of this film. With Alice Bag Band, Black Flag, Catholic Discipline, Circle Jerks, Fear, Germs, and X.

08 Mar 2021

As the first all-female band to play their instruments, write their songs and have a No. 1 album, The Go-Go’s made history. Underpinned by candid testimonies, this film chronicles the meteoric rise to fame of a band born in the LA punk scene who became a pop phenomenon.

23 Sep 1927

A day in the city of Berlin, which experienced an industrial boom in the 1920s, and still provides an insight into the living and working conditions at that time. Germany had just recovered a little from the worst consequences of the First World War, the great economic crisis was still a few years away and Hitler was not yet an issue at the time.

05 Mar 1895

A short black-and-white silent documentary film featuring one dog jumping through hoops and another dancing in a costume, which was considered lost until footage from an 1896 Fairground Programme was identified as being from this film.
08 Oct 2020
For Los Angeles natives living in the early 1900s, bicycles and streetcars shared the road as our primary modes of transportation. But the arrival of the freeway effectively wiped them out. Today, a collective of cycling communities fight for protected bike lanes and road safety, determined to bring a new era of mobility justice to the city.

21 Mar 1961

An appreciative, uncritical look at silent film comedies and thrillers from early in the century through the 1920s.

15 Oct 1888

A film by Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince, shot in late October 1888, showing pedestrians and carriages crossing Leeds Bridge.

14 Mar 1894

The first woman to appear in front of an Edison motion picture camera and possibly the first woman to appear in a motion picture within the United States. In the film, Carmencita is recorded going through a routine she had been performing at Koster & Bial's in New York since February 1890.

20 Feb 2025

Bill Bartell was a multifaceted individual who traversed the punk rock scene, law enforcement, rodeo riding, and country music. Known for his unique contribution to punk rock through his label Gasatanka Records and band White Flag, Bartell's life defies conventional boundaries, blending hyper-masculinity with subcultural rebellion. His story, filled with mysterious and seemingly contradictory roles, offers a compelling narrative about identity, transformation, and the unexpected paths life can take.