Panorama Ephemera - Reviewed by Olivia and Beth

Plants to food to compost to soil to plants to food. Oceans to vapor to clouds to rain to rivers to oceans and back again. Ideas to pictures and sounds and words then to books and movies and music and then to shelves. There they lie, unseen, unheard, and unused.
– Rick Prelinger

In 2004, Rick Prelinger wrote and directed the feature film Panorama Ephemera, a “collage” of ephemeral films produced in the United States of the 1920s through 1970s that uses images both familiar and mythical to depict the fears and hopes of the American populace during these times. His contribution to the Vectors Journal is an extension of this film that serves to further explain his theories and reasons for archiving ephemeral films. On the one hand, this project is a straightforward intellectual piece that directs the user to Prelinger’s three main topical considerations. The first is his declared project Manifesto where Prelinger flatly declares the work of the archivist as a modern savior to an overpopulated and over stimulated popular culture. The second aspect of his project, where the most substance lies, is in the delineation of the four aspects of archiving ephemeral films. Here he delineates the events in media history that have dictated the career of the ephemeral archivist. And, lastly, Prelinger concludes his work with a short essay describing and defending the role of the archivist as a position perpetuating and expanding the possibilities of art. On the other hand, Prelinger moves away from a completely argumentative thesis with his chronological exploration of significant events in his life alongside advancements in his archiving of ephemeral films. The juxtaposition of this element with a non-linear collage of ephemeral films from the feature film Panorama Ephemera serves well to lay out the various aspects of Prelinger’s interests and theories in a comprehensive study of the ephemeral archivist.