Academic Film Archive of North America

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The mission of The Academic Film Archive of North America is to acquire, preserve, document, and promote academic film by providing an archive, resource, and forum for continuing scholarly advancement and public exhibition. We also document and archive historically important films not specifically in the academic genre, including anthropological, ethnographic, and medical subjects. We also engage in special research projects, and are the only institution in the U.S. dedicated to documenting the history of this endangered film genre. We invite you to help us to save films and provide free access to them on the Internet Archive, by nominating a film and making a donation to fund uploading it.

What is "academic film"? Of the over 100,000 educational films made in North America between the early 1900s and approximately 1985, many of the best were in the subject fields of art, history, social science, literature, and science. These we refer to as academic film, as opposed to those made in health, safety, civics, and other non-academic educational subject areas. Further definition of the academic film genre can be found here.

Why is academic film important? With the launching of Sputnik in late 1957, millions of dollars in federal funds soon became available to academic film companies, as government and education officials desperately raced to bring American students to an academic level above that of their Soviet counterparts. Federal funds flowing to academic filmmakers via film companies represented the greatest governmental largesse ever bestowed on makers of non-feature films. In a capitalist country, it was very nearly socialist.

Many of the films are exceptional cinema, made by filmmakers who, primarily for financial reasons, elected to make 16mm academic films, rather chancing the vicissitudes of Hollywood. This is truly the hidden corner of North American cinema, and you've arrived at the only website dedicated to the history and preservation of these films, and the biographies and filmographies of their director/producers.

This web site serves four main objectives:

to describe and document the importance of saving 16mm academic films from destruction and loss. Many of these important film prints are being discarded by film libraries. The content of a vast number of these films is in danger of being, or already has been lost, as they were not re-released in later (e.g. VHS or DVD) formats. Our Save a Film initiative is one program we have implemented to remedy this.

	to provide historical data to researchers specializing in the academic film. We have archived previous programs in the Chronology and Filmnotes of past AFA shows to serve as a source for historians looking for data on various films. In addition to researching the history and trends of the North American classroom academic film, we have short biographies and filmographies on some of the more important filmmakers specializing in the classroom academic film. Check out our new Lost & Found FilmKids page to see what young actors from early academic films are doing now.
	to assist individuals and organizations to preserve and show academic films in their own geographical locations. Are you interested in starting an alternative public cinema in your own town? Start Your Own Cinema gives you a few ideas you may find helpful, as well as important data on film preservation and 16mm film stock.
	to distribute the Filmnotes and schedules for our upcoming film events. From our inception in October, 1996 we have presented over 500 programs internationally, consisting of more than 2,000 films, many of them at no charge to San Francisco Bay Area and St. Louis audiences. Visit AFA Shows to get directions and attend our current show, or find out what's coming up in future shows.

Special Projects The AFA engages in occasional special projects beyond the immediate scope of the archive. For the past year, the Academic Film Archive of North America has been assisting the Library of Congress in developing its Moving Image Collections (MIC) initiative. We were the first institution in the Western world to research and document aspects of Morlam video CDs from the Isaan area of Thailand.

AFA's "Academy Leader" logo was designed thanks to Joe Sikoryak, of designWELL: http://www.designwell.com/
Lennie Mace is a New York artist who works exclusively in the medium of ballpoint pen. His work "ciné16" was commissioned by ciné16, and features elements specific to the academic classroom film, including references to science, history, literature, social science, and art films, and filmmakers John Barnes and Norman McLaren.