Latin America in the Movietone News Collection

Extract

In 1980 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation announced that its Movietone newsfilm collection, containing documentary footage produced between 1919 and 1963, would be given to the University of South Carolina. Soon thereafter one-fifth of the collection, some twelve million feet of unduplicated footage, was shipped to the university's central campus in Columbia. Transfer of the film was suspended, however, when Twentieth Century Fox was purchased by a multinational corporation. Footage for the years between 1919 and 1935, and for the period from September 1942 through August 1944, was included in the initial gift. This material is presently housed and available for research in Columbia, South Carolina. Among these materials are hundreds of thousands of feet of documentary film with Latin American content, much of it untouched since the time it was “vaulted” by Fox fifty years ago or more. As such, this material represents a largely unmined and potentially rich source of film information on Latin America. This research note will suggest the nature and extent of this collection.