(OR) THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF THE INTERNET, EPISODE 1
It’s 10pm / You’re at home restless while everyone else is out — drunk, tearing up the town / You’ve read all of your old charity shop books / You’ve listened to all your battered up records / You’ve had just about enough of music coming from left and right from all hours of the day / There’s a stack of dishes to be done in the kitchen and you say “Nah, fuck it!” / The kids across the street are shrieking loudly and sending low bass throbs of club dance hits through the walls / Car ignitions are sparking in the carpark / Your neighbour Ronnie drops by asking to borrow a lightbulb, smelling strongly of hash and pepperoni / The fan just doesn’t seem to send enough cool air your way and you’re a sweaty, frustrated mess / You’ve watched all the movies you can watch and YouTube is just some cultural dumpster where you can’t even go right now.

What to do? How do you burn up these next few hours?

How about peering into the world of informational films of the 1950s and 60s? / It’s a naïve, entertaining place — seeing how the world, especially the United States, was packaged and presented to the masses in these types of educational films / Films about the good ol’ war, engineering, the marvels of science, and the freedom of the automobile.

More interesting and shocking though, you may find, are the films that touch on the subjects of drugs, drinking, homosexuality, manners, youth culture, and the “role of women in society” (!!!). Strange, nauseating, and oddly entertaining at the same time.

The website www.archive.org contains a vast majority of these films in the Prelinger Archives, and online and physical database of these films. They are public domain as well so you can use and re-use them at your will.

Here’s my one of my favourites, the tragic informational film, “Narcotics: Pit of Despair” (1967). This is Part 1 of the film. Part 2 can be viewed here.