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August 19, 2004

Be afraid, be very afraid. But also hopeful. Ok, now afraid again.

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Fear is used to sell everything from mouthwash to presidents, but in his new film Paranoia Ephemera, Rick Prelinger suggests that fear, in close concert with its evil twin hope, has also been instrumental in creating the American Dream.

Prelinger is the founder of the indespensible Prelinger Archive of ephemeral (advertising, educational, industrial, and amateur) films. Paranoia Ephemera marks the first time (I think) he's created a film of his own, editing together snippets of footage from his collection ranging from 5 seconds to 4 minutes in length to create a loosely narrative vision of the American Way of Life.

The film will be shown at New York City's Anthology Film Archives on Sept. 20th. And as with everything in the Prelinger Archive, it's also available as a free DVD-quality download.

Posted by Daniel Radosh

Comments

Uh, it's actually called PANORAMA Ephemera!

OK, the paranoia is all in my head. Once again I fall back on the Radosh.net unofficial motto: Close enough for blogging. Still, I'm sure the film is great, whatever it's about.

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