The National Air and Space Museum Film Archives, part of the Archives Division at the National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution, holds over 20,000 films documenting the history of aviation and space flight.
The Film Archives is located at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia, where it moved in 2011 from its previous location in the National Air and Space Museum (NASM) building on the National Mall. The collections are available for research, though requests must be made in advance.
NASM Film Archives' collections range from the early days of flight to space exploration. Totaling more than 700,000 feet of motion picture film as well as videotape, the collections include edited documentaries, instructional films, promotional films, home movies, interviews and outtakes. The earliest item in the collection is a 1909 test flight of the Wright Military Flyers at Ft. Myer, Virginia.
The collections include:
- Keystone Aircraft Corporation Collection (1926–34)
- Seymour Collection (1926–34)
- Lewis E. Reisner Collection (1929–38)
- World Trip Collection (1935–36)
- We Saw It Happen (1953)
Famous quotes containing the words national, air, space, museum, film and/or archive:
“The cinema is going to form the mind of England. The national conscience, the national ideals and tests of conduct, will be those of the film.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“I remember when I was first assigned to jets. I said to the colonel, “Colonel, I joined this man’s air force to fly an airplane. But nobody’s gonna hitch me to no Roman candle.””
—Kurt Neumann (1906–1958)
“The limerick packs laughs anatomical
Into space that is quite economical,
But the good ones I’ve seen
So seldom are clean
And the clean ones so seldom are comical.”
—Anonymous.
“Things will not mourn you, people will.”
—Hawaiian saying no. 191, ‘lelo No’Eau, collected, translated, and annotated by Mary Kawena Pukui, Bishop Museum Press, Hawaii (1983)
“This film is apparently meaningless, but if it has any meaning it is doubtless objectionable.”
—British Board Of Film Censors. Quoted in Halliwell’s Filmgoer’s Companion (1984)
“To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse. They are of two kinds: the library of published material, books, pamphlets, periodicals, and the archive of unpublished papers and documents.”
—Barbara Tuchman (1912–1989)