National Air and Space Museum Film Archive

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 progress
    Is permanent like the preordained bulk
    Of the First National Bank
    Like fish sauce, but agreeable.
    John Ashbery (b. 1927)

    To be worst,
    The lowest and most dejected thing of fortune,
    Stands still in esperance, lives not in fear.
    The lamentable change is from the best;
    The worst returns to laughter. Welcome, then,
    Thou unsubstantial air that I embrace!
    The wretch that thou hast blown unto the worst
    Owes nothing to thy blasts.
    William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

    This moment exhibits infinite space, but there is a space also wherein all moments are infinitely exhibited, and the everlasting duration of infinite space is another region and room of joys.
    Thomas Traherne (1636–1674)

    Flower picking.
    Hawaiian saying no. 2710, ‘lelo No’Eau, collected, translated, and annotated by Mary Kawena Pukui, Bishop Museum Press, Hawaii (1983)

    If you want to tell the untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you’ve got to find a language. Which goes for film as well as prose, for documentary as well as autobiography. Use the wrong language, and you’re dumb and blind.
    Salman Rushdie (b. 1948)

    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)