Creative Capital

Rick Prelinger

Rick Prelinger is an archivist, writer, filmmaker and outsider librarian. In 1982, he founded Prelinger Archives, a collection of industrial, advertising, educational and amateur films that was acquired by the Library of Congress in 2002. Prelinger has partnered with the Internet Archive (of which he is a board member) to make 2,100 films available online for free viewing, downloading and reuse. His archival feature Panorama Ephemera (2004) played in venues around the world. Prelinger has recently made several film programs that he categorizes as “historical interventions,” called Lost Landscapes of San Francisco (7 annual parts) and Lost Landscapes of Detroit (3 annual parts). With Megan Prelinger, he is the co-founder of Prelinger Library, an appropriation-friendly private research library open to the public in downtown San Francisco. His archival work currently focuses on collecting, recontextualizing, and exhibiting home movies and amateur films.