INTRODUCTION

Twenty-Seven hours of rare newsfilm depicting the most compelling events of the 1930s. This preserved and restored archival footage was selected by a National Advisory Committee made up of historians, film archivists and filmmakers.

The Prelude to War Video Library is made up of over 800 individual news items selected from the Hearst Metrotone Newsreel Collection at UCLA. The Library documents the complex social and political history of the period from 1929 to 1941. It contains over twenty-seven hours of newsfilm, both complete newsreels and individual stories, in three broad thematic groups:

AMERICA BEFORE WORLD WAR II the Depression and the New Deal the rise of science and technology industrialization and organized labor race relations sports

EUROPE BEFORE WORLD WAR II the Depression the rise of fascism nationalism and colonialism gender and class relations

REGIONAL CONFLICTS the Spanish Civil War the Sino-Japanese War the Italian invasion of Ethiopia the Russo-Finnish War the Manchukuo conflict events in Singapore, India, and Palestine

The National Advisory Committee weighed the historical merit of each piece of newsfilm during the three year selection process, drawing on their expertise in the areas of 20th Century history, cross-cultural historical analysis, the use of film in teaching history, newsreel archival practices, and documentary filmmaking. The video library constitutes a vital curricular resource for a broad range of subjects, including history, civics, political science, gender and ethnic studies, and media studies.

In the early days of this century, a revolution took place in the way the average person learned the news of the day. Instead of relying exclusively on the printed newspaper, people were able to review the sights and (soon) the sounds of world events at their neighborhood movie theatre. Long before the advent of either television or the Internet, the newsreel changed forever how we gather and distribute the news.

Most newsreels ran for about eight minutes and were presented twice weekly to audiences all over the world. They typically included both news segments and commentaries on important international, national and local events, and a rich range of features on fashion, sports and popular culture. In many ways, the newsreel laid the foundation for the form of today's broadcast journalism.

In 1981 the Hearst Corporation donated over 27 million feet of their newsreels (5000 hours of programming) to the University of California. Chronicling events, trends and movements from around the world between 1915 and into the 1970s, this footage is an extraordinary record of the complex fabric of public life in the twentieth century.

The over 800 news items in the Prelude to War Video Library include both complete newsreels (as they were originally presented to audiences during the 1930s) and individual stories excerpted from the full newsreels. In addition, some of the selected material was never released by the Hearst Corporation and is presented here for the very first time.

The Prelude to War Video Library is available for $1,400 per set of 30 VHS cassettes containing the newsreel material in chronological order. The collection is accompanied by a study guide, a detailed chronology of the period, a database file and a complete, printed index to the tapes with concise descriptions of the topics covered in the newsreels.

Additional funding for this projest provided by The David and Lucile Packard Foundation and the Joseph Drown Foundation.