New Video Resource: Vintage Los Angeles News Treasures Go Digital

From UCLA:

At a March 1959 news conference in Los Angeles, aspiring presidential candidate Sen. John F. Kennedy was asked if his Catholicism would hinder a possible run for the White House. He told reporters of his confidence in Americans’ belief in the separation of church and state and added that one’s religion “has nothing to do with his competence to hold office.” The fascinating and timely exchange is one of many historical moments that can be found in a new digital portal created by UCLA Film and Television Archive.
The videos are now accessible online as part of the UCLA KTLA News Project, a new moving-image research area featuring 100 clips of news footage from the 1950s to the 1980s filmed by Los Angeles station KTLA-TV. The John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation, a leading supporter of social science research in Los Angeles, funded the online project.
[Clip]
The first commercial television station west of the Mississippi, KTLA-TV has been a prominent independent television station in the Los Angeles area for more than 60 years. The collection at UCLA encompasses the station’s news coverage from about 1958 to 1981. Despite the cultural significance of television news during this era, many broadcasters did not recognize the historical value of their news film collections and much footage was discarded by the industry, according to Horak. KTLA’s donation of its surviving film material and copyright to UCLA is a notable exception.
The curated news segments document local, national and international issues, covering politics, economics, civil rights and women’s activism, as well as African-American, Asian-American, Mexican-American, Native American and LGBT communities. Additional news stories on an expanded range of topics will be added to the portal on a periodic basis.
“Much of the news footage now available for viewing as part of the UCLA KTLA News Project hasn’t been seen since its original television broadcast,” said Dan Einstein, television archivist of the UCLA archive. “This rare footage, shot on 16 mm film, provides a unique opportunity to revisit historic snapshots in time in Los Angeles, including local visits by iconic national figures such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and John F. Kennedy.”
[Clip]
Most of the 16 mm film reels selected for the project had not been previously inspected and many were found to need significant repair work before they could be digitally transferred. Archive staff hand-cleaned each of the clips while also painstakingly removing damaging masking tape. The reels were then scanned in high definition.
The KTLA project builds on the archive’s previous online access efforts, most notably its 2015 launch of a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender moving-image research area featuring episodes of the Emmy-nominated LGBT public television series “In the Life.”

Direct to UCLA KTLA News Project
Read the Complete UCLA Announcement

Filed under: News