Film Collection

The now-defunct audiovisual library of the National Trust for Historic Preservation maintained a lending library of 16mm films during the 1970s and early 1980s. These are the films that now make up the NTL film collection. The films came from a variety of sources. Some of these films were produced by the Trust itself. The Trust also held filmmaking competitions for a number of years in the 1970s and some of the films in this collection were entries in these competitions. The public affairs office of the National Trust also created short public service announcements on film to promote the activities of the Trust. Finally, a few short reels of raw footage documenting properties belonging to the Trust were acquired by the audiovisual library.

NTL can provide access to the collection with the cooperation of the Non-print Media Library. Some of the films have been reformatted to video, in which case patrons will be required to view the video copy in order to minimize wear and tear on the original film. A number of these videos are available from the Elizabeth Alley Visual Resource Collection in the University of Maryland School of Architecture.

At present, this collection is divided into four groups:

• NTHP TV Spots on Film (17 titles on 29 reels)
• Film Documentaries (17 titles on 63 reels)
• Property Documentation (5 titles on 5 reels)
• Press Coverage (1 title on 1 reel)

A complete list of titles is available from NTL.

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