Rick Prelinger

This year's LOST LANDSCAPES pictures the infrastructures, peoples and landscapes of California, centering on San Francisco’s everyday past and the futures we have tried to build. Casting an archival gaze on San Francisco and cities, towns and places throughout California where nature and culture meet, the film recalls moments in the history of our state's resources, the scars of settlement and its backbones: transportation, extraction, communication, travel and labor — all intersecting in a panoramic city/state symphony documenting the past and suggesting possible futures in an age of systemic uncertainty.

As always, this year's film (the 17th!) combines home movies, government-produced and industrial films, feature-film outtakes and many other surprises from the Prelinger Library collection (including many newly discovered San Francisco historical images).

Each year the Lost Landscapes donations bring in about 25% of the Prelinger Library's annual budget. Please consider supporting this famed experimental research library that gives access to artists, historians, community members, and researchers of all kinds!