Rick Prelinger is an archivist, filmmaker, writer, and educator. He began collecting “useful cinema” in 1983. His archival feature Panorama Ephemera (2004) played in venues around the world, and his feature project No More Road Trips? received a Creative Capital grant in 2012. His thirty-five Lost Landscapes participatory urban history projects have played to many thousands of viewers in San Francisco, Detroit, Oakland, Los Angeles, New York, and elsewhere. He is a board member of Internet Archive and frequently writes and speaks on the future of archives. With Megan Prelinger, he co-founded Prelinger Library in 2004. Rick and Megan currently co-direct Prelinger Archives, which is in the midst of a project to mass-digitize archival film, funded by Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web. Since early 2023, the project has scanned some nine thousand films and will continue doing so until at least August 2025. Newly digitized films are available at Internet Archive and YouTube.
