News and Opinion

Rare Record of Japanese Movie Theater Advertising Troupe from 1929

A few people have been sharing online a YouTube video purporting to show street scenes in Kyoto from 1929. I was suspicious at first, since the same YouTube user previously also uploaded footage from the 1910s with sound the user added. But it does seem the video is a collection of authentic sound films of Japan in 1929, taken by Fox Movietone cameramen. The combination is sloppy, however, since at least one of scenes is not from Kyoto but from Kamakura.

What I find annoying is that these videos are not this user’s own films, but taken lock stock and barrel from the Moving Image Research Collections of the University of South Carolina. You can tell that from the watermark in the footage, but the user does little to foreground where s/he took this footage from, even though the Collection website states that "The University owns the rights to most of the material held by MIRC.” Archives, who do the hard and essential work of accumulating, preserving, and in this case, digitizing and making available online old films, should get proper credit.

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