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The UCLA Film & Television Archive(opens in a new tab) has safeguarded an invaluable cinematic time capsule since the Hearst Corporation donated its newsreel collection – all 27 million feet of film – in 1981. Each frame captures a moment in history, from political and global changes to cities rising, cultures shifting, and everyday life unfolding.
Thanks to David W. Packard’s non-profit foundation, The Packard Humanities Institute (PHI), this sweeping visual record of the 20th century is being painstakingly restored and made available through a website (newsreels.net) launched in collaboration with the UCLA Film & Television Archive. About 18 percent of the collection, more than 16,000 news stories, can now be accessed online, with new material added as it is preserved and scanned.
UCLA began its stewardship of The Hearst Metrotone News Collection around four decades ago. As newsreels were shot on film and are prone to rapid deterioration, the Archive prioritized stabilization and the prevention of further degradation.
PHI’s commitment to the project changed everything, according to Jeffrey Bickell, Senior Newsreel Preservationist at the Archive, who has played a pivotal role in preserving the newsreel collection over the past 30 years.
“The Packard Humanities Institute’s partnership on such a significant scale has been invaluable,” he said.
PHI first stepped in to build and donate nitrate vaults to UCLA in Santa Clarita on a campus that would later serve as the Archive’s home for the entirety of its moving image collection. Collaborators with the Archive on film preservation projects for almost 40 years, PHI formally launched the digitization project in 2016, dedicating a team to the meticulous work of restoring the newsreels and making them available.
Bickel said it’s hard to overstate the importance of this vast collection being made available to the public. This is one of the world’s largest collections of newsreels. Yet prior to the current restoration and digitization, the footage was only accessible to those who visited UCLA in person – or who happened to see excerpts featured in documentaries by creators like Ken Burns, or in historical films such as Selma and JFK: One Day in America which draw on the archive.
“We’ve had messages of appreciation and fascination from all around the world, from historians and scholars, of course, but we’ve also heard amazing personal stories of finding family members in the footage,” said Bickel.
Norman and Armena Powell University Librarian Athena N. Jackson said PHI’s dedication to restoring, digitizing and providing access to the Hearst newsreels plays a critical role in protecting important cultural heritage and creating new knowledge.
“The fact that everyone can explore this extraordinary collection means that history is not just preserved, but actively engaged with by scholars, students, and the broader community,” she said. “We are deeply grateful to PHI for actively partnering with us to allow future generations to witness history as it was captured, enriching our collective knowledge and deepening our understanding of the past.”
