Industrial Education: The Bureau of Mines’ Cinematic History
Reminiscent of Vertov’s early Soviet montages, the Bureau of Mines’ similar propagandistic vein of education aimed to promote the governmental and industrial revolution throughout the twentieth century. Emphasizing and aestheticizing corporate interest under the guise of education, the United States Bureau of Mines, Department of Interior produced hundreds of films on the benefits of mining, fracking, and resource exploitation. Many of these films, forgotten and previously undated, have been salvaged by independent film preservation services and the National Archive. Once used as vital aids in normalizing corporate and governmental agenda, these films exist today as digital and analog relics of a spreading industrial ideology. Below is a portion of the Bureau’s capitalist-driving films that follow the medium’s long history of propaganda.
Archive Lucida
Archive Lucida is a digital archive and journal of time-based media, dedicated to the curation, preservation, and publication of the underrepresented arts. Founded in 2024 with the intent to establish a democratizing platform for curated film collections, Archive Lucida is dedicated to digital humanities research, review, and critique, free from the bounds of traditional institutional exclusivities. Largely inspired by the scholarship of Roland Barthes and Walter Benjamin, Archive Lucida is devoted to eclectic discussion of the cinematic medium and its many forms. We are interested in global cinema, early surrealism, film history, and archival practice. Above all, as a freeform, digital archive, we aim to make underrepresented art, time-based media, and academic materials decentralized and publicly accessible.
