At Internet Archive we love to see how creative people can get with the material we make available online. As part of this year’s Public Domain Day celebration we asked the greater community to submit short films highlighting anything that was going to be made available in the Public Domain in 2023.
For the contest, vintage images and sounds were woven into creative films of 2-3 minutes. Many of the films were abstract while others educational, they all showcased the possibility when public domain materials are made openly available and accessible for download.
“The Internet Archive has spent 24 years collecting and archiving content from around the world…now is the time to see what people can do with it,” said Amir Saber Esfahani, director of special arts projects at the Internet Archive. He was an organizer and judge in the January short-film contest along with Yuanxiao Xu, who serves as Counsel at Creative Commons, and Rick Prelinger, who is an archivist and filmmaker, as well as a board member for the Internet Archive.
The judges reviewed 47 entries and chose a winner based on creativity, technique, engagement, and variety of 1925 content (including lists of all sources).
Contest Winners
First Place: Echo Echo by Gnats Gonzaleshttps://archive.org/embed/echo-echo
Second Place: The Public Domain Race by José Domingues and Leonardo Domingueshttps://archive.org/embed/the_public_domain_race
Third Place: Seeing Cats by Alex T. Jacobshttps://archive.org/embed/seeingcats_v1b_aj_011423
Honorable Mentions
There were so many amazing films that did not win the contest, so below are a selection of artists that we feel should get honorable mentions for their short films.https://archive.org/embed/1927-the-drag-and-the-padlock https://archive.org/embed/remote_views https://archive.org/embed/this-is-the-science-of-optics https://archive.org/embed/publicdomainfilm_SamD https://archive.org/embed/the-garden-melody-owen-2022
View all of the submissions at archive.org.