An Evening with the Prelinger Archive: Know Your World

Beginning in 1943, SFMOMA presented hundreds of now mostly forgotten films in a seven-year-long series called Know Your World. Drawing from art films, government propaganda, corporate and institutional advocacy pieces, travelogues, and educational films, the program constructed a kaleidoscopic perspective on the world during wartime and the unstable peace that followed. While the issues embedded in Know Your World are remarkably similar to those animating today’s artists and documentarians, their expression couldn’t be more different. This retrospective tribute reexamines a period when programmers used film as a means of bringing the issues of the day into the museum.