Alfredo A. Massi Collection of Early Salvadoran Film: A Collaboration with the Library of Congress

The LAL is partnering with the Library of Congress to make available for research the Alfredo A. Massi Collection of Salvadorean film, a unique collection of early 20th-century motion pictures produced by this Italian-Salvadoran filmmaker (1899-1981).  Most of these films have not been seen by the public since at least the 1950s. In 2005, the Massi family of El Salvador donated the filmmaker’s original analog film collection to the Latin American Library.  Included in the donation were photographs and other materials documenting their father’s extraordinary life and work.  The films and supporting documents bear witness to Massi’s pioneering work as the first filmmaker in El Salvador who produced newsreels screened in movie theatres through his own production company, Lorotone.  Massi also documented speeches, ceremonies, summits, and other official acts of government figures of the time.  He filmed commercials for various companies and bore witness with his camera to natural disasters.  Also evident in the collection are Massi’s skills as an aviator, as well as a spectacular promotional road tour for the Studebaker Automobile Company from South America to New York in the 1920s. With the consent of the family, the entire collection of 16mm and 35mm reel-to-reel films was donated to the former American Film Institute and is now physically housed at the Library of Congress (LoC), one of the few repositories of its kind in the U.S. for archival film storage.  As part of the agreement with LoC, Tulane retains the copyright of the films.  Massi's surviving 35mm films were recently digitized by the LoC, although due to extensive deterioration of the original reel-to-reel film, only an hour and six minutes of footage were captured. The more extensive collection of 16mm film has begun to be digitized, and LAL is collaborating to develop accurate metadata for greater access.  Our next step is to make the entire collection digitally accessible via the Tulane Digital Library (TUDL).  Stay tuned! 

Image: Massi at work with his camera, and on the road from El Salvador to New York City in a Studebaker, a trip sponsored by the Studebaker Automobile Company, c. 1920.