If you've ever assumed that a profoundly important
piece of lost history has to be buried at the
bottom of the ocean in some shipwreck. Right.
Or sealed away in a collapsed military bunker
somewhere. Exactly. Well, today's deep dive is
going to completely upend how you think about
the survival of historical artifacts. I mean,
imagine holding a physical window into a critical,
brutal moment in time. A literal document capturing
the raw reality of a war. Yeah. and shot by some
of the greatest visual artists of the 20th century.
But now imagine that this incredibly important
artifact just vanishes. Completely disappears
from the historical record. For over 70 years.
You'd think you would need an army of archaeologists
to unearth it. But when this totally lost artifact
was finally discovered, it wasn't in some hidden
high -tech vault. No, not at all. It was just
hiding in plain sight, literally sitting on a
shelf in a standard everyday administrative office.
It's wild. It really forces a complete recalibration
of how we view the curation and preservation
of our own history. Oh, absolutely. We operate
under this comforting assumption that, you know,
culturally significant items are always treated
with reverence. That they're instantly recognized
and carefully protected behind museum glass.
Right, like someone always knows what they are.
But the reality of historical preservation is...
It's often incredibly messy, it's accidental,
and it's completely reliant on the most mundane
circumstances you can possibly imagine. Which
is exactly why we are so excited to bring you
along on this journey today. We have a fascinating
stack of material concerning a highly specific,
truly remarkable artifact from 1938. A really
unique piece of media. Yeah, it perfectly bridges
the gap between high art, the visceral tragedy
of war, and, well, urgent grassroots activism.
We're talking about an 18 -minute black -and
-white silent documentary film. Released under
the English title with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade
in Spain. Yes, alongside its French title, Avec
la Brigade Abraham Lincoln en España. As the
title explicitly suggests, it documents the involvement
of the Lincoln Brigade, which were American volunteers
fighting during the Spanish Civil War. Okay.
Let's unpack this because before we can even
get into the staggering story of how this physical
film managed to slip through the cracks of history
for over seven decades, we have to look at what
this 18 minute reel actually is. Right. Because
it's not normal. No, the composition of this
documentary is highly unconventional. This wasn't
a standard Hollywood production. No studio backing.
Exactly. You didn't have a single director sitting
in a canvas chair shouting, action, while a unified
crew captured a scripted scene. Far from it,
actually. The directing team is listed as Henri
Cartier -Bresson and Herbert Klein. Which, I
mean, that is already a powerhouse pairing. It
really is. But the actual footage, like the visual
DNA of the film itself, is a combination of work
from multiple drastically different sources.
You have footage shot directly by both Cartier
-Bresson and Klein on the front lines. Right.
But then they actively integrated newsreel material
shot by the legendary war photographer Robert
Capa. And then alongside that, even more front
line footage contributed by a fourth individual,
Jacques Lemaire. What's fascinating here is that
the final product isn't a traditional single
perspective narrative. You are looking at a literal
mosaic of visual reporting. A mosaic is a great
way to put it. Yeah, because you have four distinct
contributors, all operating with totally different
instincts, and they're pooling their visual evidence
to create a cohesive document. Cartier -Bresson,
for instance, is historically known for his geometric
composition. His eye for the human element, right?
Exactly, the decisive moment just outside the
immediate blast radius. But then you contrast
that with Robert Capa. His entire philosophy
was about getting as close to the visceral, terrifying
reality of combat as humanly possible. So his
newsreel footage brings this gritty, kinetic
chaos to the film. Yes. And then Klein and Lamar
provide the connective tissue. They are piecing
together a comprehensive reality of the Spanish
Civil War from these wildly different visual
fragments. It's basically the ultimate group
project, but you know with life or death stakes.
You have these four distinct artists all with
their own eyes, their own aesthetic philosophies,
and they are bringing all these distinct pieces
together to build one singular urgent message.
It's a massive collaborative effort. But um...
I actually have to push back on the mechanics
of this a little bit. OK, go for it. If you have
four different people shooting footage, some
of it contemplative documentary footage, some
of it chaotic newsreel combat material like Kappa
stuff, how does an 18 minute silent film keep
from becoming just an incomprehensible chaotic
mess. That's a very fair question. I mean, without
a voiceover narration to guide the audience,
and without a single unified director controlling
the lighting and blocking of every frame, how
does it maintain any sort of clear narrative
focus? Well, that is the fundamental challenge
of silent documentary editing. And the answer
lies entirely in how they wielded the sheer overwhelming
urgency of the subject matter. So it's about
the feeling, not the plot. Exactly. The focus
isn't maintained by a rigid three -act cinematic
script. It is maintained through emotional juxtaposition.
The editors had to rely purely on the thematic
collision of images. Can you give an example
of that? Sure. You might cut from Campa's chaotic,
dust -choked footage of soldiers under fire and
go directly to Cartier -Bresson's quiet, devastating
shot of a civilian reacting to the destruction
of their home. Oh, wow. That's a harsh contrast.
It is. The shared reality of the Spanish Civil
War and the specific focus on the volunteers
of the Lincoln Brigade acted as the unifying
blue. These contributors weren't trying to showcase
their individual artistic flair. They were putting
their egos aside. Yes, actively subordinating
their individual egos and their distinct visual
styles to a much larger, immediate cause. Every
single frame was selected and placed in a specific
order to elicit a very specific, undeniable emotional
response from the viewer. And that leads us directly
to the real driving force behind the film's creation.
Because looking at the sheer logistical effort
required to stitch this mosaic together, it's
clear this documentary was absolutely not made
for traditional cinematic glory. Not at all.
Cartier, Bresson, and Klein weren't aiming for
a glamorous premiere in a giant movie palace
with like a red carpet and velvet ropes. This
film was conceived and deployed as a highly specific
tactical tool for a very urgent mission. Right,
the ultimate driving purpose of With the Abraham
Lincoln Brigade. in Spain was strictly financial.
It was created to raise money. But not for a
Hollywood studio. No. crucially not to turn a
profit. The funds generated by this film were
explicitly urgently meant to help wounded volunteers
from the International Brigades return home from
the Spanish Civil War. So it was an immediate
plea for logistical and medical relief. Exactly.
So what does this all mean for the actual audience
experience? Yeah. Because the physical format
they used to distribute this film is a massive
part of why it was so effective and, well, ultimately
why it vanished. The format strategy is brilliant
in its utility. So, the documentary was initially
shot on 35mm film. Now, 35mm is your standard
professional theatrical gauge. It's what they
use in actual cinemas. Right. It provides a lush,
high quality image, but it's heavy. It requires
massive, expensive projection equipment, and
it's meant for wide distribution in traditional
commercial entertainment venues. But they didn't
stick to 35 millimeter. No. The creators specifically
went out of their way to produce a 16 millimeter
version of the documentary. Which completely
strips away the glamour of commercial cinema.
By dropping down to 16 millimeter, you're weaponizing
the film for portability. Yes. You're taking
it out of the massive movie palace and bringing
it directly to the community level. The sources
show that this 16 millimeter version was produced
specifically to be shown in union halls and local
clubs. You literally just need a guy with a portable
projector case and a white sheet hung up on a
wall. It's the definition of grassroots media,
a tool for direct immediate action. Exactly.
You set up this clanking projector in a local
union hall. You show this stark, silent, 18 minute
mosaic of a brutal war featuring fellow working
class volunteers. And as soon as the screen goes
dark, you immediately pass the hat to raise money
for the wounded soldiers they just watched. You're
hitting on the core psychological brilliance
of that format shift. The emotional weight of
that specific viewing context cannot be overstated.
No, it can't. By bringing the film into a union
hall, the filmmakers completely dismantled the
protective barrier that usually exists between
a cinema audience and the silver screen. I want
to dig into that barrier a bit because the shift
from 35 millimeters in a to 16 millimeter in
a union hall, it fundamentally changes the actual
physical relationship the audience has with the
media. How so? Think about live music. If you
go see a massive rock band play at a giant stadium
concert, there's an inherent distance there.
You bought a ticket, you were sitting in the
dark, and you were passively consuming a spectacle.
The transaction is complete. Right, you're just
an observer. But if you see that exact same band
play an intimate, stripped down acoustic set
in the back room of your local pub, The relationship
is entirely different. You're breathing the same
air. That's a great analogy. If the singer mentions
they need gas money to get to the next town and
points to a tip jar on the bar, you feel a deep,
personal, social obligation to put a dollar in.
You aren't just an audience member anymore. You
are a participant. Did the 16 millimeter format
do that for the Spanish Civil War? That acoustic
pub set analogy perfectly captures the social
mechanics at play here. Yes, absolutely. When
you show a 35 -millimeter film in a grand ornate
theater, the audience expects to be entertained.
They're insulated by the architecture of the
cinema. But when you're sitting on a creaky folding
chair in your local union hall... A space dedicated
to community and solidarity. Exactly. A space
for the protection of your own livelihood. And
you watch a 16 -millimeter projection of wounded
volunteers... That insulation just evaporates.
The war is no longer an abstract geopolitical
spectacle happening thousands of miles away.
It becomes an intimately local issue. Your neighbors
are sitting right next to you watching you watch
the film. The 16 millimeter projection creates
a communal intimacy that forces an immediate
response. The filmmakers didn't just want the
audience to feel bad. They wanted them to reach
into their pockets right then and there. It was
highly effective utilitarian filmmaking. But
that incredible grassroots utility was actually
a double -edged sword, wasn't it? Because the
film was treated as a functional tool, like a
hammer or a collection plate. Right. And once
the immediate moment in 1938 passed, once that
specific fundraising campaign was over and the
wounded volunteers were either brought home or
lost, nobody thought to preserve the tool itself.
The job was done. Yeah. And the physical film
just slipped right through the cracks of history.
It went from being an urgent, life -saving piece
of media to literally vanishing for an astonishing
72 years. For decades, film historians, archivists,
and scholars of the Spanish Civil War believed
that... with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Spain,
simply did not exist anymore in physical form.
It was officially classified as a lost film,
which is a tragically common fate for media from
that era, particularly grassroots 16 millimeter
media that wasn't legally protected or physically
vaulted by massive Hollywood studios. People
just assumed it had degraded, been thrown away
or destroyed. Here's where it gets really interesting,
though, because the film wasn't actually destroyed.
It didn't burn up in a warehouse fire, and it
wasn't lost at sea. No, it wasn't. In 2010, a
curator named Juan Salas finally discovered a
surviving print of the documentary, and he didn't
find it in some sealed, climate -controlled subterranean
archive in Europe. He found it in an office in
New York. Specifically, in the Administrative
Office of the Veterans of the Lincoln Brigade.
If we connect this to the bigger picture, it
forces a profound realization about how much
of our global history is likely just sitting
around in entirely mundane environments. Oh,
absolutely. We have this highly romanticized
cinematic idea of historical discovery. We picture
archaeologists carefully sweeping sand off a
tomb in the desert, or deep -sea divers illuminating
the rusted hull of a sunken dreadnought. Like
Indiana Jones stuff. Exactly. But the reality
is often much more bureaucratic. Here, an incredibly
vital 1938 documentary featuring irreplaceable
frontline footage captured by world -renowned
figures like Cartier -Bresson and Coppa was just
sitting quietly in an administrative office.
Surrounded by filing cabinets and copy machines.
I have to challenge this whole concept of a lost
film, though, because when archivists say lost,
they make it sound like it was buried under a
mountain. But it wasn't lost in that sense. It
was in an office. Well, lost to the public record.
But it's exactly like when you were frantically
tearing your entire house apart searching for
your glasses. You're stressed. You're looking
under the couch cushions. You're convinced they
are gone forever. Oh, I know that feeling. And
then you walk past a hallway mirror and realize
they've just been sitting on top of your head
the entire time. The film. was in the office
of the veterans of the Lincoln Brigade. The exact
literal organization of the very people the film
was originally made to support. I know, I know.
How does an organization like that just lose
a masterpiece about themselves inside their own
office for seven decades? It sounds like an impossible
irony, I know, but it actually makes complete
logistical sense when you examine how human institutions
function over long periods of time. An office
is not an archive. Okay, that's true. To a film
historian, the documentary is lost because it
is not cataloged in a recognized, accessible
cinematic database. But to the people actually
working in that veteran's office over those 72
years, that film was likely just a mysterious,
unmarked metal canister. Just sitting on a dusty
top shelf. Or shoved to the back of a supply
closet. As decades pass, generations of staff
turn over and institutional memory simply fades
away. The people working in that office in 1980
or 1990 or 2005 had absolutely no idea that the
tarnished canister next to the spare printer
paper contained an 18 -minute piece of missing
global history. They were just trying to get
through their work day. Exactly. They were focused
on their day -to -day administrative work, answering
phones, organizing audience. It becomes part
of the furniture. Your brain just filters it
out as part of the baseline reality of the room.
It just blends in. It takes a curator, someone
like Juan Salas, walking into that space and
actively looking with an external archivist's
eye to realize that the glasses are sitting right
there on top of the organization's head. And
the sheer serendipity of Juan Salas finding it
in 2010 completely changed the trajectory of
this document. because that unlikely rediscovery
in a mundane office setting directly paved the
way for the film to be elevated to the absolute
highest tier of American historical preservation.
It really did. In 2017, just seven years after
it was pulled from that office shelf with the
Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Spain was officially
selected for preservation in the United States
National Film Registry of the Library of Congress.
That is a staggering promotion from a clanking
16 millimeter projector in a smoky union hall.
It is the ultimate institutional validation,
and the specific criteria cited by the Library
of Congress for its induction is incredibly revealing.
They don't just save everything. They selected
this specific 18 -minute film for being culturally,
historically, or aesthetically significant. Culturally,
historically, or aesthetically significant. Those
are heavy academic words for a film that was
essentially born to be a collection plate. This
raises an important question about how the mere
passage of time fundamentally alters the perceived
value and purpose of media. In 1938, this film
was purely ruthlessly utilitarian. It was a functional
mechanism to extract cash for wounded soldiers.
Exactly. Nobody in that Union Hall was stroking
their chin and marveling at Cartier -Bresson's
geometric framing. They were looking at the blood
and the rubble. They're looking at their neighbors
on the screen. But with the passage of time,
the fading of the immediate conflict and its
subsequent loss and rediscovery, the object has
transformed. It has shed its temporary fundraising
skin. It is now an immortalized historical artifact.
We now have the luxury of viewing it for its
aesthetic value. The stark black and white imagery,
the brilliant silent montage, the historic collision
of Cartier -Bresson, Klein, Kappa, and Le Maire's
visual styles. Time has elevated a functional,
desperate object into a cultural pillar. But
I want to press you on that elevation because
it feels like a double -edged sword. By taking
this incredibly grassroots, union -hole film,
a film that was literally designed to be shown
on a cheap Portable 16 millimeter projector to
raise urgent funds from working -class people
Yeah, and placing it into the pristine perfectly
climate controlled official sterile vaults of
the Library of Congress Do we risk sanitizing
it right do we strip away its raw desperate original
soul by? putting it behind metaphorical museum
glass and labeling it aesthetically significant.
You are identifying the constant inherent tragedy
in all historical preservation. Yes, it does
sanitize the experience. By preserving the physical
object, you inevitably permanently alter its
context. Unavoidable. The Library of Congress
guarantees that those exact 18 minutes of visual
footage will survive for centuries. Scholars
unborn will be able to study Kappa's framing.
But no archive, no matter how advanced, can ever
truly preserve the smell of the sweat and tobacco
in that 1930s Union Hall. It can't preserve the
loud mechanical whirring of the 16 millimeter
projector. or the heavy, desperate silence in
the room as the hat is passed to save a neighbor's
life. We lose the acoustic pub set entirely.
Yeah. But the brutal reality is that the alternative
is letting the film rot away in an unmarked canister
in a filing cabinet until the celluloid turns
to dust. And the visual evidence of those volunteers
is erased from the earth forever. We willingly
sacrifice the raw original context in order to
secure the survival of the visual memory. Which
brings us to exactly why this journey matters
so deeply for you our listener today. We've set
this time tracking an 18 -minute black -and -white
silent film from its creation on the battlefields
of 1938 through the Union Halls into a forgotten
office closet and finally into the most prestigious
archive in the country. It's an incredible journey.
But this deep dive really isn't just about an
old movie. It's a powerful testament to the fact
that media, history, and human stories are terrifyingly
fragile. It shows us that grassroots efforts,
the things made quickly, made cheaply, made for
a strictly functional purpose and shown in local
community spaces. They often possess a lasting
aesthetic and historical value that completely
outlives their initial utilitarian goals. That's
the real takeaway here. The things happening
right now in your community, the local efforts,
the raw footage captured on phones during community
organizing, the functional messages being passed
around today, well... That is a definitive history
of tomorrow. And that leads to a final thought
I want to leave you with. Building directly on
everything we've uncovered today about how easily
history hides in plain sight. We just explored
how an 18 -minute physical reel of film shot
by masters of their craft managed to sit completely
forgotten in a mundane administrative office
for over seven decades. Right under everyone's
noses. It went entirely unnoticed by the very
people whose legacy it contained before finally
being recognized as a national pressure. So take
a moment to consider our current infinitely expanding
digital world. Oh, that's an interesting parallel.
What crucial pieces of our modern history, you
know, urgent grassroots footage, vital on the
ground reporting, the digital equivalent of a
16 millimeter Union Hall film are currently sitting
lost on an old forgotten external hard drive
tossed in the back of your desk drawer. Just
collecting dust. Or floating anonymously on an
obsolete, abandoned server that no one has locked
into for a decade. What massive, defining piece
of our era's story is just waiting in plain sight
right now, hoping against hope to be accidentally
rediscovered by someone who knows what they're
looking at 70 years from today? That is a profound
and slightly terrifying thought to end on. Thank
you so much for joining us in this deep dive
into the fascinating, unlikely journey of VIF
with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Spain. We'll
catch you next time.