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Alaska Film Archives

About the Collection

Over the past half century, the University of Alaska Fairbanks has built the largest collection of archival films in and about Alaska. The collection combines hundreds of donations of film and videos to UAF by individuals, organizations and institutions. Materials range from professional productions to amateur home-movies, made in and about Alaska from the earliest days of filmmaking through today. Since 1993 these materials have been held by the Alaska Film Archives, a unit of Alaska and Polar Regions Collections & Archives in the Elmer E. Rasmuson Library. Films and videos selected for this portal project are a sampling of the thousands available for checkout on DVD through the Rasmuson Library. Unless otherwise noted, items are presented here in their entirety, unedited and uncut. Short, popular clips from the collection can be viewed on our YouTube channel. Read more about the Alaska Film Archives.

1 to 2 of 2 Objects
[Fall, winter and summer of 1958 and 1959]
[Fall, winter and summer of 1958 and 1959]
Footage includes Jan Koslosky with a large polar bear hide, Fred and Sara Machetanz with dogs and cutting firewood, downhill skiers, a snowplow, a plane on skis at High Ridge Lake, Ernest Gruening on an Anchorage street, High Ridge, an Eskimo woman dancing, Fur Rendezvous dog races, a merry-go-round, and dog weight pull. Additional images include reindeer on rope, Dr. Vic Hessler, a weaver at the loom, a moose in High Ridge Lake, Chilkat dancers at Haines, Sara eating strawberries, Sara and children feeding a moose calf, ski planes on High Ridge Lake, a party at Atwood home in Anchorage, airliners at Anchorage International Airport, a choral group, a moose on the road and High Ridge Lake, aerial view of High Ridge Lake, Alaska Railroad tracks and trains during winter, a snowplow, Healy coal mine, Mount McKinley, Alcan Highway, sign forest on Alcan Highway, Miles Canyon, highway scenery, oil drill rig, water well drill rig, George Sundborg at teletype, statehood celebration in Fairbanks, Fairbanks Daily News-Miner presses, Riverboat Discovery operation, logs on conveyor at mill, fish camp and birch bark basket construction, Fred and Sara at fish camp, gold dredge and loggers.
[Yukon River travel, Nenana and Eagle, seal skinning, sport fishing, commercial fishing, Unalakleet, gold dredge]
[Yukon River travel, Nenana and Eagle, seal skinning, sport fishing, commercial fishing, Unalakleet, gold dredge]
Part 1 (AAF-980) footage includes a dog team crossing ice, a riverboat on the Yukon River in autumn, a river pilot in a small boat checking water depth, a school in Nenana, people in Eagle Village, riverboat workers, a Dawson City street, going through Five-Finger Rapids, Alaska and Canada flags, Whitehorse, Skagway, Miles Canyon Rapids, and Lake Bennett. Part 2 (AAF-981) footage includes an Alaska Native woman wearing a parka, drying sea mammal intestines, whale butchering in Kotzebue, river scenery, sod houses, a cemetery at Pt. Hope, a gold dredge operating in Nome, a man speaking to an audience, Alaska Native dancers, a Ladd Field hangar, Athabascan men and women in Eagle, the Mission School in Nenana, Gren Collins float plane at a dock with people crowded around, and men trading furs in Canada. Part 3 (AAF-984) footage includes an Alaska Native woman skinning a seal at Pt. Hope. Part 4 (AAF-985) footage includes people at a picnic, small boats on the ocean, fly fishing on a creek, men catching salmon and flounder, the fishing boat "Radar,” a glacier, a flower garden, Sara Machetanz and a man with dogs pulling a three-wheeled cart in Nome, women in parkas, and Sara Machetanz with children eating ice cream. Part 5 (AAF-986) footage includes Sara Machetanz fishing, unloading salmon from a commercial fishing boat, a fishing fleet, crabs on a dock, totes of fish, emptying nets on fishing boats, salmon swimming upstream at a waterfall, Sara Machetanz with girls at a Girl Scout Camp near Ketchikan, women in parkas putting on mukluks, and boys playing on a rubber raft in a gravel pit. Part 6 (AAF-987) footage includes scenery around Unalakleet. Part 7 (AAF-988) footage includes men driving thaw points for a mining operation, men working hydraulic giants, and a large dredge in operation in Interior Alaska.