Sherman Grinberg Film Library Digitization Project Update

The staff at the Sherman Grinberg Film Library, located in Chatsworth, California, continue to restore, assemble, digitize, edit, create metadata, and license the historic newsreels that make up the Paramount and American Pathé newsreel collection. Even during these challenging days of the Covid-19 Pandemic, the company continues to serve clients by conducting research and scanning motion picture film remotely.

Under the project leadership of Bill Brewington, General Manager, and Lance Watsky, Manager of the Media Archives and Licensing, the library’s website now contains over 33,000 newsreel clips available for viewing, see: https://filmlibrary.shermangrinberg.com.

The Sherman Grinberg Film Library, which first opened in the 1950’s by the early stock footage pioneer, Sherman Grinberg, has more than 20 million feet of classic 35mm B&W film from 1895 to 1957. The newsreel collections include the historic Paramount newsreel, which were initially called Eyes of the World (silent era) and later the Eyes and Ears of the World (the “talkies”). The collection also includes the American Pathé newsreel library, which is America’s oldest newsreel collection (1895-1956). The library also has the Industry on Parade series of early manufacturing films, the Allied Artist Scenic stock footage collection, and over 3,500 mid-20th century television and movie theater commercials.

The newsreels contain an amazing variety of world-changing events and topics including movie premieres, Academy Awards, celebrities; sports including the Olympics, college, and professional games; world leaders and politics; the Great Wars (WWI, WW2 and more); science, technology, and medicine; natural disasters and civil unrest; fashion, culture, crimes, and human interest, to name just a few subjects.

At this point approximately 40% of the newsreels have been restored and digitized which are available to watch on their website, but if you can’t find newsreel footage for your project, contact the library, or send them keywords, and they will create a custom finding aid for your review.

After you review the finding aid, let the Grinberg staff know what footage you are interested in, and they will search for the footage in their vaults. If the footage is available, they will restore and digitize the footage and send you digital screeners for no cost.

If you want to license the footage for your production, or project, the library offers competitive rates, and aims to stay within your budget by selling footage by the second instead of clips. Much of the newsreel footage has rarely, and in many cases, never been publicly viewed since the footage was put into storage during the late 1950’s. The Sherman Grinberg Film Library can be thought of as a lost film collection of international importance that contains an unexplored trove of never-before-seen historic newsreels.

To contact the Sherman Grinberg Film Library, email: Sales@shermangrinberg.com; or call 818-717-9200.

Article by: Lily Turner-Graham and Lance Watsky