Memory & Imagination

From Isaac Stern discovering an original Brahms manuscript
and Francis Ford Coppola celebrating the preservation
of lost films, to Julia Child with the world's first cookbook
and Penn & Teller trapped deep inside the Houdini Collection,
this hour film examines the world's largest
repository of human thought and culture.

Featuring:

Ted Koppel, Henry Steele Commager, Steve Jobs,
Sam Waterston, Gore Vidal, Pete Seeger, Dr. James Watson,
Senator Albert Gore, Jr., Vartan Gregorian, Michael Feinstein,
Richard Wurman, Penn & Teller, Stewart Brand,
and James H. Billington, Librarian of Congress.

SAM WATERSTON and GORE VIDAL share their insights
into Lincoln and their research at the Library,
while PETE SEEGER recalls the early field recording trips
he made for the Library's Folk Archive. DR. JAMES WATSON
speculates on the information explosion in science and the
unprecedented amount of data needed for the Human
Genome Project.

The film explores the role of the
Library of Congress, the world's largest library,
as the "memory bank of mankind" and examines
the implications of new technologies for sharing the
Library's vast resources electronically with the world.

VARTAN GREGORIAN speculates on the need
to preserve our common human heritage,
and HENRY STEELE COMMAGER examines
the original draft of the Declaration of Independence.
MICHAEL FEINSTEIN sings Gershwin songs once thought
lost but now safely preserved at the Library.

The camera floats through the rich baroque architecture
of the Library's Great Hall and ornate hallways.
Soon we are with Isaac Stern in the Music Division
as he discovers the original manuscript
for the Brahms Violin Concerto.

Stewart Brand, Richard Wurman and Steve Jobs
speculate on the future of the Library as it move
into the emerging global information environment.

RICHARD SAUL WURMAN

"Learning is remembering what you're interested in."
"The creative organization of information actually creates new information."

The first film ever commissioned by the Library of Congress,
Memory and Imagination explores the Library's hidden treasures
and awe-inspiring prospects for the digital global village.

HONORARY FILM SCREENING

ACADEMY OF MOTION PICTURE ARTS & SCIENCES

GRAND AWARD

INTERNATIONAL FILM & VIDEO FESTIVAL OF NEW YORK

PRESIDENT'S AWARD

COLUMBUS INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

BEST OF SHOW

CINDY AWARD

"When my wife and I watched the video of
Memory and Imagination, we agreed
it's the first thing we had seen in a long time
that made us feel good about paying taxes."
Stuart Brand

Written, Produced, and Directed by Michael R. Lawrence
Executive Producer, Julian Krainin
Project Director, Craig D'Ooge
Associate Producer, Johanna T. Lawrence

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Francis Ford Coppola

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Isaac Stern

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Steve Jobs

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Ted Koppel

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Gore Vidal and Sam Waterston

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Julia Child

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Penn & Teller

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Francis Ford Coppola

"I realize that the Library of Congress is probably the major first step of an availability of all knowledge, all art, all of the philosophical discussion, all of the films, all of the drawings, all of the recorded music, all of the performances. It's all going to exist in this vast vault of our common human culture, the real wealth of the human race."

Ted Koppel

"We record everything. Everything. The impact of that becomes totally numbing. I mean, future generations are going to be looking at literally billions of pictures and reams of videotape and film; and I'm not sure that they'll be able to make any sense out of it.

"I fear that we in the mass media are creating such a market for mediocrity that we are losing our ability to manage ideas, to contemplate, to think. We are becoming a nation of electronic voyeurs whose capacity for informed dialogue is a fading memory."

Steve Jobs

"We should be augmenting our libraries with links to the Library of Congress. Then even the smallest town will have the entire Library of Congress at their fingertips."

James H. Billington

"So, we're not going to need just knowledge and information in the future; we're going to need wisdom. You know, the great libraries of the world are really temples of hope for the future of humanity; and that's what connects that record of anguish, achievement, and aspiration of the past with the possibilities of the future."

Julia Child

"These rare old cookbooks are fascinating. The view of history that we get through the kitchen window is a more gentle view: not of war and politics but of family and community and sharing."

Isaac Stern

"Look at this, for heaven's sake. It's the Mozart A Major Concerto. Just take a look how few scratches and changes. Look at the neatness. There's a terrific quality of passion, tenderness, in all of this; and you read the music and it shouts itself to you."

Gore Vidal

"When I began Lincoln, I came to the Library of Congress, home of the Lincoln Presidential Library. One of the great insights into Lincoln's character is a letter he wrote to a Shakespearean actor in New York. And he says in the letter here that although he likes Lear, Richard III, Henry VIII, and Hamlet, he especially likes Macbeth. What is Macbeth about? It is about the guilt of the king, who has murdered his predecessor Duncan."

"I found it absolutely fascinating when I came to write Lincoln. Always guilt. Always blood. Always remorse. That is why he is our greatest and most tragic president."

Sam Waterston

"I was doing research for the television miniseries that I did about Lincoln, and I found my way to the Library. I was looking for a feeling of Lincoln."

Vartan Gregorian

"The Library of Congress is one of the great accomplishments in world history. Librarians are guardians of entire humanity's accomplishments, entire humanity's records--not just for parts of it--by retaining, preserving, disseminating the unity of knowledge, the unity of humanity."

Pete Seeger

"It was from my father I first learned the importance of preserving folksongs. Fifty years ago, I was inspired to become a musician because of the music I heard in this Library."

Michael Feinstein

"Can you believe that the original manuscript for this song, which is by the Gershwins, it's titled "The World Is Mine" - it was almost destroyed, it was almost thrown away. You see, this manuscript was discovered in 1982 in the Warner Brothers Music Warehouse along with a lot of other musical theater material. I'll never forget the first day that I walked into that warehouse. A total of eighty-seven original manuscripts were found. They were just getting ready to throw out boxes and boxes of all this old stuff. But now, it's safely here at the Library of Congress."

Richard Wurman

"This Library is moving into decades and decades of allowing all the stuff that's stored here to be transmitted in an understandable form, in a personal form, in a way you can find your personal path through all of it. And, the prospect of it is around the corner. And the prospect of it, for the the Library of Congress, will allow this institution that has the memory of mankind in it to allow the people in the United States and around the world to find out things: to find out things of their own choosing and to put those things together in their own particular exotic journey."

Steve Jobs

"I think one of the things that really separates us from the high primates is that we're tool builders. I read a study that measured the efficiency of locomotion for various species on the planet. The condor used the least energy to move a kilometer. And, humans came in with a rather unimpressive showing, about a third of the way down the list. It was not too proud a showing for the crown of creation. So, that didn't look so good. But, then somebody at Scientific American had the insight to test the efficiency of locomotion for a man on a bicycle. And, a man on a bicycle, a human on a bicycle, blew the condor away, completely off the top of the charts."

"And that's what a computer is to me. What a computer is to me is it's the most remarkable tool that we've ever come up with, and it's the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds."

Stuart Brand

"Up until pretty recently the whole communication environment was relatively trackable, simple, straight forward. You sort of knew where the information was and were it was going. But increasingly, both with computers and in the large picture globally - you might say the global computer - it has gotten so rich that it no longer makes sense to us, in sort of understandable mechanical terms. It becomes more like a biological level of complexity."

James D. Watson

"If you visit the science and technology division of the Library of Congress, you can see that the number of scientific articles and journals being published around the world has grown so large the sheer volume of available information renders much of it useless to us."

"Our immediate human communications environment has reached a level of complexity that approaches that of biological systems. And, I guess, it just reflects the fact that our civilization, in any way you look at it, is more and more complicated. And, how are you going to live with complexity?"

Penn & Teller

"Houdini was a superstar. I mean we're talking Michael Jackson, Prince, Springsteen, the Beatles, Elvis. Bigger than Elvis.

"Yeah, Houdini. Skeptic. Superstar. And most important, the finest escape artist that ever lived. Nothing could hold him. But, time to run."

(YELLING) "We're locked in. We're in the Houdini Collection. Anybody! With a key! Where are the escape books?"

Michael Lawrence Films

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Memory & Imagination