Rare behind the scenes still of the filming of Shootout at Bloody Porch in The Wild Bunch with Warren Oates, William Holden and Ernest Borgnine.

FOUNDER: Founded and curated by Blake.

There are many ways to follow Museum of Cinema online:

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The primary mission of Museum of Cinema is preserving and showcasing cinema history. This preservation effort of cinema includes all things cinema including film memorabilia, film photographs (location, behind the scenes, events, film festivals and publicity) and more.

With countless film sites and blogs out there, you are probably wondering how this cinema devoted site is different? The difference here is a complete focus on preserving and showcasing cinema history. Each historical item (photographs, lobby cards and more) are all carefully restored. You will not find screen grabs from any films here. Everything on display here comes from actual film photographs or material. In addition you will find film event and film festival reports reports including video, interviews and photographs you will not find anywhere else. In addition we offer a variety of sizes for all historical cinema items that you can use to decorate your computer wallpaper, iPad wallpaper and more.

All cinema historical items featured here are painstakingly restored. The restoration process of any one photograph, lobby card or poster can sometimes take months of hard work. The restoration and quality efforts of cinema history as featured and showcased on Museum of Cinema help set it apart from countless film sites that post items as is.

In future months Museum of Cinema will offer several online cinema exhibitions. These exhibitions will offer exclusive restored content and immersive dives into films, filmmakers and more.

If you would like to get involved and help out be sure and read our Get Involved page (here). Be sure to tell your friends about the site!

In addition be sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook:
::: Facebook Fan Page
::: @museumofcinema
::: @filmfest – Twitter account devoted to covering the world of film festivals.

I’ve been a huge rescuer of film memorabilia for the last 30 years. I’ve rescued rare film memorabilia from estate sells, trash heaps, collectors and you name it. I never really bothered the state of any film memorabilia item (torn, ripped, faded) as I’ve sought to preserve everything I’ve come across. I think their is a huge tragedy in cinema history being lost or relegated to private collections where no one will ever see them. In the case of private collections once the owner passes on their collections are often thrown away. So one rare Marilyn Monroe still from say Asphalt Jungle might never see the light of day, especially if it was an on set photograph never officially issued by the studio. If you think of cinema history, film memorabilia is often overlooked in being archived and preserved and my mission is to do just this. In addition to what we commonly define as film memorabilia in press kits, official stills, lobby cards, Italian photobustas, posters, etc., I’m also focusing on promotional items, photography/video of movie theater marquees and related events surrounding a film. This site will be a centralized effort to preserve and celebrate all forms of cinema history.

When I first started my initial online film gallery effort in the form of BadAssMovieImages.com (Austin Chronicle Interview) around 2000 I wanted to make it an online museum but with limits of technology I just couldn’t pull it off. This was ever more true when it received a Yahoo! Pick of the Day award and promptly crashed my server and nearly every site I linked to and cost me a huge bandwidth bill. Eventually I restarted and merged this effort to CinemaisDope.com which worked great but still veered to far away from the online museum of cinema history that I had originally envisioned back in the late 90′s.

Museum of Cinema gets back to the original vision and over the next couple of months in BETA new features, major exhibits and more will be rolling out. Hopefully by the time SXSW rolls around next year I will have most things in place to push out the full 1.0 version of it.

I want to blaze a trail for the ongoing preservation, archiving and celebration of cinema and its history. I’m not talking about film prints themselves but the memorabilia, marketing materials, event photography/video, behind the scenes photography, official stills, lobbycards, Italian photobustas, international posters, movie theater marquees and location photography and video.

Additional Features of Museum of Cinema

LOCATION PHOTOGRAPHY – This will be an ongoing collection of photography and videos (past and present) of famous locations where films were shot at.

MOVIE THEATER MARQUEES – Photography and video of movie theater marquees is something worth cherishing and preserving. I welcome contributions and will be posting my own ongoing taken photographs and videos for this ongoing collection.

FILM EVENT/SPECIAL SCREENINGS – Whether its a recent Rolling Roadshow screening of Night of the Hunter or a world premiere, any film event/special screening and related photography is something that needs to be preserved and archived for this ongoing collection here.

FILM MEMORABILIA – Original stills, lobbycards, Italian photobustas, marketing materials, video artwork, posters and more.

Rare On Set Photography/Video – In addition to official issued stills, I will also be posting private photography from film sets.

FAN ARTWORK – Fan artwork is in no way centralized and needs to be preserved. If you have artwork you have created and want to share, I would love to feature it here.