(orchestral music)
- [Narrator] We're in Culpeper, Virginia,
at this building, which once belonged to the Feds.
- [Narrator] On the surface,
the purpose was they stored gold here.
- [Narrator] Four billion dollars' worth
of gold currency, to be exact.
But that was just on the surface.
- [Narrator] The real purpose of it
was sort of an anti-nuclear contingency program.
- [Narrator] During the Cold War,
if the big bomb went off,
they would move the president here.
But that's all in the past.
Now they house something completely different, film.
- Yes, we have the classics here,
we have Casablanca,
and we have The Maltese Falcon,
and we have Frankenstein.
We also have Gigli,
and we have all the Adam Sandler movies.
- [Narrator] This building is now
the Library of Congress's Packard Campus.
Its goal is to ensure the survival and conservation
of our nation's films.
And over 144,000 of the most precious of these
is under the care of George Willeman.
(film leader beeping) (projector whirring)
But first, let's explore the building.
- There is a suite
where our technicians do nothing but repair films.
We have specialized rooms for printing,
for film processing,
DataCine transfer, cylinder recordings,
special suites for doing two-inch videotapes,
one-inch videotapes,
three-quarter-inch videotape.
You name it, we play it.
- [Narrator] All these rooms exist
because the Packard Campus
is about restoration and preservation.
And those first early pieces,
they were made on nitrate.
And that's what George is in charge of.
He's head of the nitrate vaults.
The oldest and most dangerous of all the film bases.
- We have 124 nitrate film vaults.
They're very austere-looking, like a high-security prison.
And they're very thick-walled,
designed to protect us from the films
and the films from each other,
because nitrate film has the basic same chemical compound
as gunpowder, and is highly flammable.
A nitrate fire is like nothing you have ever seen.
Because it's almost like a controlled explosion.
It burns with a bright orange-yellow flame
and it looks like a rocket engine.
We have negatives in our vaults
that are over a hundred years old.
Things come in to us
that have been in barns and warehouses
and people's attics and basements.
And I've been able to be involved
in the restoration of several films that
otherwise, in the outside world,
would have no monetary value.
But their historical value is immense.
My interest has always been in early film.
And I am getting a chance to work with
one of the largest and most unique collections
of early film in the world.
I think I'm here for a reason.
I think my purpose
is to make sure that we remember.
To know what we had
and what we looked like and what we did.
And film is one of the absolute best ways of doing that.
(upbeat music)
(electronic music)