25 minutes of pure 1939 optimism — before reality hit different.
The future was now at the 1939 World’s Fair – and it is still awesome. From the perspective of the 21st century, it’s hard to imagine what a marvel the 1939-1940 New York World’s Fair would have been to its visitors. Still living in the heavy shadow of the stock market crash of 1929, the many people who flocked to the big exhibition found not only bounteous luxuries such as free Coca-Cola, but the unveiling of unthinkable new technologies that promised that a better world lay ahead. Using sparkling, rare, colour film footage – itself a brand-new technology at the time – the US director Amanda Murray mines the memories of several people who attended the New York World’s Fair in 1939.
Cinematography
Rare color 1939 footage that basically glows.
Editing
Murray weaves memory and archive with ghostly precision.
Director
Amanda Murray
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
The Fair introduced television, nylon, and fluorescent lighting — all captured here in early color Kodachrome that still looks impossibly vibrant.
Murray specifically chose interviewees who were children at the Fair — their memories are unreliable, idealized, and therefore more honest about what the Fair actually meant.
US
