After years of planning, the Anthology Film Archives first opened its doors in New York City towards the end of 1970. That opening came with great interest and fascination of how the world’s first “museum of film” was going to operate like no other theater before it.

Brian L. Frye programmed the first screening on May 12, 1998 at the Collective Unconscious theater space. The screening included the feature-length documentary Underground by Emile de Antonio about the left-wing militant group the Weather Underground

The 7th annual WNDX Festival of Moving Image presents a four-part study of Beat cinema by Jack Sargeant, a moveable microcinema curated by Solomon Nagler, plus films by Clint Enns and much more.

Pioneering experimental animator and artist Harry Smith was born under mysterious circumstances today in 1923.

The 48th annual Ann Arbor Film Festival is a celebration of underground film past and present with classic retrospectives and fantastic new work.

Naked Lens, Jack Sargeant’s take on how the Beat literary movement influenced underground film, happily veers off the well-trodden film history path.

Some notable underground film events in 1971 were Jonas Mekas ending his Movie Journal column, Willard Maas passing away and the first festival was held.

Jack Sargeant takes over as festival director and programs some of the best underground films, including Craig Baldwin’s Mock Up on Mu and a retrospective of the work of Jeff Krulik.

In the ’60s, Film Culture gave out one award per year to an underground filmmaker, such as Andy Warhol and Kenneth Anger. Here’s the full list of winners.

George Renan’s An Introduction to the American Underground Film, written in the ’60s, is an invaluable encyclopedic reference to the classics.