Excerpts From Six Queens World's Fair Films to Screen Continuously Until August 31st

World’s Fair. World’s Fair. World’s Fair. World’s Fair. World’s Fair. World’s Fair. Repeat until August 31st. The Museum of the Moving Image is currently — and continuously — screening excerpts from six movies about the two World’s Fairs that took place in Flushing Meadows Corona Park (1939 and 1964). Among the highlights are scenes about a plastic green brontosaurus (above) based on Sinclair’s logo and Electro (below), a voice-controlled robot whose vocabulary had more than 700 words stored on a 78 RPM record. Here’s the rundown.

• The Middleton Family at the New York World’s Fair. This film depicts the complications of a love triangle with a young woman who breaks her engagement with a Westinghouse engineer to be with her anti-capitalist art teacher. The movie features discussions about the importance of machines, especially Electro.
• To New Horizons. This documentary tells the story of the the 1964 General Motors Highways and Horizons Pavilion, which contained the popular Futurama exhibit. Individual car ownership and the highway system are the main themes.
• World’s Fair Report with Lowell Thomas. Legendary broadcaster Lowell Thomas, who traveled to the Middle East in 1918 and discovered T.E. Lawrence (“Lawrence of Arabia”), hosts this promotional video, which was made about three years before the 1964 World’s Fair opened. The original version included footage of President John F. Kennedy speaking at a promotional press event, but it was revised shortly after his assassination.
• Sinclair at the World’s Fair. Corporate sponsors, including car manufacturers, oil companies and airlines, built many of the 1964 pavilions. Arguably, the most popular one was Sinclair Oil’s Dinoland, which featured nine life-sized fiberglass dinosaurs.
• Unisphere: The Biggest World on Earth. The Unisphere was built in 1964 to represent the theme “Man’s Achievements on a Shrinking Globe in an Expanding Universe.” To this day, it’s the world’s largest globe-shaped structure.
• To the Fair. This humorous film, commissioned to promote the 1964 fair, shows visitors coming to NYC by any means possible, including helicopter, hydrofoil, 10-seat bike, and amphibious car.

Photos: Museum of the Moving Image