1964 World's Fair documentary raising funds on Kickstarter

The 1964 NYC World's Fair is legendary -- birthplace of animatronics and Belgian waffles, the zenith of exuberant goofy corporate futurism and the beloved coming-of-age for millions who entered a modern world filled with promise. Documentarians are raising funds to produce "After the Fair," a doc featuring any amount of droolworthy archival footage of the great fair.

Videophones, space satellites, computers, color television. Today, these technologies are everywhere. For millions of people though, their first experience with these innovations came in Queens, at the 1964-65 World's Fair.

The fair also marked the debut of Belgian Waffles, and for many, the first foray into different cultures and ethnic foods.

In our documentary, we will travel the country to reveal the cultural, technological, and physical relics of the fair. We will travel to over 30 locations, with dozens of interviews looking at not only what the fair meant in 1964-65, but more importantly, what it means to all of today.

Our first teaser trailer gives you a taste of the wonderful archival fair footage we've found, along with our trek across the country to visit dozens of relics (and people) from the fair so far.

After The Fair: The Legacy of the 1964-65 NY World's Fair by Ryan Ritchey — Kickstarter (via DVICE)

• [planettom]

  Relics from the 1964 New York World’s Fair that I’ve been to:

  * IT’S A SMALL WORLD ride at Disney World
  * The giant tire outside Detroit that’s the former Ferris Wheel.
  * The Carillon at Stone Mountain Park in Atlanta, Georgia from the Coca-Cola Pavilion
  (A friend of mine got to go inside of it a few years back, here’s his report:
  http://www.grantbob.com/2007/05/inside-carillon.html )
  * The Travelers Insurance Companies TRIUMPH OF MAN exhibit, which was relocated
  to the Center Of Science and Industry museum (COSI) in Columbus, Ohio from 1966-1999
  (See the Boing Boing post earlier this month about my Virtual Re-Creation of this exhibit in Flash:
  http://boingboing.net/2012/02/03/my-favorite-museum-exhibit-19.html )

• [Noctilucent Studios]

  Wait, are you telling me that Belgian waffles come from Queens!?!?

• [Bob N Johnson]

  There are these hazy memories from the fair that are just out of reach, but have left this warm feeling of family and wonder. The fair is one of the few things I would wish to relive at almost any cost.

• [Sean Carolan]

  Yeah, I pretty much want this. I’m in.

• [Matthew Urso]

  living most of my life in flushign, its always bothered me that no one is trying to renovate or use that pavilion that the restaurant was in.  kind of an eye sore up close

• [Brendan McKeon]

  Birthplace of Belgian Waffles? That would be Belgium, amazingly enough – though they call them “Brussels Waffles” there to distinguish them from the other common waffle type, the Liège Waffle. And turns out they were introduced to the US two years before, at the 1962 World’s Fair in Seattle. They were even a key plot device (to the extent that the movie had a plot) in the 1963 Elvis Movie “It Happened At The World’s Fair”, which was filmed at the Seattle fair the previous year…!

  • [Dan Dumas]

    FYI…
    http://kcts9.org/when-seattle-invented-future-1962-worlds-fair 

• [Jim Dixon]

  I actually ate “Belgian” waffles at the Seattle World’s Fair. Saveur has some info (and a recipe) here: http://www.saveur.com/article/Recipes/Belgian-Waffles

• [mat catastrophe]

  Who was at the Dupont Pavilion? Why was the bench still warm?