For five years, media archaelogist Richard Prelinger has been exploring the hidden layers of our recent past. His New York City archive holds some 11,000 "ephemeral" films-advertising, industrial and educational films produced to fulfill a specific purpose. Unlike feature films or newsreels, they were never intended to be saved, and were generally discarded after their usefulness came to an end. As evidence of everyday life and preoccupations of their era, they are illuminating precisely because they were thought too obvious to preserve. Tonight's screening will be a jocular collection of visual detritus, many of the films never seen since their initial release in the hazy past. Among them we have Thirties advertisements made for distribution in movie theaters with contributions from Esso, Eveready, Chevrolet and Singer. A Forties industrial spreads goodwill about the St. Paul Police Detectives and their Work. Fortifying the social agenda of the Fifties, we have A Date With Your Family, in which pimply kids are directed to "greet their Dad as though they were really glad to see him." General Motors' touring 1956 "Motorama" is documented in glowing Anscochrome. We see snappy fashions of the year, Frigidaire's "Kitchen of Tomorrow," and the Pontiac "Firebird II," a dream car. The late Fifties brought the designer product, products that forsook function for fashion. In one 26-minute cavalcade of consumption, we have enough domestic treasures to make one wonder if freedom of choice was worth the price.