The ArchiveJuly 12, 2026

The Department of Digestive Security Training Reel

The Department of Digestive Security's 1943 training reel, declassified yet held unprojected by the order printed on its own leader, catalogued in full.

From the series: The Declassified Files

A round film can lettered for the Department of Digestive Security on a cream museum mount, its lid off to reveal a film reel on its core, lit from the side.

Accession no. NMDP 1943.129

Object: motion-picture film, one reel, acetate stock, 420 ft, on original core, title card intact. Credit line: Collection of the National Museum of the Digestive Past.

Provenance

The reel is an instructional film produced in 1943 by the Department of Digestive Security for internal circulation and marked, on its leader, NOT FOR PUBLIC EXHIBITION. It was declassified in 1984 and came to the collection through the Office of Civic Digestion. The distribution ledger pasted inside the can lists seventeen field offices and one recall; the reason for the recall occupies a line that was inked out before transfer.

An open film can on a cradle, a ruled paper ledger pasted inside the lid with a line blacked out, a film reel below. — Fig. 1 —The distribution ledger inside the lid. One line, the recall, was inked out before transfer.

Condition report

The stock is stable acetate with light edge warp and a faint vinegar note logged at accession and unchanged since. The film is projectable. By standing order it is not projected. The leader's exhibition warning is treated by the conservation committee as an instruction the Museum remains bound to follow, the Department that issued it being no longer in a position to lift it.

Curatorial note

What the reel taught is legible on the title card and nowhere else the Museum will quote. The collection preserves the film, its warning, and its obedience to that warning, and regards the three as a single object.