While Indiana Jones quests for the Crystal Skull, film hoarders go on epic searches for Golden Kitsch. Archivists, collectors and peddlers of cinematic ephemera such as Mike Vraney (founder of Something Weird Video) and Dion Conflict unearth and present rare and forgotten celluloid that co-existed outside the Hollywood studio marketplace, from "classroom scare films" to porn. Dennis Nyback is one such reel adventurer, and he hosts two feature-length programs of shorts this Friday at the Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque.

Nyback is a film archivist and scholar of everything from dorky school/instructional films to PSAs to early music-video promotional and video-jukebox films to strange religious shorts to retro-racist cartoons of yesteryear and eye-curdling propaganda images. At 7 p.m. Friday he offers one of his most popular programs, "The Mormon Church Explains It All To You." Holy Texas Polygamy, Batman, it's a, well, revival, of clean-cut LDS dogma and uplift, mostly made in the 1960s. You filthy gentiles, bring your sense of Mo-humor to bear witness to the likes of Man's Search for Happiness, perhaps the most widely-seen LDS production ever. At 9 p.m. Nyback screens what he calls "Un-PC comics," with clips of old, hoary cartoons that dealt in racist gags, sexual innuendo, grisly violence and abundant bad taste. He recently spoke about trash/treasures, and if you think you possess something on his "most wanted" list, go to dennisnybackfilms.com and prepare to deal.

What we will be seeing is all on projected celluloid. Where do you store all this stuff?

My film archive is now at Marylhurst University [in Oregon]. I also teach there. This summer I will be teaching the course Social History Through Animation.

I assume you consider yourself a guardian/archivist of celluloid. What is the rarest film you possess?

Probably the rarest things I have are orphan films that were never copyrighted. That would include a 1920s home movie that says "Uncle Harold's Party" on the can. It is about a wealthy group flying into some lodge in the sticks, where they have a wild drunken party. During Prohibition.

What is the rarest "lost" film that you would like to have?

A film that was stolen from me a few years ago is The End of an Old Song by John Cohen. I'd sure like to get another copy of it. For years I have been looking for Dizzy and Daffy, featuring Dizzy Dean and his brother Paul, 1934, A Battery of Hits featuring J. Fred Coots, look him up, and Waite Hoyt, 1933. For Time or Eternity (made by the Mormon Church), 1968, How Much Affection?, a 1960 educational film. There are others. Those years are approximate.

When did you start collecting and where have you found some of your most interesting selections? Some pre-Internet stories, maybe.

I started buying short films to show at my theater, the Rosebud Movie Palace in Seattle, in 1979. I was showing Hollywood classics and wanted to give the audience the whole deal, cartoon, short subject, newsreel with every feature. I found that buying the shorts was cheaper than renting them, and I got to show them more than once. I was connected with a sort of black market of film collectors. One guy I dealt with in SF got busted by the FBI. They didn't care about the old jazz films and stuff I bought. They did care about rare Beatles material. Also, more aboveboard was the publication The Big Reel where collectors could buy and sell. I have also frequented junk stores and such looking for films. My favorite purchase was in Paris in 1999. Walking the bridge from Ile St. Louis to the Left Bank I found a flea market. I paid 600 francs for all the films on a table. They contained the only print in the world, as far as I know, of an Andy Gump short titled Brave Mr. Slim, the American film A Total Loss. There was also a bunch of 9.5mm film including a print of Metropolis. There were movies of Nazis filmed during the occupation.

Do you limit yourself to collecting up to a certain time-period cutoff?

The only limit I have on what I collect is what I can pay for. I have films from 1896 to the very recent past

Have you ever looked into Mansfield, Ohio's heritage of driver-education films, or did Mike Vraney at Something Weird get the patent on that one?

I have long been aware of the Ohio driver-ed films. I know Mike. He was way ahead of me in seeing that selling videos was better than showing films in terms of making money.

I've got a good rundown of your Mormon program off your Web site; what will the "Un-PC Comics" include?

The show will be the true history of America revealed in cartoons: racism, sexism and violence. I will also lecture on how corporate censorship works in a free country.

Any ambitions to make films yourself?

I have been considered a "found footage filmmaker." I have created three or four hundred film shows on themes. Some fit the FFF template better than others. I created a cabaret show on women songwriters of the Tin Pan Alley days that became American Masters' Yours for a Song: The Women of Tin Pan Alley. That's my only credit on IMDB. I do want to make my own documentaries.