Film Believed to Show Amelia Earhart Before Her Last Flight
The footage was shot by the brother of her personal photographer.
— -- Newly rediscovered footage shows the last known recording of Amelia Earhart before she departed for her last flight.
The black-and-white video is believed to have been shot by the brother of Earhart's personal photographer, Al Bresnik, during their last photo shoot together in the spring of 1937.
Downloadable copies of the film are now being sold in conjunction with a new 80-page book about Earhart's doomed trip around the world. Her plane is believed to have crashed in the South Pacific on July 2, 1937.
The Associated Press reported that Bresnik's brother, John, held on to the footage that he shot ahead of the flight until his death in 1992, and his son held on to it until this year, when he contacted a publishing house, The Paragon Agency.
"I didn't even know what was on the film until my dad died and I took it home and watched it," Bresnik told the AP recently. "It just always sat it in a plain box on a shelf in his office, and on the outside it said, 'Amelia Earhart, Burbank Airport, 1937.'"
Experts believe that it is legitimate.
"You see Albert on the ground with his big camera," Nicole Swinford, the author of the book being sold with the downloadable film told the AP. "He's on his back and he's shooting upwards towards Amelia and she's, like, kind of towering over him, towards this plane. It's how the world saw Amelia, as this heroine and she was this sign of hope in the Great Depression."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.