C. O. Baptista Film Collection & Archives

The C. O. Baptista Film Collection & Archives

The C. O. [Carlos (or Charles) Octavio] Baptista Collection Collection and Archives contain some of the earliest Christian films produced in the United States. The Collection includes includes 89 live action and animated films, hand-painted title cards, correspondence, documents, and an original 16mm “Miracle” projector, designed and manufactured by Baptista himself.

The films housed at Regent date from 1941 to 1958 and cover nearly the entire span of Baptista's creative work. They were released under various production company names, including Scriptures Visualized Institute, C. O. Baptista Film Mission and C. O. Baptista Films. Thirty-four of the films at Regent are the only know copy in existence. The remaining fifty-five films have only one known additional copy, held at the Billy Graham Center Archive in Chicago.

The Miracle projector, designed in 1944, was a groundbreaking machine for film distribution, both because it weighed only 25 pounds (less than half the weight of typical projectors of its day), and because of its extreme durability. Baptista guaranteed his projectors would work "until the return of the Lord."