Vintage Church-Craft Pictures Stori-Strip: Annanais and Saphira

Church-Craft Pictures Inc. of St. Louis Missouri was the long time ministry of the Kiehl family (Rev. Paul G. Kiehl and his father Rev. Henry G. Kiehl) which started in the 1940s and lasted for over 50 years. Church-Craft produces numerous visual aids for school and church use, and were pioneers in story viewers used in schools for decades. The kit pictured above includes a long vertical film strip that would have been inserted into the Story-viewer with a story to read with the images.

Church-Craft also produced several films, probably the most famous one today is the Christmas short "Brightest Night".

Christmas Library 2015 - Brightest Night (1952)

Brightest Night is a 1952 short film produced by Church-Craft Pictures, Inc. under the ministry of the Rev. Paul G. Kiehl. Church-Craft was a multimedia ministry based in St. Louis, Missouri that produced films strips, for homes, churches and schools.  Their "Storiview" items, similar to the Viewmaster toys, are still collected around the world. In Brightest Night, a mother and father explain to their children the story of the birth of Christ, which is re-enacted with colorful miniatures. Church-Craft would use this technique several times in their film strip productions.

Very little is known about the production of this film, and one wonders if the family are really related and if so who were they.  The film began to resurface on DVD and Youtube within the last decade.

ENJOY!

For more about the history of Church-Craft's Storiview products: LINK