By the beginning of the sound-on-film era (starting in 1928), there would have been many people in their 70s, 80s and 90s who would have lived through the Civil War and other major historical events. Are their any interviews of these people's stories bearing witness on film? If not, why on earth not?!
Edit: I've been made aware of the former slave recordings, but nothing on film. This notion occurred to me while watching old early 1930's films. Seeing the older actors perform made me stop and think: This person was alive during the Civil War. I wonder what their memories of the 1800's were like?
Surely historians the world over - especially those with government backing - would have scrambled to get documentary interviews of this generation on film once that technology became available! Alas, it seems almost all of our early sound film was relegated to current events and entertainment...
Here are some audio recordings by former slaves.
I'm aware of snippets of recordings of veterans and others - Union and Confederate veterans meeting at the 75th anniversary of Gettysburg, individual testimonies, performances by veterans of the rebel yell, that sort of thing - but not of any other curated collections of that scope and quality.
Not an interview but here is footage of civil war veterns recreating the "rebel yell" http://youtu.be/s6jSqt39vFM
I found this interesting mini documentary that contains footage of veterans, though they're not being interviewed. If there is any footage taken during the time you specified, chances are they would be within an archives, and not accessible online.
Films that had synchronized sound, "talkies", didn't exist until 1927. According to Ryan Piccirillo, "the adoption of sound was a major step forward in the technological evolution of film, but in order for it to be gainfully applied, the practice in itself had to go through a self-contained evolution." That coupled with that fact that film making was an expensive industry, people were looking to make money and produce more entertainment than anything else. You will notice that the footage in that documentary was obtained at Civil War veteran events. It's not just one camera sitting down with one person. Film equipment would have been expensive at the time. It was probably used by a film enthusiast/director, and would not be easily accessible by a historian.
On another note, there wasn't a focus on the social history of the Civil War until the Civil Rights Movement. According to Stuart McConnell, historians at the turn of the 20th century focused on "the coming of the war, on its moral irrepressibility." Historians immediately following this historiographical theme "emphasized economical conflict between Northern capitalists and Southern agrarians."
Mcconnell, Stuart. "The Civil War and Historical Memory: A Historiographical Survey." OAH Magazine of History 8.1, The Civil War (1993): 3-6. JSTOR. Web. 26 Feb. 2015. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/25162917?ref=no-x-route:be999d92a69b114c0043fc6f7576ab7b.
Piccirillo, Ryan A. "The Technological Evolution of Filmmaking and its Relation to Quality in Cinema." Student Pulse 3.08 (2011). http://www.studentpulse.com/a?id=560
Are there recordings of veterans of other 19th century conflicts such as the Franco-Prussian and Austro-Prussian Wars, Taiping Rebellion, Boshin War, First Sino-Japanese War, etc.?
there's a gameshow from the 50's that had a guy who witnessed Lincolns' death, kind of tangential, but interesting none the less. here's the clip
Wow. Those are really great resource's. Thank you.