Frequently asked questions

• What is the Zapruder film?
• When was the Zapruder film released to the public?
• Where is the original Zapruder film today?
• Was the Zapruder film altered?
• Who owns the Zapruder film?
• How much was the Zapruder film worth?
• What does the Zapruder film show?
• Was the Zapruder film doctored?
• Where can I watch the Zapruder film?
• How much did Life magazine pay for the Zapruder film?
• Who was Abraham Zapruder?
• What camera shot the Zapruder film?
• How many frames are in the Zapruder film?

The Zapruder film is a 26.6-second, 486-frame color home movie shot by Dallas dressmaker Abraham Zapruder on 8mm Kodachrome II film at 18.3 frames per second. It captured the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963, and is the only continuous visual record of the shooting — walk it through in the frame-by-frame timeline.

Individual frames were published in Life magazine in late 1963 and 1964, but the film was not shown in motion to a national audience until March 6, 1975, when Robert Groden and Dick Gregory presented it on Geraldo Rivera's Good Night America on ABC. Life returned the film's rights to the Zapruder family in 1975 for $1. The camera-original was legally taken into public ownership by the U.S. government in 1998 under the JFK Records Act — see the full chain of custody and ownership pages.

The camera-original is held in cold storage at the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in College Park, Maryland. Copyright to the images was transferred to the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza by the Zapruder family in 2000. High-resolution scans are available through both institutions for research and licensed reproduction — details on the original location page.

The mainstream forensic finding — from the HSCA Photographic Evidence Panel (1979) and the ARRB's technical review by Kodak's Roland Zavada (1998) — is that the camera-original held by NARA shows no evidence of alteration and is consistent with a single, continuous exposure through Abraham Zapruder's Bell & Howell Zoomatic. A minority position, associated primarily with Doug Horne's 2009 volume, argues that the extant original is a re-created optical composite made at the CIA's National Photographic Interpretation Center on the weekend of November 23–24, 1963. That claim is contested by the ARRB's own technical staff and has not been accepted in the peer-reviewed literature — the full argument is on the Was the film altered? page, with the underlying government reviews summarized in Investigations.

Physical custody of the camera-original rests with the U.S. government via the National Archives. Copyright to the film's images is held by the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza. The Zapruder family retained copyright until 1999 and transferred it to the museum in 2000 as a gift — the full legal history is on the ownership page.

A three-member federal arbitration panel ruled in 1999 that the U.S. government owed the Zapruder family $16 million (plus interest) for the taking of the camera-original under the JFK Records Act. The panel split 2–1, with the majority accepting a valuation based on the film's status as a unique historical artifact rather than as ordinary intellectual property — the arbitration and preceding ARRB seizure are covered in ownership and chain of custody.

The film shows the presidential limousine turning from Houston onto Elm Street in Dealey Plaza, then President Kennedy reacting to a shot as he emerges from behind the Stemmons Freeway sign around frame 225. Governor John Connally is visibly hit in the following seconds. At frame 313, a fatal head shot is recorded. The limousine then accelerates under the triple underpass. The 486-frame sequence is the only continuous visual record of the shooting itself — sequenced in the frame-by-frame walkthrough.

"Doctored" and "altered" describe the same claim, and the answer is the same: no peer-reviewed forensic examination has found evidence of tampering in the camera-original held at the National Archives. Kodak's Roland Zavada, commissioned by the Assassination Records Review Board in 1998, confirmed the film's edge print, intersprocket imagery, and single-camera-run characteristics are consistent with an unaltered Kodachrome II original exposed in Zapruder's Bell & Howell Zoomatic — the alteration hypothesis and Zavada's rebuttal are laid out on the Was the film altered? page.

Licensed reproductions of the film are available through the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, which holds the copyright. The U.S. National Archives provides research access to preservation scans of the camera-original. Numerous unlicensed copies circulate online; frame quality and stabilization vary widely, and most published sequences derive from either the Life magazine transparencies or the 1997 MPI Home Video release. For the modern 4K/60fps AI-upscaled versions and their forensic caveats, see AI restoration.

Time Inc., publisher of Life magazine, paid Abraham Zapruder $150,000 for all rights to the film on November 25, 1963 — three days after the assassination. The initial agreement on November 23 covered print rights only for $50,000; the expanded contract two days later added motion picture rights. Zapruder donated the first $25,000 to the family of slain Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit. Life returned the rights to the Zapruder family in 1975 for a token payment of $1 — the full sequence of contracts is on ownership.

Abraham Zapruder (1905–1970) was a Ukrainian-born dressmaker who ran Jennifer Juniors, a women's clothing manufacturer in the Dal-Tex Building on Dealey Plaza. On November 22, 1963, he stood on a concrete pergola on the north side of Elm Street with his Bell & Howell Zoomatic 8mm camera to film the presidential motorcade, inadvertently producing the most complete visual record of the assassination. He testified before the Warren Commission on July 22, 1964, and died of stomach cancer in 1970 — the full biography and camera details are on provenance.

Abraham Zapruder used a Bell & Howell Zoomatic Director Series Model 414 PD 8mm home movie camera, loaded with Kodachrome II Safety Film Type A. The camera was set to run at its top speed, which Kodak's Roland Zavada measured at 18.3 frames per second — the value used to time the assassination sequence. The camera itself is preserved at the U.S. National Archives — more on the camera and film stock in provenance.

The full Zapruder film contains 486 frames. The assassination sequence proper — from the limousine turning onto Elm Street to its acceleration under the triple underpass — runs from roughly frame 133 to frame 486. Each frame is individually numbered under the Life magazine convention adopted by the Warren Commission and preserved in the National Archives reference set. Walk the sequence in frame-by-frame, or jump straight to frame 313.

For the film's creation and camera, see Provenance. For every documented custodian from Kodak Dallas to NARA, see Chain of Custody. For the fatal frame, see Frame 313. Term definitions: Glossary. Full citation list: Sources.

Primary references for the answers above: ARRB Final Report (1998), HSCA Final Report (1979), In re Zapruder Film arbitration award (1999).