Short film of Amelia Earhart surfaces

Rare footage of Amelia Earhart's final days before her ill-fated around the world trip, has surfaced in the US.

A publisher released the grainy, but remarkably well preserved three-and-a-half minute home movie on Tuesday.

It shows the 39-year-old smiling and self-confident, climbing aboard her plane the day before she began the trip that ended in her mysterious disappearance over the Pacific in 1937.

The clip does little to solve one of aviation's enduring riddles, in which a 39-year-old Earhart and her navigator, 44-year-old Fred Noonan vanished as they were flying from Papua New Guinea to Howland Island on July 2, 1937.

The film was shot by John Bresnik, who tagged along with his brother Albert, Earhart's official photographer, as he shot images of her inspecting her Lockheed 10 Electra.

Author and historian Douglas Westfall of The Paragon Agency, which is publishing the film clip "Amelia Earhart's Last Photo Shoot" along with a book of the same name, said he was approached a decade ago by John Bresnik's son, who revealed he had a potentially historic 16-millimetre film that his father had kept for decades in his office.

When the elder Bresnik died, the son kept the film untouched for 20 years, until Westfall coaxed him to let him make a digital copy.

"It was remarkable," Westfall told AFP about the black-and-white footage, which shows Earhart looking "coquettish, posing for the camera" in a stylish pants-and-sweater outfit.

"Looking at Earhart - I mean, how many of those are you going to get in a lifetime?"

Her legacy continues to fascinate. This week, the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery launches its 11th expedition in the South Pacific to search for more clues backing up the theory that Earhart crash-landed on Nikumaroro atoll.