Monday, August 26, 2013
1933 Dawn to Dawn
Director: Josef Berne, Seymour Stern
Notes: a.k.a "Black Dawn," short, Naturalist melodrama.
Storyline: On a desolate farm, a man and his grown daughter eek out a living. He's aging and ill; she's lonely and wan. He's adamant that she have no contact with men, so she's a prisoner of the farm. One hot day, while she takes a nap beside a haystack after plowing, a drifter approaches her. She sees a chance at a life less desperate. The drifter comes for supper and the old farmer let's the young man spend the night. But will he allow his daughter's longing to express itself, and if she must, who will she choose? Written by <jhailey@hotmail.com>
Sunday, August 25, 2013
1933 Oil—A Symphony in Motion
Director: M.G. MacPherson, Jean Michelson
Notes: Only extant Artkino production.
Storyline: A self proclaimed saga of oil, celebrating the speed and power of plane, trains, and automobiles. It starts with a look at a farm, beneath which is oil. Soon, farmland is dotted with derricks. It's on to a refinery. Then, shots of oil derricks, their pumps and pistons moving, are interspersed with images of men at work and machines in motion powered by oil. Horse-drawn carts are discarded. Modern wheels turn. The narration consists of title cards written in a grandiose and rhetorical style - the bones of yesterday become the blood of today. Written by <jhailey@hotmail.com>
1933 Une nuit sur le mont chauve
Director: Alexandre Alexieff, Claire Parker
Notes: First pinscreen animation, also dated to 1934, 1931.
Storyline: Mussorgsky's composition is the soundtrack for this pin-screen animated take on night and wild things. A scarecrow blows down, clouds move by quickly. Beings take shape; a town appears, animals flee, and a horse gallops by. A child looks on. Monsters run and float by: the phantasmagoric is everywhere. A woman's figure tumbles through space. A clash ensues. The horse falls. Goblins take control. The night and its denizens are relentless. Forms appear and become grotesque. Will dawn and calm ever come? Written by <jhailey@hotmail.com>
Monday, August 19, 2013
1933 Lot in Sodom
Lot in Sodom
Director: James Sibley Watson, Jr., Melville Webber
Notes: Experimental short based on Biblical story.
Storyline: The story is much closer to the tale than other films like Sodom and Gomorrah. Sodom is a place of sin. An angel appears there and he is welcomed by Lot. The people of Sodom want to have sex with him. Lot refuses; then the angel tells him to escape the city with his wife and daughter. Sodom is then destroyed by the flames; Lot's wife is turned to a pillar of salt for having looked back.
All intertitles are quotes from the Bible. [wikipedia]
Saturday, August 17, 2013
Tuesday, August 13, 2013
1932 La cartomancienne (The Fortune Teller)
Director: Jerome Hill
Notes: Precursor to the mythopoeic, poetic style of experimental film that emerged in the 1940s, tinting and hand-coloring added in the 1960s
Storyline: In a European seaside village, a maiden takes clean sheets down from the clothesline. Carrying her basket of linens home, she stops to consult a fortune teller, whose been napping the the sun. The cartomancienne sees love in the cards. The young woman pauses to reflect. We then see water, swirling, and into view swims a man, as if just appearing on earth. He arrives on shore - is he just in her mind's eye, or is he real? She weaves a garland of for her hair. Will they meet? Written by <jhailey@hotmail.com>
1932 Poem 8
Director: Emlen Etting
Notes: Dance film, shot in 8mm, silent.
Storyline: A film without words. A young woman dances in a field, she projects innocence. More experienced women follow, offering invitations of cigarettes and cocktails and then of sex. A man responds, but is he a lover or a madman. In between this sporadic narrative, a train arrives in New York City, its skyline appears, a ship leaves port, while well-wishers wave goodbye, and a boat's wake leaves a pattern in water. Near the end, a woman draped in white muslin dances and swirls in a field, her eyes closed. Leaves fall, a woman walks, a man seems to follow her. Women's invitations, men's responses. Possibilities abound, but not all are benign. Written by <jhailey@hotmail.com>
Sunday, August 11, 2013
1932 Blood of a Poet
Blood of a Poet
Director: Jean Cocteau
Notes: Surrealist feature, produced by Charles de Noailles; often misdated to 1930-31.
Storyline: A young artist draws a face at a canvas on his easel. Suddenly the mouth on the drawing comes into life and starts talking. The artist tries to wipe it away with his hand, but when he looks into the hand he finds the living mouth on his palm. He tries to wipe it off on the mouth of an unfinished statue of a young woman. The statue comes into life and tells him that the only way out of the studio is through the looking glass. The artist jumps into the mirror and comes to the Hotel of Dramatic Lunacies. He peeps through the keyholes of a series of hotel rooms. In the last room he sees desperate meetings of hermaphrodites. One of them has a signboard saying "Mortal danger". Back in the studio the artist crushes the statue with a sledgehammer. Because of this he himself becomes a statue, located at the side of a square. Some schoolboys start a snowball fight around the statue. One of the boys is killed by a snowball. A fashionable couple start playing cards at a table beside the corpse. The woman tells the man that unless he holds the ace of hearts he is doomed. The man takes the ace of hearts from the dead boy. The child's guardian, a black angel, appears and takes away the corpse as well as the card. Losing the ace of hearts the man shoots himself. The woman is transformed into the unfinished statue from the studio, and walks away. Written by Maths Jesperson {maths.jesperson1@comhem.se}
Thursday, August 8, 2013
1930 It's a Bird (partially missing)
Director: Harold Mueller
Notes: Strange, semi-animated short where an egg transforms into an automobile.
Storyline: Charlie, working on a junkjard, always trying to help people in the most impossible ways with junk from his work place, hears from a German professor, that there is a bird, a Belgish Kongo, that eats metal. Charlie sets out on a ridiculous hunting expedition to catch one. With some music - the birds love music - and a strange worm he is able to catch one, but even then the bird offers some even more over-the-top surprises. Written by Stephan Eichenberg <eichenbe@fak-cbg.tu-muenchen.de>
1930 L'Âge d'Or
Director: Luis Buñuel
Notes: Notorious surrealist feature, produced by Charles De Noaille.
Storyline: Bunuel's first feature has more of a plot than Un Chien Andalou, but it's still a pure Surrealist film, so this is only a vague outline. A man and a woman are passionately in love with one another, but their attempts to consummate that passion are constantly thwarted, by their families, the Church and bourgeois society. Written by Michael Brooke <michael@everyman.demon.co.uk>
1930 Takový je zivot (Such is Life)
Director: Karl Junghans
Notes: Slovak avant-garde social realist feature; silent.
Storyline: A story about domestic life in a typical working-class environment. Life and trials and how little situations have big consequences.[themoviedb.org]
1930 Tomatoes Another Day
Director: James Sibley Watson, Jr.
Notes: Absurdist comedy written by Alec Wilder
Storyline: The images on the screen tell it all. In a drawing room, the clock shows two on an afternoon. Adulterous lovers cling; her husband is due home momentarily, so he leaves. She goes to a table to play solitaire, sitting on her departed lover's hat. She removes it and sets it on the table as her husband enters. She denies anyone has been with her, except her lover. She and her husband go into the bedroom. The lover comes back for his hat. The married couple returns to the drawing room, and the men confront each other, with cigarettes, pistol, and puns, while she sits at the table. Is there anything anyone can do for the other in this satire on the needlessness of talking pictures? Written by <jhailey@hotmail.com>
Monday, August 5, 2013
1929 Man with a Movie Camera
Director: Dziga Vertov
Storyline: A cameraman travels around a city with a camera slung over his shoulder, documenting urban life with dazzling inventiveness.[IMDb]
1929 Un Chien Andalou
Director: Luis Buñuel
Notes: Short, surrealist film written by Buñuel and Salvador Dalí
Storyline: In a dream-like sequence, a woman's eye is slit open--juxtaposed with a similarly shaped cloud obsucuring the moon moving in the same direction as the knife through the eye--to grab the audience's attention. The French phrase "ants in the palms," (which means that someone is "itching" to kill) is shown literally. A man pulls a piano along with the tablets of the Ten Commandments and a dead donkey towards the woman he's itching to kill. A shot of differently striped objects is repeatedly used to connect scenes. Written by Ryan T. Casey <RTCasey@mn.uswest.net>
1928 Koko's Earth Control
Notes: Animated cartoon with exceptional visual dynamism; flash frames.
Storyline: Koko the Clown and his dog Fitz walk into a building where levers that control various aspects of the Earth are located. After Fitz presses a particular lever, the world goes topsy-turvy and out-of-control.[IMDb]
1928 The Life and Death of 9413 - A Hollywood Extra
Notes: Ultra low budget anti-Hollywood film
Storyline: This short experimental film tells the story of a man who comes to Hollywood to become a star, only to fail and be dehumanized (he is identified by the number 9314 written on his forehead), after which he dies and goes on to Heaven where the number is removed. Written by George Schneiderman
1928 Uberfall
Director: Erno Metzner
Storyline: The film centers on the struggles of a German citizen who happens upon a counterfeit coin lying in a gutter. The opening sequence of the movie gives a brief glimpse into the notion that the coin might be "cursed," as another passerby is struck down by a car while reaching for the coin in the middle of the road. Although the finder of the coin is at first glad, he soon regrets ever having picked it up. [wikipedia]
1928 L'Argent
Director: Marcel L'Herbier
Notes: Experimental, modernized treatment of Zola novel
Storyline: The business tycoon Nicolas Saccard is nearly ruined by his rival Gunderman, when he tries to raise capital for his company. To push up the price of his stock, Saccard plans a publicity stunt involving the aviator Jacques Hamelin flying across the Atlantic to Guyana and drilling for oil there, much to the dismay of Hamelin's wife Line. While Hamelin is away, Saccard tries to seduce Line. Line finally realizes that she and her husband were pawns in Saccard's scheme, and she accuses him of stock fraud. Written by Will Gilbert
Sunday, August 4, 2013
1927 Berlin: Symphony of a Great City
Director: Walter Ruttmann
Notes: City film
Storyline: A train speeds through the country on its way to Berlin, then gradually slows down as it pulls into the station. It is very early in the morning, about 5:00 AM, and the great city is mostly quiet. But before long there are some signs of activity, and a few early risers are to be seen on the streets. Soon the new day is well underway - it's just a typical day in Berlin, but a day full of life and energy. Written by Snow Leopard
1926 Mother
Mother
Director: Vsevolod Pudovkin
Notes: Gripping social realist drama, heavy use of montage.
Storyline: In this film, the mother of Pavel Vlasov is pulled into the revolutionary conflict when her husband and son find themselves on opposite sides during a worker's strike. After her husband dies during the failed strike, she betrays her son's ideology in order to try, in vain, to save his life. He is arrested, tried in what amounts to a judicial farce, and sentenced to heavy labor in a prison camp. During his incarceration, his mother aligns herself with him and his ideology and joins the revolutionaries. In the climax of the movie, the mother and hundreds of others march to the prison in order to free the prisoners, who are aware of the plan and have planned their escape. Ultimately, the troops of the Tsar suppress the uprising, killing both mother and son in the final scenes.[wikipedia]
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