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>
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