1932 Poem 8

Director: Emlen Etting
Cast:  Mary Binney Montgomery, Caresse Crosby
Country: USA

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>

1932 Blood of a Poet

Blood of a Poet


Director: Jean Cocteau
Cast:  Lee Miller, Pauline Carton, Odette Talazacuez
Country: FRANCE

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}

1930 It's a Bird (partially missing)

Director:  Harold Mueller
Cast:  Charles Bowers, Lowell Thomas
Country: USA

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
Cast:  Gaston Modot, Lya Lys, Max Ernst
Country: FRANCE

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
Cast:  Vera Baranovskaya, Theodor Pistek
Country: CZECHOSLOVAKIA

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.
Country: USA

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>

1929 Man with a Movie Camera

Man with a Movie Camera

Director:  Dziga Vertov
Country:  SOVIET UNION


Storyline:  A cameraman travels around a city with a camera slung over his shoulder, documenting urban life with dazzling inventiveness.[IMDb]