Via
io9: "The first nine Superman cartoons produced by Fleischer Studios from 1941 to 1942 are a wonder of animated retrofuturism, giving us a peek into a world that not only had a flying superstrong protector, but also filled viewers' heads with dreams of autonomous robots, comet-controlling telescopes, and machines that could shake the Earth. These films are in the public domain and have been available on the Internet Archive," but now Warner Bros. is releasing them (remastered) on YouTube. The first short,
"Superman" (also known as "The Mad Scientist,") was nominated for an Academy Award. Also see:
The Super Guide to the Fleischer Superman Cartoons. Find links to all nine episodes and more inside.
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on Nov 25, 2012 -
28 comments
'TV historians will tell you that “Felix the Cat” was one of the first images ever broadcast on television (when RCA broadcast a Felix doll in 1928 on experimental station W2XBS) — but it wasn’t until the late ’40s that the first animated character was created expressly for TV.
Crusader Rabbit appeared for the very first time on KNBH (Los Angeles) on August 1, 1950, and featured a Don Quixote-like title character aided by his friend Ragland T. “Rags” Tiger as they pursued adventures in serial (i.e. cliffhanger) installments.' On November 8th, the voice of Crusader Rabbit, Lucille Bliss,
passed away at the age of 96. Ms. Bliss may be more familiar to younger fans as the voice of
Smurfette, from
The Smurfs, or as
Ms. Bitters on Invader ZIM.
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on Nov 15, 2012 -
18 comments
During the Golden Age of Hollywood and until 1967, mainstream movie studios were
banned by the Production Code from depicting taboo topics like drug addiction, explicit murder and venereal disease, or even showing explicit nudity. But in the 1930's and 1940's, films marketed as "educational" could and did fly under the radar, and three of the best known 'educational' propaganda exploitation films are:
Sex Madness (1935),
Reefer Madness (1936) and
The Cocaine Fiends (1938).
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on Oct 15, 2012 -
30 comments
In 2005, Steven Spielberg and Dreamworks produced a 6 episode miniseries that spanned the period of expansion of the United States into the American West, from 1825 to 1890. Through fictional and historical characters, the series used two primary symbols--the wagon wheel and the Lakota medicine wheel -- to join the story of two families: one Native American, one White settlers, as they witnessed many of the 19th century's pivotal historical milestones. The award-winning
Into The West can now be
seen in its entirety on YouTube.
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on Sep 20, 2012 -
12 comments
In May, YouTube
announced they would be hosting a lineup of original video channels, in a possible attempt to compete with network and cable television. Among the new offerings was
WIGS, the (
NSFW) brainchild of director/producer/writers Jon Avnet and Rodrigo Garcia, of original, scripted dramatic series and short films exploring female characters.
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on Jun 27, 2012 -
14 comments
Kirby Ferguson's fourth and final installment of
Everything is a Remix:
System Failure has been released. (Also on
YouTube.) It covers intellectual property rights, the derivative nature of creativity, patents and copyright.
Transcript.
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on Feb 17, 2012 -
5 comments
Человек с киноаппаратом ("Man with a Movie Camera") is a classic experimental documentary film that was released in 1929. Directed by pioneer Soviet filmmaker
Dziga Vertov, this classic, silent documentary film has no story and no actors, and is actually three documentaries in one. Ostensibly it documents 24 hours of life in a single city in the Soviet Union. But it is also a documentary of the filming of that documentary and a depiction of an audience watching that documentary and their responses. "We see the cameraman and the editing of the film, but what we don't see is any of the film itself."
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on Feb 13, 2012 -
26 comments
ROSA (vimeo) A sci-fi short animated film created by a new Spanish artist, Jesús Orellana. This was a year-long, solo project created without a budget.
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on Nov 11, 2011 -
8 comments
Like a "modern-day pirate," 75-year-old Ray Ives has been diving for sunken treasure for decades. Wearing an ancient, bronze-helmeted diving suit, he searches the ocean floor and keeps a huge collection of marine salvage (including antique cannon balls, 'bottles, bells, swords, portholes and diving gear') in a shipping container "museum" at a British marina.
Ray: A Life Underwater:
Vimeo /
YouTube. (A short film documentary.)
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on Sep 23, 2011 -
5 comments
From 1935 to 1951, Time Magazine bridged the gap between print & radio news reporting and the new visual medium of film, with
March of Time: award-winning newsreel reports that were a combination of objective documentary, dramatized fiction and pro-American, anti-totalitarian propaganda. They “often
tackled subjects and themes that audiences weren’t used to seeing —
foreign affairs,
social trends, public-health issues — and did so with a combination of panache and subterfuge that today seems either absurd or visionary.”
(Previous two links have autoplaying video.) By 1937, the short films were being seen by as many as 26 million people every month and
may have helped steer public opinion on numerous issues,
including (
eventually) America’s
entry to WWII. Video samples are available at
Time.com, the
March of Time Facebook page and the entire collection is available online,
(free registration required) at
HBO Archives. [more inside]
posted by zarq
on Aug 22, 2011 -
8 comments
"What do you get when you combine 15kgs of silicon, 2km of wool, 46 highly enthusiastic filmmakers and 2 years of hard work? …
Zero." (youtube / also on
vimeo) Official
site.
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on Jun 30, 2011 -
14 comments
In 2009,
Ctrl.Alt.Shift, the "youth
initiative of Christian Aid," held a national competition in the UK for aspiring filmmakers aged 18 to 25. Their mission: create a short film treatment based around three key issues: "War + Peace," "Gender + Power" and "HIV + Stigma." The results were then screened to an audience at the 2009 Raindance Film Festival. The films:
1000 Voices,
HIV: The Musical,
Man Made,
No Way Through and
War School.
(All YouTube links. Vimeo links and descriptions of each film are inside this post.) These films deal with adult subject matter and may be disturbing for some viewers. Some may also be nsfw. [more inside]
posted by zarq
on May 24, 2011 -
3 comments
"Let's do those drive-in totals. We have: Nineteen dead bodies
(plus fragments). Ten breasts
(shame on you, TNT censors). Two zombie breasts. One-hundred twenty-five zombies. Mummy dogs. One-half zombie dog. Ten gallons blood. Brain-eating. Gratuitous embalming. Zombie fu. Nekkid punk-rocker fondue. Gratuitous midget zombie. Torso S&M. One motor vehicle chase
(totalled by zombies). Pool cue fu. No aardvarking. Heads roll. Brains roll. Arms roll. Hands roll.
Joe Bob says, Check It Out." Only on
MonsterVision.
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on Feb 3, 2011 -
31 comments
"We gathered our favorite cutting-edge content creators from across the internet and gave each of them a deceptively simple mission -- tell a short story in an innovative way." Showtime presents:
Short Stories. [more inside]
posted by zarq
on Dec 20, 2010 -
4 comments
From the BBC blog of documentary filmmaker
Adam Curtis:
Experiments in the Laboratory of Consumerism 1959-67:
"I have quite a lot of film from the archives that was shot in the Madison Avenue agencies in the mid 1960s, and I thought I would put some sections up. It is great because it shows some of the major advertising men and women of the time, many of whom are the real-life models for characters in Mad Men." Includes a 9-minute video interview with the late
Herta Herzog.
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on Aug 23, 2010 -
17 comments
When "Proto-Pop" artist
Larry Rivers' died in
2002, he left behind extensive archives of his letters, paperwork, photographs and film documenting the New York artistic and literary scene from the 1940s through the 1980s. They chronicle his friendships and relationships with dozens of artists, musicians and writers, from Willem de Kooning and Andy Warhol to Frank O’Hara. Also included: films and videos of his two adolescent daughters, naked or topless, being interviewed by their father about their developing breasts. Now, one daughter, who says she was pressured to participate beginning when she was 11, is
demanding that material be removed from the archive and returned to her and her sister. [more inside]
posted by zarq
on Jul 8, 2010 -
74 comments
