The Polaroid SX-70. A 10 minute promotional film by Charles and Ray Eames.
posted by ardgedee on Oct 16, 2009 - 15 comments

The Lumière brothers, Auguste Marie Louis Nicolas and Louis Jean, were among the earliest filmmakers. Their father, Claude-Antoine Lumière, ran a photographic firm and both brothers worked for him. It was not until their father retired in 1892 that the brothers began to create moving pictures. They patented a number of significant processes leading up to their film camera — most notably film perforations as a means of advancing the film through the camera and projector, and the cinématographe. Their first public screening of films at which admission was charged was held on December 28, 1895 in Paris. This history-making presentation featured ten short films, including their first film, Sortie des Usines Lumière à Lyon (Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory). Each film is 17 meters long, which, when hand cranked through a projector, runs approximately 50 seconds. [more inside]
posted by netbros on Oct 6, 2009 - 11 comments

Mastroianni. Bardot. Mingus. Balenciaga. Camus. McQueen. The impossible cool.
posted by pts on Aug 18, 2009 - 67 comments

They've taken my Kodachrome away, oh yeah.
posted by normy on Jun 22, 2009 - 62 comments

Lost At E Minor is an online publication of inspiring art, illustration, photography, music, fashion, film — basically contemporary pop culture.
posted by netbros on May 20, 2009 - 23 comments

Blanka is a collection of original, vintage, and limited edition posters and prints.
posted by netbros on May 16, 2009 - 9 comments

Ten years ago, a guy started collecting undeveloped rolls of film. [more inside]
posted by mudpuppie on Feb 26, 2009 - 36 comments

I work as a film location scout in New York City. My day is basically spent combing the streets for interesting and unique locations for feature films. In my travels, I often stumble across some pretty incredible sights, most of which are ignored every day by thousands of New Yorkers in too much of a rush to pay attention. As it happens, it's my job to pay attention, and I've started this blog to keep a record of what I see.
posted by grumblebee on Dec 26, 2008 - 44 comments

Photograph of Jesus is a short film by Laurie Hill illustrating the strange requests photography archivists at the vast Hulton Archive sometimes get, such as for photographs of Jesus, the Yeti, Jack the Ripper, Neil Armstrong with 11 other people on the moon and the like. This film won Getty Images' Short and Sweet Film Challenge. The three other shortlisted films were Big Red Button's gambling tale Perrington Stud, Jasmin Jodry's science fiction fantasy Star Games and Ian Mackinnon's sports story Long Jump.
posted by Kattullus on Dec 11, 2008 - 14 comments

The Thirties in Colour is a four-part series using rare colour film and photographs to give poignant and surprising insights into the 1930s. [Previously] [more inside]
posted by chuckdarwin on Nov 26, 2008 - 15 comments

Making Iron Man
posted by Brandon Blatcher on Nov 24, 2008 - 42 comments

One minute and four seconds in London, 1904. Birkbeck College professor Ian Christie rediscovered this footage in an archive in Canberra, shot for a travelogue by film pioneer Charles Urban.
posted by digaman on Oct 24, 2008 - 67 comments

Between 1908 and 1931, French philanthropist Albert Kahn funded The Archive of the Planet. He sent out still photographers and motion picture cameramen who returned with 72,000 Autochrome colour plates, 4,000 steroscopic views, and 600,000 feet of film. BBC4's startling series allows us all to see Edwardians In Colour.
posted by chuckdarwin on Aug 30, 2008 - 25 comments

Burton Holmes, Extraordinary Traveler. Burton Holmes didn't invent travel stories, slide shows, moving pictures or cross-country lectures, but he put them all together and created the travelogue (a term coined by his manager) as performance art. The site is full of information, pictures and additional links (including companion pages about the Trans-Siberian Railroad) chronicling Holmes' life and legacy.
posted by amyms on Jul 21, 2008 - 8 comments

Film is not dead it just smells funny - Analog photography blog - a nice way to discover some new photographers - a few images NSFW.
posted by carter on May 9, 2008 - 19 comments

Ross Ching is a time-lapse photographer. Ross traveled across the US, Argentina, and Chile to shoot Eclectic 2.0 (480p Quicktime) with a DSLR mounted on a telescope tripod. Here's some production stills. See how it was made here and here. View a flash version at the website of The Ghost Orchid, who provided the music.
posted by Sfving on Apr 3, 2008 - 17 comments

Darkroom book images, You may have had to of spent 100's of hours in a darkroom to appreciate this project. "Images articulated around the decline of silver-gelatin photography" Book from Nazraeli Press by Michel Campeau. {via darius himes blog}
posted by doug3505 on Jan 28, 2008 - 17 comments

Billions and Billions astrophotography CCD gallery / film gallery / equipment / tutorials
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Sep 14, 2007 - 7 comments

Gregory Colbert's Ashes and Snow has been linked to twice before on Metafilter. However, you can now view 10 minutes of his film as part of his Ted Talk--it's the most stunning nature footage I've ever seen. In the talk he also mentions a new concept he's developing called Animal Copyright, which I think is long overdue.
posted by dobbs on Jan 2, 2007 - 29 comments

"THIN is a photographic essay and a documentary film about the treatment of eating disorders. In 1997, Lauren Greenfield began documenting the lives of patients at the Renfrew Center in Coconut Grove, Florida, a forty-bed residential facility for the treatment of women with eating disorders. She subsequently returned to Renfrew to take more photographs, and was eventually given unprecedented access to film the daily lives of patients". (scroll down or search for "Greenfield"). 2002 MeFi post on Greenfield's previous project, "Girl Culture", here.
posted by matteo on Oct 16, 2006 - 23 comments

"I had come to Spain with some notion of writing newspaper articles, but I had joined the militia almost immediately." – George Orwell, writing about the revolutionary war which started 70 years ago yesterday: July 19th, 1936. Also: Anarchism and the Spanish Civil War. The Visual Front: Posters of The Spanish Civil War. Photos from the Spanish Civil War. Films from the CNT (National Confederation of Labour), 1936-1938.
posted by Len on Jul 20, 2006 - 28 comments

The Polaroid Photography Collective has a number of links to some great galleries. The multi-shot panoramas are especially nice. {some images may be nsfw}
posted by dobbs on Apr 6, 2006 - 9 comments

Oranges & Apples Digital photography is amazing and impressive in many ways, but if you choose it over film, expect to make sacrifices. I've assembled articles here exposing these sacrifices. I do this not to make a case for film, but to temper the popular view that advances in digital photography have now made film obsolete.
posted by Lanark on Feb 26, 2006 - 78 comments

The Image Culture - a discussion of the history, manipulation, desensitization and supplanting of language skills by the ubiquity of images. And no, there are no pretty pictures.
posted by peacay on Nov 19, 2005 - 38 comments

Buddhist photo documentaries and more.
posted by plep on May 31, 2005 - 5 comments

The photographs of Gregory Crewdson are variably described as disturbing (nsfw,) otherworldly, filmic and sometimes just technically stunning. He readily acknowledges the influence of David Lynch and Steven Spielberg, so it's no surprise that some of Hollywood's finest are queuing up to appear in his big budget images of skewed suburbia.
posted by fire&wings on Apr 24, 2005 - 25 comments

The Cheerful Transgressive Ever since 1971, when Larry Clark published Tulsa, an austere series chronicling his meth-shooting pals in sixties Oklahoma, Clark has made it his mission to document teenagers at their most deviant, their most vulnerable, their most sexually unhinged (possibly NSFW). And now “Larry Clark” the first American retrospective of Clark’s work, currently on display at the International Center of Photography, demonstrates the richness with which he’s mined this single subject (NSFW). More inside.
posted by matteo on Mar 31, 2005 - 48 comments

To live in a pristine land ... to roam the wilderness ... to choose a site, cut trees, and build a home ... Thousands have had such dreams, but Richard Proenneke lived them. In 1968, at 51 years of age, Richard Proenneke retired to Upper Twin Lakes, Alaska and using nothing but hand tools, built a cabin where he lived for the next 30 or so years. He filmed the cabin's construction (as well as much of nature's wonder) and kept meticulous notes on the back of wall calendars. In 1973, Sam_Keith produced a book (One Man's Wilderness: An Alaskan Odyssey) based on Proenneke's journal entries and photography. In 1999, at the age of 82, Proenneke could no longer endure the harsh winters of Alaska and moved to California to be with his family. He died there on Easter Sunday, 2003.
posted by a_day_late on Feb 10, 2005 - 16 comments

Charles Eames (1907-78) and Ray Eames (1912-88) gave shape to America's twentieth century. Their lives and work represented the nation's defining social movements: the West Coast's coming-of-age, the economy's shift from making goods to the producing information, and the global expansion of American culture. This Library of Congress exhibit outlines major themes of the Eames' life and voluminous works, including architecture, furniture, and the film Powers of Ten. It is wonderfully illustrated with artifacts, photos of their life and work, and examples from the Eames' collection of 350,000 slides.
posted by carter on Jan 12, 2005 - 14 comments

I've developed an obsession of sorts with old cameras. You should too. Digital was cool for a while, but there is something about film. Now, I'm not saying run out and get a Lomo. Lomos are for lamers. No, get yourself a Kiev 35, the poor man's Minox, or perhaps an Olympux XA. Can't find batteries for your old cameras? You're not looking hard enough. Want to hold something a bit more substational? Perhaps you should check out a Yashica Rangefinder or a Canon Canonet. A good rangefinder will make you look like better photographer, and that's what it is all about.
posted by chunking express on Dec 7, 2004 - 54 comments

"Excuse me, but we can credit sources however we choose." Some of you might have seen the pictures of Jessica Simpson as Daisy Duke which have been popping out all over. One of the sources was Film Rotation, who presented the 'story' in this post. The following day they included a follow up discussing other sites which have been covering the story including Cinema Blend adding that it was "sadly with no source credit - seems to be a pattern with them as of late." The Blend people didn't take too kindly to the criticism and this 'discussion' occured. It's captivating, but all too familiar.
posted by feelinglistless on Dec 5, 2004 - 31 comments

BadAssMovieImages.com features rare stills and artwork for viewing, with a healthy (but not exclusive) emphasis on cult cinema, and only occasional reviews and comments to compete with the goodness and/or bad-assedness. A movie fan shares his wealth with the world.
posted by LinusMines on May 3, 2004 - 9 comments

Dirkon: the Paper Camera, and more at pinhole.cz.
posted by hama7 on Feb 25, 2004 - 9 comments

Arakimentari: A Documentary Film and Journey Into the Mind Of Photographer Nobuyoshi Araki. [some nudity + salacity]
posted by hama7 on Feb 17, 2004 - 1 comment

Cidade de Deus. Possibly the best Brazilian film ever made.
posted by the fire you left me on Feb 5, 2004 - 21 comments

Pre-cinema devices & diversions - before film, multimedia amusements ranged from zoetropes and magic lantern shows to praxinoscopes and kinetescopes. Whether you're a film buff or a photographer or simply just prone to nostalgia for a day when the world seemed less jaded, you will love this site - take the time to take the tour.
posted by madamjujujive on Mar 4, 2003 - 12 comments

Could this new digital camera technology finally spell the death of traditional emulsion-film cameras? According to inventor Carver Mead, the X3 photographic sensor chip "delivers two to three times the image-producing power of today's digital cameras." Although not the first to try to bring this promising technology to the market place, Carver believes his new start-up company "Faveon," has made the breakthrough necessary to usher in the age of affordable 35mm film quality digital photography. link via techdirt
posted by lucien on Feb 11, 2002 - 42 comments

IMDB Charging Actors/Actress for Pictures The Internet Movie Data Base has provided an invaluable service to millions of Web users over the years. But now, the IMDB sees fit to charge actors and actresses to put a small 'headshot' pic on their pages.

What next? Will IMDB start charging studios to list their films? For an example of a page without a headshot, try the gorgeous Keira Knightley's page. Not so good without the pic, huh?
posted by wackybrit on Apr 22, 2001 - 16 comments