The
George Eastman House is producing a series of nicely produced videos, each about 10 minutes long, demonstrating
every major technological development in photographic process with guidance from historians, curators, and artists and illustrated by objects from their collection. There are more to come, but you can start now with
The Dageurrotype,
The Collodion Process,
The Albumen Print,
The Woodburytype,
The Platium Print, and
The Gelatin Silver Print.
posted by Miko
on May 5, 2013 -
12 comments
Makers: Women Who Make America is a sweeping 3-hour documentary of the movement for women's equality in the last half of the twentieth century. Airing this month on US public television, it's accompanied by an
online archive of videos of interviews with individual women in leadership across a variety of fields. Leaders and activists, celebrities and pioneers, and everyday women retell the story of their awakening, organizing, and world-changing efforts.
posted by Miko
on Feb 28, 2013 -
5 comments
A collection of color photography and film footage of Paris and the surrounding area - from the early 20th century! - has been made available on the
website of the Albert-Kahn Museum.
posted by jph
on Jan 25, 2013 -
9 comments
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
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
Shouldn't we credit the director, the one who decided to shoot 75 feet, for the success of the Tramp? Keystone didn't have writers in those days, but did the director of Mabel's Strange Predicament unleash the Tramp? Doesn't Sergio Leone deserve some credit for Clint Eastwood's Man With No Name? Doesn't the director dictate tempo and decide who gets the camera's attention? Isn't the director's job to seek out the hidden talents of his actors and make sure they end up on screen? Doesn't a good director jump on a happy accident like the Tramp and ride it with a prayer of gratitude? [more inside]
posted by latkes
on Apr 18, 2012 -
23 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
We've all seen variations on the personal time-lapse video --
a snapshot every day for six years, or a look at
a young girl's first decade. But nobody's done it quite like
Sam Klemke. For thirty-five years the
itinerant freelance cartoonist has documented his life in short year-end reviews, a funny, weary, eccentric, and hopeful record dating all the way back to 1977. Recently optioned for
documentary treatment by the
government of Australia, you can skim Sam's opus in reverse in the striking video
"35 Years Backwards Thru Time with Sam Klemke," an ever-evolving home movie montage that grows grainier and grainier as it tracks Sam
"from a paunchy middle aged white bearded self deprecating schluby old fart, to a svelt, full haired, clean shaven, self-important but clueless 20 year old."
posted by Rhaomi
on Dec 31, 2011 -
7 comments
A decade on, the Coen brothers' woefully underrated
O Brother, Where Art Thou? [alt] is remembered for
a lot of things: its sun-drenched, sepia-rich
cinematography (a pioneer of
digital color grading), its
whimsical humor,
fluid vernacular, and
many subtle references to Homer's
Odyssey. But one part of its legacy truly stands out:
the music.
Assembled by
T-Bone Burnett, the soundtrack is a cornucopia of American folk music, exhibiting everything from
cheery ballads and
angelic hymns to
wistful blues and
chain-gang anthems. Woven into the plot of the film through radio and live performances, the songs lent the story a
heartfelt, homespun feel that echoed its cultural heritage,
a paean and uchronia of the Old South.
Though the multiplatinum album was recently
reissued, the movie's medley is best heard via famed documentarian
D. A. Pennebaker's
Down from the Mountain, an
extraordinary yet
intimate concert film focused on a night of live music by the soundtrack's stars (among them
Gillian Welch,
Emmylou Harris,
Chris Thomas King, bluegrass legend
Dr. Ralph Stanley) and wryly hosted by
John Hartford, an accomplished
fiddler,
riverboat captain, and
raconteur whose struggle with terminal cancer made this his last major performance. The film is free in its entirety on
Hulu and
YouTube -- click inside for individual clips, song links, and breakdowns of
the set list's fascinating history.
[more inside]
posted by Rhaomi
on Dec 22, 2011 -
107 comments
The Burton Holmes Archive has information about Burton Holmes, the travel writer who became the first person to make filmic travelogues. More importantly, they also have a lot of
film clips by Holmes and his associate,
André de la Varre, who was also a great travelogue maker himself. Watching these clips is not quite time travel, but it is as close as we can get. Take a look at
Reykjavík, Iceland, in 1926,
Lake Michigan in 20s,
Cairo in 1932 and
the 1955 Rio de Janeiro carnival. The later films have sound and narration, but I prefer the silent ones.
[Burton Holmes previously, André de la Varre previously, and the Travel Film Archive, which runs Burton Holmes site, previously]
posted by Kattullus
on Oct 26, 2011 -
5 comments
The Reel History of Britain, a BFI/BBC co-production, brings archive film into the nation’s living rooms. The footage shown in the series has been selected from the hundreds of thousands of films and programmes preserved in Britain’s film and television archives. We are complementing the series by making many of the films featured in The Reel History of Britain available online in their entirety, alongside expert commentary from the nation’s archive curators.
posted by Trurl
on Oct 17, 2011 -
4 comments
In an effort to preserve the rich story behind this landmark film, CONELRAD has spent the last two years thoroughly researching DUCK AND COVER's production history as well as its initial public reception in 1952. Interviews were conducted with living participants involved in the making of the film as well as surviving family members of those key players who had passed away. In the course of our research, CONELRAD also uncovered a wealth of archival material that leaves no doubt that a tremendous amount of thought went into the making of this nine minute motion picture that has been the subject of so much dismissive ridicule over the years. (More CONELRAD goodness previously)
posted by Trurl
on Jun 19, 2011 -
12 comments
Finnish YouTube user
Ishexan has uploaded seven English subtitled movies in parts:
Broken Blossoms (
1919),
Aelita (
1924),
The Gipsy Charmer (
1929),
The Tragedy of Elina (
1938),
The Activists (
1939),
The Wooden Pauper's Bride (
1944), and
Sampo (
1959), which is based on the epic poem
The Kalevala. The films are mostly Finnish, though
Aelita is a silent Russian sci-fi film, and
Sampo was a joint Finnish and Soviet production. More film clips inside (mostly Finnish documentaries and "dorky musical numbers").
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Apr 30, 2011 -
12 comments
Waterlife — No matter where we live, the Great Lakes affect us all. And as species of fish disappear and rates of birth defects and cancer rise, it seems one thing is clear: the Great Lakes are changing and something's not quite right with the water. An interactive documentary film from the
National Film Board of Canada.
[more inside]
posted by netbros
on Feb 26, 2011 -
20 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
The history of Poland, in eight minutes,
in CGI, from the country's exhibition at Expo 2010 in Shanghai. The film is full of blink-and-you'll-miss-it references - check the date at the bottom-left of the screen and see how many you can find!
[more inside]
posted by mdonley
on Aug 7, 2010 -
24 comments
America at Work, America at Leisure - "Work, school, and leisure activities in the United States from 1894 to 1915 are featured in this presentation of 150 motion pictures." [Library of Congress Youtube playlist]
posted by peacay
on May 20, 2010 -
5 comments
