Fwd: Reaction to Chistopher Bruno's "Recontextualization of the Other in Peter Eng's The Discovery of Vienna at the North Pole," with an Eye to "Peace, by Adolf Hitler"

Christopher, I liked the various points you made regarding "The Discovery of Vienna at the North Pole," especially the way you examined the content of the piece with regards to expected audience reaction and reception.  Based upon this notion of contextual reception and re-contextualized analysis, I would like to move the conversation to March of Time's 1941 segment "Peace, by Adolf Hitler."  Using the audiotape we heard in class as a sample to represent popular sentiment (for at least a small New York population), I would like to briefly look at the various images that created, what I believe were, the filmmaker's desired reactions from the crowd, and what that meant to the newsreel genre and an employed use of cinematic and political understanding at that time. 

 

Throughout the newsreel and accompanying audio track, as we were fortunate enough to be able to listen to in class, the viewer was presented with a variety of nationalistic images or personae, be they domestic or foreign, that described America's ever increasing involvement in World War II, with certain images eliciting an auditory reaction from the Radio City Music Hall crowd.  We, as contemporary analyzers, are now led to understand that these images must have been associated with preexisting and underlying messages for two reasons.  Firstly, few of the politicians or public speakers are introduced to the audience by either explanatory text or through narrative voice over, indicating that this was not the audience's first exposure to the political ideologies these figureheads or images represent.  Secondly, upon viewing certain public speakers, Charles Lindbergh for instance, the audience did not wait to hear his message before expressing their approval or anger towards what he was actually saying.  The sight of Lindbergh's face alone, placed within the context of a newsreel examining American involvement in World War II, is enough to trigger the condemning boo's or retroactive applause. 

 

To me, this use of the association between image and political emotion marks one of the larger developments of nonfiction film, specifically with an eye towards the relationship between the travelogue and the newsreel.  "Peace, by Adolf Hitler" shows the advancement of the moving image from its initial use of surprising and intriguing audiences, to a tapping into of political zeitgeists and the harnessing of the moving image's connotative powers to spread a political point of view.  March of Time, along with the other media sources of the era, could have even been responsible for the pre-conditioning of American audiences to like or dis-like certain politicians that we hear on the audio track playing with "Peace."  As a newsreel producer in the early 1940s, March of Time knew that juxtaposing the applauded images throughout the newsreel, including American and Great British flags and military personnel among other examples, with the seemingly unbiased portrayal of isolationist supporters, would still create a biased opinion within the audience.  Once the crowd has lauded the images that represent wartime involvement, any other images that represent isolationism work in opposition to previously accepted ideals of providing industrial aid to England in the face of a lying and violent Nazi Germany.  These contrarian images come off feeling un-American and even slightly cowardly when slanted against the sight of brave English soldiers and the industrious American worker.  Since Lindbergh had become known for his strong isolationist opinion, his presence within the diegesis of the film connotes the section of America that believed that this was not the United State's war to fight, and as such was boo'ed and seen negatively in the light of the other pro-involvment politicians present in the newsreel. This newsreel does not need to directly project a negative presentation of isolationists, but does so creatively as to lead the audience to draw that as their own conclusion.

 

When comparing "Peace, by Adolf Hitler," to "The Discovery of Vienna at the North Pole" we see two different pieces of short nonfiction work designed with audience reception and psychology in mind.  While "Discovery" was made with the benign expectation that audiences would find some pleasure in objectifying the Inuit as they explore his contrived daily regimen and travels to Austria in hopes of attending the World Fair exhibit, "Peace," I believe, plays off of the public opinion of previously established political ideals and their representative politicians, to further prepare the audience for the increased American participation in World War II.  Within a modern analysis of the shifting 1940s American political sphere, we can now understand "Peace, by Adolf Hitler" as another installment of the psychological conditioning of the American people to publicly support the war efforts and simultaneously censure any sentiment that encouraged isolationism.

           

-Roger Mancusi

Recontextualization of the Other in Peter Eng’s The Discovery of Vienna at the North Pole

Recontextualization of the Other in Peter Eng's The Discovery of Vienna at the North Pole

"[M]uch of what I find intriguing in these films was not intended by their makers or exhibitors."

-Jennifer Lynn Peterson, Education in the School of Dreams

Much of the writing dedicated to the evolution of the cinema has, either directly or indirectly, functioned as a corroboration of what David Bordwell calls the Standard Version of film history, which, in its broadest sense, refers to the movement of motion pictures from short scenes of actuality toward a more technically and narratively complex system of storytelling through the development and deployment of all the variegated tools endemic to the medium.  These can include the use of spoken text, music, editing, staging, motion of subject or of camera, or any other number of pro-filmic, enframed, or edited characteristics of cinema.  What all of these techniques bear in common is their function within the narrativization of the filmed work, and, by virtue of the narrative's illusions of self-containment and self-efficacy, the exclusion of any extra- or inter-textual signifiers that may establish or deepen a filmed work's value, meaning, or -- to use a loaded term -- success.

This primacy of a self-establishing narrative overlooks a great deal of film history, especially that which encompasses non-theatrical and non-fictive works, wherein the filmed entertainment was presented not as an all-encompassing work of art in and of itself, but rather as a part of a larger presentation.  In her book Education in the School of Dreams, Jennifer Peterson chooses to focus on travelogues specifically, an often overlooked genre of cinema that is especially prone to what she calls "intertextual complexity."  Quoting Rick Altman, she explains, "'Early moving pictures were in many cases like theatrical props,' simply one part of a live performance that also involved lecturing and slides."  Many of these early filmed works, then -- and, in fact, ephemeral filmed works from all points along the continuing history of the cinema -- must be thought of not as self-contained documents, but rather as particularly vivid pieces of a socio-historical puzzle, illuminating for us not only their subjects, but also -- and, perhaps, even more so -- their creators.

This intertextuality should not come at the expense of a textual reading of a given piece of film; rather, it should serve as a means of enriching and deepening one's analysis of it.  While Peter Eng's The Discovery of Vienna at the North Pole (1923) is by no means what Peterson would categorize as a travelogue, many of her arguments and observations are salient to the film and point to a particularly fruitful context in which we can view and appreciate this curious work.

Seemingly commissioned to advertise some sort of industrial trades fair, Eng's film immediately capitalizes upon the widespread interest in the Inuit and other northern arctic peoples spurred by the success of Robert Flaherty's docu-drama Nanook of the North the previous year.  "In picturing the world that does exist," Peterson notes, "early travel films created a world that does not exist: an idealized geography that functioned as a parallel universe on the cinema screen."  From this "parallel universe" sprang countless fantastical depictions of the world, some more germane to reality than others, in which one can, in hindsight, quite clearly see a naive imperialism, a reduction of foreign lands and their citizens to a sort of Hegelian Other, subordinate and inferior to both the crews who filmed them and to the audiences who consumed them.  This is by no means an arbitrary term; Peterson goes on to state, "The new visual culture of travel enabled people to envision the world as a series of consumable places."  Quoting Mary Louise Pratt, Peterson elaborates, "The viewer witnesses not only a foreign culture or landscape, but the 'relations of domination and subordination' that are inscribed by the act of filming that foreign culture or landscape."

It is in this regard that Eng's film becomes, to myself at least, both most interesting and most acutely self-aware.  Beginning not with filmed "actuality," but rather with a somewhat crudely animated depiction of the protagonist, Eng immediately establishes a degree of Otherness between subject and viewer that is further accentuated by the absurdity of the routines depicted (most strikingly, that of the parading of bears into a meat-grinder-like device in order to produce ice cream).  This is the first of several recontextualizations which make us question not only the relationship between subject and spectator, but also the mutability and contingency of such roles and the manner in which technology shapes and changes them.  Peterson adapts Pratt's notion of "contact zones" ("'social spaces where disparate cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in highly asymmetrical relations of domination and subordination.'") to accommodate "the safe zone of the movie theater."  It is within these "virtual contact zones," Peterson explains, that viewers witness not the culture itself, but rather the "encounter" of the culture.

Eng seems preternaturally aware of this aspect of the subject-spectator interaction as he stages the titular "discovery" of Vienna not in any concrete empirical transaction, but rather on a movie screen.  Here we find Eng's second recontextualization, which is perhaps the most interesting and complex of the film.  Here, not only is our protagonist given his first view of Vienna, but the audience is given its first view of filmed reality.  The dynamic here is worth exploring for a number of reasons.  Firstly, for the sense of authority that this cinematic trick implicitly gives to its own apparatus; the power of the camera, Eng seems to be saying, is its ability to capture reality itself.  Here is no mere depiction, such as we have been treated thus far through animation, but a record of living, breathing actuality.  This, of course, can also be said to have the effect of affirming the Viennese white male as somehow more real than the protagonist, further reinforcing the imperialist gaze of the motion pictures, but I believe this is reductive.  By presenting Vienna within the context of a cinema screen, Eng also invites the audience to consider themselves as a subject, and in doing so, to considering the very nature of observation.

It is here that we must also remember that Eng's film is primarily functioning as an advertisement for a trades fair and that we, as an audience, are being encouraged to view the latest technological advances (such as a maneuverable plow) with the same sense of wonder and awe as might our protagonist.  Here, the intrinsic Otherness on which the film has seemed to capitalize posits itself against Eng's desire for us to relate and align ourselves with the protagonist, creating a somewhat uneasy conflagration of perspectives which remedies itself through the film's next recontextualization: as our protagonist sojourns to the fair, he arrives not as a caricatured animation, but personified as a flesh and blood human, occupying the same physiological -- if not the same sociological or intellectual -- plane as the Viennese.  It is in this act that the protagonist is, paradoxically, rendered both his most individually relatable (through his flesh and blood personification) and his most contextually amiss (through his juxtaposition with the sophistications of Viennese society and technology).

Peterson makes two other points which are worth mentioning in light of this final recontextualizaton.  First is that our protagonist's journey is not unique, but rather firmly placed within a continuum of travel that had been earning cultural cache: "[T]ourism was also spurred by a wave of World's Fair exhibitions in the second half of the [nineteenth] century."  So just as tourism had prompted a profusion of films about exotic locales, so too did the cinema spark an interest in visiting those foreign lands.  This Ouroboros of cross-pollination between travel and travelogues finds, in Eng's film, an interesting microcosmic snapshot of itself, in which "Other" becomes an even more malleable term.

Secondly, Peterson invokes Pierre Bourdieu, whose work "traces the ways in which 'art and cultural consumption are predisposed, consciously and deliberately or not, to fulfil [sic] a social function of legitimating differences.'"  In the case of The Discovery of Vienna..., we see a particularly ripe example of this, insofar as it not only encourages the audience to distinguish between Vienna and the North Pole, as its title implies, but also -- for the purposes of commerce (and it is in this mode that we must point to the reemergence of that term, "consumption") -- to view themselves as different and, as all advertising somehow must by design impress, deficient.  By using a culturally accepted depiction of the Other as an avatar, he both conceals the implications of his motive and draws the audience in as though for pure entertainment.

For a modern viewer, a film such as The Discovery of Vienna... is fated to be more illuminating than inherently entertaining.  So much of what makes it a significant work is based upon cultural signifiers both intended and imperative that one cannot simply view it in a vacuum as he or she might a so-called canonical work such as Citizen Kane, for which such historical context would serve to deepen rather than define its cache.  Through the work of scholars such as Jennifer Peterson, however, we are more able to put these non-fictive and non-theatrical works into proper relief; while Eng's film may have little to teach us about the form of filmic art, its revelations about the culture which birthed it are legion and serve to remind us that intertextuality is not a detriment, but a strength that such elliptical works are fortunate to possess.

Christopher Bruno

Contact Zones and Cultural Relations in Early Travelogues

Carrie Reese

In "The Dreamworld of Cinematic Travel," Jennifer Peterson cites Marie Louise Pratt's idea of "contact zones" defined as "social spaces where disparate cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other (Pratt in Peterson 8). This idea of the contact zone is useful in two areas of study: the contact of mass audience with elite, aesthetic beauty and the contact between levels of the racial, cultural hierarchy, especially during travelogue production. I want to analyze these contact zones to try and place the conception of Benjamin's "dreamworld" into the literal landscapes that actually provide an aesthetic purpose rather than educational one. Like Peterson, I agree with the idea that the travelogues actually function to promote mythical views rather than realistic ones; however, with study, these myths may reveal more about early film culture than any 'realist' piece of non-fiction footage. However, instead of revealing information about the culture they feature, they reveal information bout the culture that made them.

To begin, I want to address the production confrontations between euro-centric filmmakers and the "ethnic other." While the Exotic Europe travelogues we briefly saw in class included portraits of Italy and France, these western cultures are made exotic through marketing and a focus on their differences from the US. One might contrast these against war pictures that are shot in France or Germany which do not make the cultures exotic; in fact, to the untrained eye it is difficult to distinguish the difference between a British, French, German, or US army. However, the landscape portraits of Europe are unquestionably European and provide scenes of city centers that are based around rivers—an old-world tradition that is not as common a scene in the US.

Travelogues focus on creating difference rather than exploring similarity. While landscapes might be the focus of the dreamworld, the land represents territories, which then represent people and culture.Song of Ceylon and Grass do not fit into the distinct definition of Peterson's travelogue genre, but they are examples of cultural exchange and the creation of impression through a camera-culture contact zone.Song of Ceylon "silences" the Ceylonese and reduces them to an image (Guynn) while Grass is a more politically correct story. Instead of silencing a culture, it gives the people a voice. This is especially effective through the more distant, removed filmmaking rather than the process of "assimilation" which Basil Wright tried with his portrait of the Ceylonese. The concept of othering might be applied to the early travelogues as they assume exoticism of any culture that is not American (at least in Peterson's writing, which focuses on US audiences). Ironically, especially in the case of early Pathe films, French-produced travelogues might have 'othered' their own country so that it is marketable in the visual tourism market of US filmgoing.

Cultural clash or "othering" also occurs within the cultural consumption of US audiences. Pierre Bourdieu wrote that "art and cultural consumption are predisposed, consciously and deliberately or not, to fulfill a social function of legitimating differences" (Bourdieu in Peterson 10). While differences between so-called exotic, ethnic cultures and the audience that watches them on film might be significant, the difference between US "elite" audiences and "mass" audiences create equally impressionable distinctions. (The elitist quality of Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer's writing on the culture industry especially speaks to this idea.) When introduced to new exotic lands through filmic tourism, the mass audiences of the US create the idea that the once aesthetically distinguished images of landscape in travelogues are now commonplace. They become commodified through film distribution. Likewise, the people of these landscapes become commodities. Peterson writes that "The chaos of the real, it seems, is managed by the rigid formulas of the genre." (18) But, however real the original pictures of landscape and people might be, the formulations of the genre in fact mythologize the land and people. Putting labels on culture—like calling the peoples in Grass Iranian—begins to create stereotypes (even despite efforts to be politically correct). Through this attempt to create categories, the idea of "the real" is erased. The indexical link to reality is broken and instead, dreamworlds appear. Instead of educating the mass public through an understanding of visual tourism, a 'taste of sense' takes over where the 'taste of reflection' is lost (Kantian idea in Bourdieu's, Distinction). Generic conventions shaped these films and their viewers' expectations. What may have begun as an educational genre turned into a genre of aesthetic appreciation. Travelogues placed the idea of aesthetic form over the function of cultural understanding. A further look into audience reception and response to these films might reveal more about this idea. However, with the ideas I have gleaned from Peterson's article, this is my understanding of the audience reception of early travelogues.

Peterson categorizes travelogues as dreamworlds. So what is the significance of studying these films and their reception? The indexical link to early cultures in these early films is perhaps not the most forthright way to study "other" cultures' histories. (Understandings of our own cultural history through "local" films would, on the other hand, be an appropriate way to examine cultural evolution). Instead, the idea of "awakening from the dream" (8) might provide a better metaphor for how to study this early genre. Emphasizing dream over world places travelogues into a borderline category somewhere between non-fiction and fiction. They seem to fall into the same aesthetic traditions that allowed Tom Gunning to associate early cinema with the avant-garde; in this sense of association, Peterson's idea of the travelogue as unconscious "minor cinema" might be relevant in this sense. The idea of minor cinema is especially useful if studying travelogues from a historical position; the generic conventions might provide a framework of cultural exchange that can be followed to read which ideas about certain cultures form impressions on both the filmmakers and audiences. Studying the generic patters, one might also discover the levels of cultural translation and stereotyping that occur within the borderline "contact zones."

The multiple levels of cultural contact that are contained within the study of early travelogues provide a multifaceted portrait of history that might contribute to a greater understanding of early cinema audiences and how they formulated ideas of nationhood and culture. The encounter with other lands and people becomes centered on aesthetics rather than function. Perhaps this is seen in the struggle to define documentary—what are the educational implications of aesthetics? Can aesthetics bring a message to an audience without disrupting their original purpose of beauty? Additionally, aesthetics might problematize the idea of culture: can a territory/landscape define a nation? As Peterson acknowledges, travelogues still do bring an educational aspect to the audience (21). Some might even be compared to the 'city symphony'. But despite this, there are many questions that arise in these early cinematic portraits that are left to be explored.

I am particularly interested in this topic because of my interest the idea of "contact zones" along the various levels of filmmaking. The director I am interested in investigating, Francois Reichenbach, has filmed several modern-day "travelogues" that might be seen in light of the cinema verité tradition. His film L'Amerique Insolite (1960, aka Bizarre America aka America as Seen by a Frenchman) includes portraits of an exoticized America. This is amusing in some cases as he reads the "exotic dreamworld" onto the American culture--I have included captioned stills below that might provide an idea of the "bizarre America" he has developed. (Not all of his film revolves around food but these are perhaps some of the more stereotypical images.)

 

"The children are not happy unless they get their dessert"

 

"The little American's first encounter with love"

Women in Non-fiction War Films: The Battalion of Death

The following is a summary of some of my preliminary findings on the Russian all-women’s fighting force known as “The Battalion of Death” on wartime American screens. Though part of a larger project, I offer it here as a counter point to non-fiction films of the Great War screened in class and discussed in Abel’s article. Histories of The First World War often mention this enigmatic all female military unit, but film studies has yet to address this subject.

In 1917, the Russian army began to admit women into the armed forces in combat positions. Women were then gathered into to all-female combat units or battalions. The Battalion of Death was the most famous but as many as 5,000 women may have served in these units. The American public found this new fighting force and its leader Maria Bochkarieva fascinating for many reasons. American women could serve in the army and navy but only as yeomen or nurses. However, many believed women would have to fight if fears of U.S. invasion from Mexico ever came to fruition. In 1917, when the Russian force appeared, the U.S. had just entered the war in response to this perceived threat of invasion. It is, therefore, not surprising that newspapers of the time reported on the maneuvers and bravery of the Battalion of Death so frequently.

The film world was not immune to the sensation. America’s leading ladies were donning military-like garb with increasing frequency for films and liberty loan drives. See: "Warriors- Reel and Real" from Film Fun Sept, 1917.

The existence of this female fighting force lent a sense of credibility to these performances while also providing the film industry and American public with another model for wartime female heroism. For example, a review of DW Griffith’s “Hearts of the World” in Film Fun saw the film as “sufficiently stirring to stimulate the organization among the woman of America of a Battalion of Death” (Film Fun 352 (August 1918) ). The Battalion of Death also directly inspired films like Tod Browning’s The Legion of Death (1918). But where were American audiences encountering the very real Russian women?

The Russian Battalion of Death also left its mark on nonfiction film. My preliminary research has found that they appeared in non-fiction feature length films and newsreels. Here I highlight just a few. One of the most-heavily promoted non-fiction feature was entitled “The German Curse in Russia” filmed and directed by Donald C. Thompson during his time in Russia. Though the film does not deal exclusively with the battalion, advertisements for the film often feature images of the women. See image below excerpted from the following article from Motion Picture Magazine 15.2 (March 1918) and also this article Photoplay 13 (April 1918) p. 32.

Thompson, the war photographer for Leslie’s Weekly, initially distributed the film in the United States under the following titles: Bloodstained Russia, German Intrigue, and Treason and Revolt. It became The German Curse in Russia once it was picked up by the Pathé exchange. Thompson heavily publicized the film in the trade press and mainstream newspapers. A search of archive.org’s holdings reveals that Thompson also published at least three heavily illustrated book-length accounts of his trip to Russia to compliment his film. The first is simply titled Donald Thompson in Russia (New York: The Century Co., March 1918). Both Blood Stained Russia (New York: Leslie-Judge Co. 1918) and From Czar to Kaiser: the Betrayal of Russia (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Page and Co, 1918) open with a dedication and image of Maria Bochkarieva “the Joan of arc of Russia.” The text below her image tells us she was the wife of a peasant who petitioned to join the army in his stead after he was killed. In both editions the caption states that: “She suffered many hardships and proved herself a good soldier. She was several times decorated for bravery, once for rescuing men who were caught on barbed wire, she herself being wounded.” Thompson’s film also captured a meeting between the Russian leader and the famously militant British suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst. This photograph of that meeting is included in his books.

Though the survival status of Thompson’s film is unknown, British Pathé’s website features two short clips of footage of the women’s Battalion of Death.

Click to view: soviet-womens-battalion

Click to view: russian-womens-battalion

Since Thompson’s film was eventually affiliated with Pathé through the exchange in the U.S. it is possible that these unidentified segments were from the American non-fiction feature but it is just as likely that they come from newsreel footage or other films. Though Thompson’s film was the first to draw my attention because of the heavily illustrated advertisements, other non-fiction films captured these historic women. For instance, Moving Pictures World tells of a different filmmaker working alongside the Red Cross that  “Takes Many Pictures of Legion of Death” (Jan. 19, 1918, p. 351).  Though a specific title for the final product is not given, the article is further testament to U.S. interest in the group and engagement through non-fiction film.

Kristin N. Harper

Fwd: Item(s) from BobCat: World Newsreels Online 1929-1966

Another test of these new-fangled Alexander Street video resources.

Hi,
World Newsreels Online, 1929-1966

This message from BobCat contains the details of the following item.

World newsreels online, 1929-1966. Author/Creator: Alexander Street Press issuing body. Subjects: History, Modern -- 20th century -- Sources ; Newsreels -- Databases ; Newsreels ; Nonfiction films Restrictions/Permissions: Access restricted to users affiliated with licensed institutions. Notes: Summary: The collection of streaming videos that features full runs of many of the key international newsreels produced during the first half of the twentieth century. The collection is semantically indexed, allowing users to search by subject, year, historical era, historical event, people, and places. Language: English ;  French ;  Japanese Publication Date: 2013 Description: 1 online resource (streaming video files) : black and white

Location:

Check Availability:

NYU Abu Dhabi Restricted Restricted Electronic Resources (D411 .W6 Electronic access )

Fwd: historical film periodicals available online

Anyone -- ANY • ONE -- researching in our field will realize that this new LANTERN tool is indispensible. It not only opens up large new areas of research, it also makes powerful, wide, and deep searching into primary sources ridiculously easy. 

Below is a newsletter from the co-founders of the project, Eric Hoyt (assistant professor, Media & Cultural Studies at the University of Wisconsin Madison) and David Pierce (an independent scholar, film copyright expert, researcher, historian, author, entrepreneur, DVD producer, consultant, MBA, speaker, former Curator of the BFI National Film and Television Archive, orphanista, and native of Greer, South Carolina). 

Media History Digital Library

http://mediahistoryproject.org/

http://mediahistoryproject.org/2013/08/12/search-variety-arrive-at-the-media
-history-digital-library/

http://lantern.mediahist.org/

Search & Variety arrive at the Media History Digital Library

Published by Eric Hoyt<http://mediahistoryproject.org/author/erichoyt/> in
Newsletter<http://mediahistoryproject.org/topics/newsletter/> on August
12th,
2013<http://mediahistoryproject.org/2013/08/12/search-variety-arrive-at-the-
media-history-digital-library/>

Since we launched the Media History Digital Library website in 2011, you
have asked us two questions over and over again.

First, when will you make it possible for users to run full-text searches
across the entire collection at once?

Second, when will you digitize Variety (or, more precisely, the portion of
Variety that belongs in the public domain)?

You asked. We delivered.

We are very happy to announce the launch of Lantern, the MHDL's search
platform, and the availability of the first 20 years of Variety (Dec. 1905-
Feb. 1926; post-production on the next 20 years is underway).

Lantern, our search platform, allows you to search the MHDL collections. You may access Lantern at http://lantern.mediahist.org or simply type a query into the searchbox of the website you are already on.

The MHDL's searchable collections now include:

· Business Screen (1938-1973)
· Educational Screen (1922-1962)
· The Film Daily (1918-1948)
· International Photographer (1929-1941)
· International Projectionist (1933-1965)
· Transactions of SMPE and Journal of SMPE (1915-1954)
· Motion Picture Magazine (1914-1941)
· Motography (1909-1918)
· Movie Classic (1931-1937)
· Movie Makers (1926-1953)
· Moving Picture World (1907-1919)
· The New Movie Magazine (1929-1935)
· Photoplay (1914-1943)
· Radio Annual and Television Yearbook (1938-1964)
· Radio Digest (1923-1933)
· Radio Mirror (1934-1963)
· Radio Broadcast (1922-1930)
· Sponsor (1946-1964)
· Talking Machine World (1906-1928)
· Variety (1905-1926)

In addition to searching Lantern, we invite you try out the homepage's
interactive magazine gallery. You may visually sort the collections by
genre, page count, circulation, and the number of academic citations. The
covers link to our holdings of the magazine.

Lantern and the scanning of Variety were made possible through the support and close cooperation of the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Department of Communication Arts. Many of the rare magazines in our collection came from the Library of Congress Packard Campus, and you can see the full list of contributing individuals and sponsors on the credits webpage.

Happy searching!

Sincerely,

David & Eric

Fwd: Tomorrow: An Evening with Samuel Pollard

 yu.edu>

NYU's Department of Cinema Studies presents

An Evening With Samuel Pollard

Wednesday, September 18, 6:15pm
Michelson Theater
Department of Cinema Studies
NYU Tisch School of the Arts
721 Broadway, 6th Floor

From feature films to television documentaries, Emmy-winning filmmaker Samuel Pollard (editor and producer: 4 Little Girls; When the Levees Broke) has amassed a long list of credits and accomplishments over a career spanning four decades. A professor at NYU's Department of Undergraduate Film and Television, Mr. Pollard will discuss the craft of editing using clips from his own work and from works that have influenced him.

Introduction by Dan Streible (NYU Cinema Studies).

This event is free and open to the public.

Link: Samuel Pollard on IMDB.com

NYU's Department of Cinema Studies
Tisch School of the Arts
721 Broadway, 6th Floor
New York, NY 10003

cinema.tisch.nyu.edu
Join our Facebook page!
Follow us on Twitter @CinemaStudies

 

Nanook of the South: screening notes on rare archival films, descendants and step-sisters of Flaherty's Nanook.

Below are screening notes written for the 57th Robert Flaherty Film Seminar in 2011, a week of programming entitled Sonic Truth.  

Kivalina (photo in Earl Rossman' book

Black Sunlight: A Log of the Arctic

Oxford University Press, 1926  

SESSION 11:   Nanook of the South

            Too often Flaherty’s landmark Nanook of the North has been discussed in isolation, as the “first” documentary, a masterpiece, or singular achievement. In this session -- a completist’s archival look at the Flaherty legacy -- we see other silent-era films derived from Nanook. These have only recently been rediscovered by archivists -- in Argentina, Austria, and the U.S. Their first-time appearances at the Flaherty Seminar are intended to refocus the discussion on Nanook’s international influence rather than Flaherty’s “genius.”

            Intertwined with this is the remarkable work of rediscovery and access being achieved by the Museo del Cine, a film archive and museum governed by the city of Buenos Aires. As its director Paul Félix-Didier said in the wake of publicity surrounding her rediscovery of the director’s cut of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927), that well-known movie might be one of the less interesting ones in this significant archive of world cinema.

Coming Attractions: 1928-1929 trailer compilation  3.5 min., 35mm on DigiBeta

            In 2010, the Academy Film Archive preserved this rare reel of MGM trailers, which includes a preview of White Shadows in the South Seas (1928), the first film MGM released with a recorded soundtrack. Robert Flaherty shot extensive amounts of footage in Tahiti (some of which appears in the final version) before W. S. (Woody) Van Dyke replaced him as director.

Nanook of the North (Robert Flaherty, 1922) looping 8 seconds, HD

            In June 2011, the Library of Congress’s National Audiovisual Conservation Center made this test 4k scan of its 35mm nitrate print of Nanook, for possible use in an upcoming IMAX production about the Arctic. LOC sent the Seminar this high-resolution footage of Inuit children appearing in the film.

Die Entdeckung Wiens am Nordpol (The Discovery of Vienna at the North Pole)

(Peter Eng, 1923) 10’ 35mm on QuickTime

Piano accompaniment: Elaine Brennan (recorded live, 2010)

            This odd but lively topical riff on Nanook was commissioned to promote the Vienna International Trade Fair (W.I.M., in German), combining animation with live action sequences. As in Flaherty’s film, there is a joke about Eskimo children taking cod liver oil; but this North Poler encounters not a phonograph but a movie projector. While the cartoon section retains its humor (the animator’s hand comes on screen to turn on the Northern Lights), the transition to an actor playing the “Lapplander” makes the character more grotesque than comic.

            (Thanks to Nikolaus Wostry, Filmarchiv Austria, for permission to exhibit. Michael Loebenstein and Michael Cowan provided English subtitles.)

En las Orcadas del Sur (In the South Orkney Islands) (José Manuel Moneta, 1927)

ca. 15 of 60’ DVCAM of 16mm print made from 35mm original

            A meteorologist doing research in Antarctica, José Manuel Moneta wrote in his memoir, Cuatro años en las Orcadas del sur (1940), that he saw Nanook of the North in Cordoba, Argentina, then decided to make a film himself. In 1924, the prominent producer Federico Valle financed the project and trained him to shoot film during his return to island research base. Valle’s writer provided a scenario to guide the shooting -- suggesting the film center on a family of penguins[!]. Ironically, like Flaherty, Moneta saw the first version of his film destroyed in a fire. In 1927, he returned and remade it. The results include a surprising degree of cinematic play: matte shots, long dissolves, 

            Decades later, Moneta recorded himself narrating his original documentary (with music from commercial recordings added). In 2011, Paula Félix-Didier tracked down the audiotape and rediscovered a 16mm print of En las Orcadas del Sur. The ¼” magnetic tape has begun to deteriorate and requires professional preservation before it can be played and replicated.

Kivalina la esquimal [Kivalina the Eskimo] (Earl Rossman, 1925) 87’ DVD / 35mm

            Excerpt of 47 minutes, from Acts 1-2, 7-8.  Live accompaniment by Suzanne Binet-Audet (ondes Martenot) and Kareya Audet (percussion, computer, and vocals); English narration (also live) by Tan Pin Pin.

           Shot in Alaska with an Inuit cast, of the American film Kivalina of the Ice Lands survives only in this Spanish-language edition. A worn 16mm reduction negative taken from a 35mm print was found in the Museo del Cine’s Manuel Peña Rodriguez Collection (also the source of the complete Metropolis, famously rediscovered in 2008). Although the copy is apparently complete, Kivalina remains “lost” in another sense. In the voluminous writings about Nanook of the North over the past ninety years, there is barely mention of this feature-length production, which had a major distributor behind its theatrical release.

            Earl Rossman, like Flaherty, was a genuine Arctic explorer, photographer, and cinematographer. He too lost all of the footage he shot on his first expedition. Like Flaherty, Rossman cast indigenous people as themselves, directing them to recreate hunts, build igloos, and the like. Like Nanook, Kivalina received theatrical distribution from Pathé. How has this step-daughter [step-sister?]of Nanook escaped discussion until now? 

The footage of the aurora borealis that frames the story was originally in color, and Rossman claimed his was the first such recording. However, Kivalina of the Ice Lands is not a documentary but an archetypal narrative: a great hunter must overcome harsh elements to secure the pelt of a rare silver fox, which a shaman requires of him before allowing his marriage to Kivalina.

- notes and research by Dan Streible

A version of this text was published in:

57th Robert Flaherty Film Seminar: Sonic Truth (New York: International Film Seminars, 2011). 

Rossman shooting on location in southwest Alaska.

photo in Black Sunlight 

Kivalina fact sheet

Kivalina of the Ice Lands (1925) 

Director: Earl Rossman

B.C.R. Productions

Distributor: Pathé Exchange (35mm; 5,946 ft.)

Kivalina, la esquimal (16mm transferred to video at 18 fps runs ca. 87 min.)

Kivalina (The Heroine), Aguvaluk (The Hero), Nashulik (Witch doctor), Tokatoo (Kivalina’s brother), and Nuwak (The Master Hunter).

AFI Catalog, plot synopsis:
            Aguvaluk, a great Eskimo hunter, plans to marry Kivalina and goes to the witch doctor for his consent. The witch doctor tells Aguvaluk that he may not marry until he has discharged all of his father's debts by bringing back the hides of 40 seals. The great hunter accomplishes this incredible feat and returns with the hides only to be told that, in order to pay off the interest on the debt, he must also bring in the hide of a silver fox. After great privation, Aguvaluk captures the fox, but before he can return to safety, he is caught in a fierce storm. He builds an ice shelter that protects him from the bitter cold and the following morning kills a small reindeer, satisfying his hunger with the meat and using the hide to make a small sled. Finally reaching home, Aguvaluk prepares to marry Kivalina, and there is a great feast.

  

* * * * *

Mordaunt Hall, “An Eskimo Romance,” New York Times, June 29, 1925.

            As an antidote to the sultry weather, "Kivalina of the Ice Lands," the principal attraction at the Mark Strand this week, undoubtedly served a purpose yesterday, as for more than an hour one felt all the cooler for centering one's attention upon a frozen background with scenes of the "restless Arctic Ocean, silenced by the grip of the deadly Winter." This film was produced by Earl Rossman, who has succeeded in making an informing and interesting effort. It, however, melts into mediocrity when compared with Robert J. Flaherty's masterpiece, "Nanook of the North," which was presented at the Capitol three years ago.                    

            We are informed that in producing this new Eskimo picture Mr. Rossman endured the hardships of life in the Northern regions for approximately two years. An important result of Mr. Rossman's earnest efforts are two prismatic sequences of the majestic aurora borealis, which are impressive in spite of being all too short to give one a really comprehensive pictorial conception of this stirring phenomenon. There are the shooting lights and the giant rays of gold, green and red streaking up from what appears to be the other side of the world, looking like a blurred and constantly moving rainbow of vast proportions.

            The producer claims that this is the first colored motion picture taken of the northern lights. In these stretches there is an occasional fringing which causes one to wonder whether the colors are as true as they might be.

            Mr. Rossman has endeavored to increase the interest in this Arctic film by an Eskimo romance in which the hero accepts an appalling task from the Witch Doctor, one Nashulik. Aguvaluk, this gallant lover of Kivalina, is told that he must bring the wizened old Witch Doctor forty seals so that his father's spirit will rest in peace. The courageous Aguvaluk goes forth to bring back what is needed so that he may wed Kivalina, and through his adventures one has an insight into the colorless existence of the Eskimos. They are seen protecting themselves from a wicked wind by building a wall of great slabs of ice. The thousands of reindeer are driven into this Arctic camp and the unperturbed denizens of the North proceed to construct the comfortless igloos of blocks of snow and ice. The dogs are seen blinking as they squat, obviously eager for protection against the blizzard. Never have they known the comfort of a hearthrug before an open fire!

            One has a glimpse in another stretch of a so-called village "sprawled on the edge of a frozen ocean." Yet these stories of the North make the most of their lives, for Mr. Rossman shows what one might allude to as their Derby. Here one sees them in groups watching the reindeer, attached to sleds, racing.

            There are hard, glum Eskimo countenances, others that now and again light up with a flicker of a smile, and still others that appear quite contented. The grimness of the life stirs one, as for months these folks have no color on which to gaze. There are only the bleak, boundless wilds of snow and ice.

            Aguvaluk is seen busy spearing a seal. Actually there is not much of this business, as no sooner has Mr. Rossman depicted the hero killing one of these animals than follows a scene in which he has the quota of forty. He hastens back to the old parchment-faced Witch Doctor, who strikes one as an old villain. Aguvaluk is told that it is all very well to bring the forty seals, but how about the interest? His father's spirit cannot rest until that is paid. What is the interest? It is that Aguvaluk at the most difficult season of the year must bring a silver fox. Thereupon ensues the hero's adventures in finding and killing the silver fox.

One of the most stirring chapters is where Aguvaluk is caught in a terrific blizzard, and to save himself he has to construct an igloo in great haste. One perceives here that by the time the camera man starts to turn his crank Aguvaluk has already prepared several blocks of snow and that his cutting them out with a small knife is but a perfunctory action. Mr. Rossman later shows Aguvaluk crawling out of the top of his igloo, which is completely covered by the deep snow.

            It strikes one that even a sticky day in New York is better than camping on the edge of a frozen ocean. There is a deal to be learned from this picture, and much credit is due Mr. Rossman for his courage and energy in putting forth such a production. That he had to follow a veritable masterpiece on the same subject does not diminish the sterling worth of parts of this effort. •

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