Articles about All Categories, tagged streaming video
New in the Screening Room—A Regular Bouquet: Mississippi Summer (1964)
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| Students at a Freedom School in Mississippi in 1964, photographed by Richard Beymer. Courtesy Washington University Film & Media Archive. |
Actor Richard Beymer took a Bolex camera to Misissippi in the Freedom Summer of 1964. He documented the African American community alongside his fellow activists and volunteers working to register black voters and provide educational instruction to children. The film has been preserved by the Washington University Film & Media Archive with a grant from the NFPF. The New York Times profiled the film on the occasion of its 50th anniversary here.
Beymer’s film is an astonishing document of a turbulent moment in American history. He captures the joy of community life while at the same time providing a clear-eyed view of the struggle for equality. Nadia Ghasedi, who leads the Visual Media Research Lab at Washington … Read more
Orphan Film Spotlight—Roach’s Lullaby (1973) and Welcome to Spivey’s Corner (1978)
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| Coharie elder Leonard Emanuel demonstrates hollerin' techniques in Welcome to Spivey's Corner (1978). |
Thanks to everyone who attended last week’s Exploratorium screening of films preserved through NFPF funding. Those who couldn’t make it will be glad to know two of the screening’s biggest hits can be watched online.
Roach’s Lullaby (1973), preserved by the New York Public Library, was praised by the New York Times as a witty and “bold excursion into one of the city’s great conflicts—the war against the roach.” The documentary profiles three New Yorkers who demonstrate eccentric methods of pest removal. Directed by Claudia Weill and Eli Noyes, Roach’s Lullaby is a prime example of on-the-go, hand-held 16mm documentary-making. And yes, it has a song about roaches.
Spotlight on Home Movies
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| Slavko Vorkapich, 1940 |
Last Sunday, TV viewers were treated to a news segment on home movies, broadcast by CBS Sunday Morning. Now available online, "Bringing the importance of home movies into focus," showed the origins of small-gauge consumer filmmaking and emphasized the need for preservation by featuring archivists from George Eastman House and The Center for Home Movies.
Those organizations and many others have received funding from NFPF grants to preserve hundreds of home movies, many of which are now online. Here’s a brief but diverse sampler: From the Mayme A. Clayton Library & Museum come the home movies of Marie Dickerson Coker, an African American jazz musician, dancer, and pilot who filmed in Honolulu during the second world war. From The Clyfford Still Museum comes a home movie of Clyfford Still in his studio, the only known moving images of the Abstract Expressionist … Read more
Orphan Film Spotlight—Blackie the Wonder Horse Swims the Golden Gate (1938)
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| Blackie arrives in San Francisco after a pleasant swim. |
The mission of the NFPF is to save and make accessible “orphan films.” These are movies unprotected by commercial interests, including documentaries, silent films, newsreels, home movies, avant-garde works, industrial films, and independent productions. “Orphan Film Spotlight” is a new regular feature of our blog and will highlight orphans preserved through our grant programs that are viewable online. Our inaugural selection has an unusual premise and unforgettable title: Blackie the Wonder Horse Swims the Golden Gate.
The story behind the film begins and ends at Roberts-at-the-Beach, a San Francisco restaurant owned by Richard “Shorty” Roberts. One day Shorty was arguing with Bill Kyne, owner of the famed Bay Meadows Racetrack, about whether horses could swim. Shorty … Read more
"Movies of Local People"—the H. Lee Waters Collection goes online
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| Movies of Local People: Spindale (1937) |
This week we’d like to direct your attention to a captivating set of movies: Duke University’s H. Lee Waters Film Collection, which consists of 92 town portraits available for online viewing.
Between 1936 and 1942 itinerant filmmaker H. Lee Waters (1902-97) filmed more than 118 small communities in the Carolinas, Virginia, and Tennessee for his series Movies of Local People. By collaborating with local movie theaters to screen his films, he allowed everyday people to see themselves on the big screen. One of the highlights of the 252-film series, Kannapolis (1940–41), was placed on the National Film Registry in 2004.
These invaluable documentaries sprang from a canny commercial sense. As Waters explained, “with the Depression and hard times, people couldn’t justify spending much money, but to be able to … Read more