The films I share in my 31 Days of Oscar lists tend to get lost in the shuffle, so I’ll be featuring them on Short Film Saturday to give them their due.
Aside from the stylistic animation choices of the era, this short can apply to many eras of American history.
Despite dropping a reference to it in the music video section of my series Once Upon a Time in the 80s, I never featured the first vide MTV ever played in its own post. And that’s rather strange seeing as how “Video Killed the Radio Star” isn’t merely a footnote in musical history but rather prophetic, that and song and images are quite memorable as well. Enjoy!
The films I share in my 31 Days of Oscar lists tend to get lost in the shuffle, so I’ll be featuring them on Short Film Saturday to give them their due. Directed by Vincent-René Lortie Invincible dramatizes a harrowing ripped-from-the-headlines tale in a sensitive, empathetic, and moving way. It’s a film that was most deserving of its nomination, but sadly overlooked in voting. You can watch it below.
Despite having mentioned the film on a few occasions, first, in A Cinematic Trip Around Canada then in the Mini-Review Round-Up Late August/September 2013, I have never featured Nanook of the North on this page. Both those passing references to this film discuss its imperfections: the cultural perspective the story is told from, the casual racism of some intertitles, and the methods employed in the making of this film some documentarians find controversial (Flaherty lost footage and recreated it via dramatization; he also created half-igloos to shoot in order to solve lighting concerns).
I, myself, can’t blame a filmmaker dealing with the limitations of his equipment doing all he could to present the images he captured to the world. Especially, when the alternative was yet another lost film. Despite the built-in concerns that one must acknowledge, it doesn’t discount the importance of this early documentary feature.
It is viewable below. Enjoy!
Pioneer Intro
The film festival post, both yesterday and today (and perhaps those to come) came to me by accident after falling into YouTube rabbit holes. I don’t fall into them often and rarely with such delightful results.
This happened about a year ago, so the deatils are a bit fuzzy, but I think a repeat viewing of Nope, and discovering a book of his studies in motion had me looking up Eadweard Muybridge again.
Lore has it he photographed a man riding horse as part of a bet to see if all four hooves are ever off the ground at once (spoiler: they are). The story goes on to purport the 24 cameras set up created a happy accident. Still images that appeared to move when shown in rapid succession.
That’s true enough, but that makes it more of a “eureka moment” than it really was. Having discovered the book, I saw Muybridge assiduously used film to study motion over many years. Also, Nope, was correct. While many Muybrdige’s subjects (even horses) where named in intertitles, the horse’s jockey in his most famous film, was not. But it is noteworthy that while the horse ride sets motion pictures off. There were quickly many disparate experiments with motion pictures that are fascinating, even exciting to see now, so many years later considering their early vintage.
Films
Here are some works by Étienne-Jules Marey another pioneer.
The film festival post, both yesterday and today (and perhaps those to come) came to me by accident after falling into YouTube rabbit holes. I don’t fall into them often and rarely with such delightful results.
This happened about a year ago, so the deatils are a bit fuzzy, but I think a repeat viewing of Nope, and discovering a book of his studies in motion had me looking up Eadweard Muybridge again.
Lore has it he photographed a man riding horse as part of a bet to see if all four hooves are ever off the ground at once (spoiler: they are). The story goes on to purport the 24 cameras set up created a happy accident. Still images that appeared to move when shown in rapid succession.
That’s true enough, but that makes it more of a “eureka moment” than it really was. Having discovered the book, I saw Muybridge assiduously used film to study motion over many years. Also, Nope, was correct. While many Muybrdige’s subjects (even horses) where named in intertitles, the horse’s jockey in his most famous film, was not. But it is noteworthy that while the horse ride sets motion pictures off. There were quickly many disparate experiments with motion pictures that are fascinating, even exciting to see now, so many years later considering their early vintage.
Below you’ll find a small sampling of his experiments. This final channel has the most complete playlist of his films that I’ve found, if you want to explore further. Enjoy!
An old short disclaimer with a message that’s needed now more than ever.
I don’t believe I was fully aware of the Censored Eleven before now. I have previously discussed some Looney Tunes being pulled by specific cable providers as is the case with Hillbilly Hare, but these films are of older vintage and have been kept mostly out of circulation by the studio itself. They haven’t even been presented recently with their now (in)famous disclaimer.
These shorts stand out not die to an off-color intended-for-adults comment here or there, but because they’re thematically racist and problematic to varying degrees, even more so than their propaganda films.
As such I modified my original intention of posting these films over the course of three months as many people will not have an appetite to watch more than a few.
Most of these shorts are available in one convenient Internet Archive playlist (linked to below). The Internet Archive swaps out Hallelujah Land for a Bosko title. The shorts do get increasingly more difficult to watch, so buyer beware. Hallelujah Land is one of the tamest titles of the bucnch and the one I saw first.
These films also made worse when you consider Warners released about one of these a year in a short period of time.
Earlier this year the animation world lost an unsung hero. Paul Fierlinger was perhaps best known as the writer/director of the Teeny Little Super Guy shorts on Sesame Street. He and his wife Sandra also created the critically acclaimed My Dog Tulip. I’ve linked to some of his work here and recommend you read the great profile Cartoon Brew did on him. Enjoy!
His Alphabet song also from Sesame Street.
This year I intended to start profiling national film archives that host a lot of great content online at the start of the year as part of my long-inactive By Any Means Necessary series. More than halfway through the year, I am finally doing it.
This idea started late in ’24 when I started noticing how many countries had such sites and I started perusing and bookmarking them.
Even before Conan’s Estonia joke at the Oscars, I’d seen some films on their site. As this archive is less likely to be well-known I’ll spotlight it today.
Today is Võidupüha, an Estonian holiday, which commemorates their victory over Latvia in the Battle of Cēsis. So I am featuring Arkaader, a joint project of the Estonian Film Institute and National Archives of Estonia, to host many historical films online; short and feature, narrative and documentary. Many of the films are free-to-stream. Others are available to rent for a small fee.
Any of the places I feature will have plenty of places to explore, due to the fact that they’re more likely to be dialogue-free I recommend starting with this curated list of animated shorts. There are also music video and experimental films. Most of the films typically have subtitles.
The Movie Rat 