Author: bernardovillela

Film History Friday: Nanook of the North (1922)

Posted on by bernardovillela

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!

 Make Your Own Film Festival: Étienne-Jules Marey

Posted on by bernardovillela

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.

Make Your Own Film Festival: Eadward Muybridge

Posted on by bernardovillela

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!

Short Film Saturday: The Censored Eleven

Posted on by bernardovillela

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.

Censored Eleven playlist.

Short Film Saturday: Paul Fierlinger

Posted on by bernardovillela

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.

By Any Means Necessary: Arkaader

Posted on by bernardovillela

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.

Short Film Saturday: Cardiff City v. Wrexham (1927)

Posted on by bernardovillela

While watching a recent episode of Welcome to Wrexham I noticed they once again used a snippet of an old British Pathé newsreel featuring Cardiff City and Wrexham. British Pathé has a vast online library of digitized newsreels, so I decided to search it out. Sure, enough I found the match in question. Not much footage of live sports about 100 years ago, when they were it tended to be mostly random snippets, most people would have gotten the narrative of the game from newspapers. However, old newsreels and snippets of actual events (referred to as actualities back in the day) are some of the best time capsules we have. They’re peepholes into a past mostly confined to the written word. Enjoy!

Music Video Monday: “Psycho Killer” The Talking Heads

Posted on by bernardovillela

It’s rare to see a music video come along for a classic song that never had one, but we’ve recently enjoyed the privilege with the release of “Psycho Killer” by The Talking Heads. If a video is finally to come along for such a song, it’d better bring A-list talent with it , this video does just that. Saoirse Ronan, one of the finest actors on the planet pairs with director Mike Mills (C’mon, C’mon) to present a hypnotically edited, brilliantly performed interpretation of inner-turmoil outwardly portrayed. As the band themselves said “This video makes the song better. We LOVE what this video is NOT — it’s not literal, creepy, bloody, physically violent or obvious.” Enjoy.