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Backyard Zoo

Date produced: 1945

Filmmaker(s):

Francis M. Spoonogle

Description:

"To film an insect well, when it is crawling, creeping or flying, is a real feat. Francis M. Spoonogle does this with great success. In his film, Backyard Zoo, he has taken completely undirectable creatures and has managed to capture them on film with such intimacy as to give one the feeling that he might be living for a while in the insect world. Unsuspected beauty is revealed in the coloring of caterpillars with normally unseen fur collars. So sharply has he focused on insect life in this beautiful 8mm. film that the "feathers," making up the coating of a butterfly's wings, are almost discernible." Movie Makers, Dec. 1945, 495-496.


Beasts Shall Inherit the Earth, The

Date produced: 1966

Filmmaker(s):

Charles Adair

Description:

"The Beasts Shall Inherit the Earth for the excellently made props in the form of creatures that appear in the film from time to time to drive out the populace and take over for themselves. Many times these props look genuinely alive" PSA Journal, Sept. 1966, 36.


Big Game Hunt in British Columbia: September 28th to October 14th, 1926, A

Date produced: 1926

Filmmaker(s):

Allan H. DeWolf

Description:

"A 1926 hunting trip in the East Kootenay region. The hunting party comprises Allan H. De Wolf, Claire and Elmore Staples, Bob Grimes, and Barney and Ralph Clifford, with Mr. and Mrs. Paul Stevens as guide and cook respectively, and 'Cheerful Joe' as Wrangler. The film shows the party on the trail with pack horses, in camp, and hunting bear, deer, elk and mountain goat. Specific locations include Elk Creek, Premier Lake, White River and Whiteswan Lake. There are good sequences on the packing of a pack horse and the skinning of big game. De Wolf's companions on this trip were his partners in the Western Explorations mine at Silverton" British Columbia Archives.


Birds of a Feather

Date produced: 1934

Filmmaker(s):

Edmund Zacher

Description:

"In Birds of a Feather, Edmund Zacher, II, ACL, exhibits the patience and skill necessary to compile a complete story entirely with telephoto lenses. All the particular points which must needs be observed to make successful telephoto pictures — careful centering, sharp focusing and rigid camera support — are exhibited in this film, which is interesting withal, as it tells the story of a thrush family from the time the youngsters are hatched until the last laggard leaves the nest. Some scenes, which show the parent bird in closeup by means of telephoto magnification and in which the bird fills the entire frame, are truly remarkable. Good fortune gave Mr. Zacher the beautiful background of a flowering tree for this springtime idyll. A suitable musical background — compiled from discs — accompanies the film. Mr. Zacher made this picture entirely from a window in his home, and his patience and skill in capturing every needed shot are remarkable." Movie Makers, Dec. 1934, 534.


Bold Badmen

Date produced: 1949

Filmmaker(s):

Casimer V. Zaleski

Len Zaleski

Description:

"Handsome and hard hitting, Bold Badmen is a Western filmed as Westerns should be filmed — without romance, without singing, but with plenty of shooting, plenty of horsemanship and plenty of very tough looking and acting characters. Casimer V. Zaleski knows that movement makes a movie. Bold Badmen is crammed with both kinds — physical and cinematic. Unfortunately, the physical condition of the film (which was inexcusably scratched and dirty) did much to restrain the enthusiasm of the judges for a melodrama of real power." Movie Makers, Dec. 1949, 468-469.


Boy Next Door, The

Date produced: 1962

Filmmaker(s):

Leonard John Getgood

Description:

"'This is a simple story concerning the affairs of a cat and a dog. Are they natural enemies, or can they become playmates?' (Amicus description, via Library & Archives Canada web site.) This film received a Certificate of Merit in the Amateur Category at the 14th Canadian Film Awards, 1962. English and French-language versions were apparently distributed by Thomas Howe Associates Ltd. in 1980" British Columbia Archives.


Breakfast in Bed

Date produced: 1947

Filmmaker(s):

Clifford Bach

Description:

"Animated figures have seldom been presented with such meticulous technique and in such clever situations as are executed by Clifford Bach in Breakfast in Bed. A perfectionist to the last twitch of an eyebrow, Mr. Bach has achieved exceptional realism in the movements of his small figures by painstaking frame by frame exposure and expressive camera viewpoints. His story follows the efforts of a cocky little cockatoo, Windy, to prepare breakfast for his master, Professor Whiffle. Windy's ingenuity overcomes all obstacles in a series of neatly motivated and genuinely amusing "gags." Mr. Bach's persistence and eye for design indicate a bright future in the field of animated movies." Movie Makers, Dec. 1947, 536.


Brookside

Date produced: 1941

Filmmaker(s):

Robert P. Kehoe

Description:

"The very great faculty of Robert P. Kehoe for seeing natural beauty and giving it an individual and entirely original expression in film enables him, in Brookside, to reach a new height in cinematography, because he has added to that faculty an attention to the business of continuity. Like Tennyson's Brook, Mr. Kehoe"s film starts to go somewhere, keeps going and gets there, while we who watch the going see, by the brookside, some of the loveliest — but tripodless — footage of water, flowers and woodland that any landscapist could want to come by. The final sequence of Mr. Kehoe's picture has a tragic tenderness that is almost too poignant, since he has filmed the funeral progress down the darting brook of a lustrous butterfly that ventured too close to the water and was sucked into it. With wings outspread, the little body goes past us into '"yesterday's ten thousand years" as the film ends." Movie Makers, Dec. 1941, 565.


Bull Fight

Date produced: 1931

Filmmaker(s):

Coburn

Description:

"considering the obvious difficulty of getting anywhere near the subject to be photographed, is an amazing piece of work, as regards photography, choice of shots, continuity, cutting, and editing. It is no exaggeration to say that a professional could have done no better. The whole grim business of the fight is depicted in a vivid and realistic manner, and but for the fact that the Censor and general public are averse to witnessing spectacles of this type of picture, if enlarged to standard size, could be shown in the cinemas" (Hill 1931: 7).


Butterflies

Date produced: 1945

Filmmaker(s):

Robert S. Walker

Description:

"The late and unlamented war kept amateur movie makers — along with the rest of peripatetic America — pretty close to their backyards. Robert S. Walker is one who has made this restriction pay dividends. The result is Butterflies, a charming study of these winged wanderers of blossomland. Those filmers who have ventured into the field of extreme closeup work will understand and applaud the patient skill with which Mr. Walker got wellnigh perfect results in recording each new specimen. Rhymed quatrains serve, with the scenes, to create a film of light and airy entertainment." Movie Makers, Dec. 1945, 496.


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