"Opens with footage of a man, two women and a girl in a garden. Some footage shot through a gap in a wall and some closer up. They are seen playing with a dog. The film continues with footage of the Tower Circus elephants being bathed in the sea at Blackpool. A crowd watches as the elephant's keeper controls them whilst riding one. Members of the crowd pet the elephants before they are seen leaving the beach. This is followed by footage from Stanley Park in Blackpool. Two girls are seen walking through the park and relaxing by a bowling green. The film ends with footage of Stanley Park lake, thick with boats, shot from a moving boat." (NWFA Online Database)
"Un-staged documentary footage shot and edited by Sallie Wagner. Sallie's description of the film: 'Trading post at Wide Ruins, "Trader Burnt Hat" - Bill Lippincott, Sallie, Antoinette Badgley - mother, baby, Sallie, group of three left to right - Gaddy, John Joe, and ? , Tom Big Gun - raising his arm quickly Hosteen Belahi. Little Woman - captive of [Kit] Carson [survived the Long Walk and Navajo incarceration at Ft. Sumner], John Joe's wife (gold skirt) and daughter, Mary Toddy and John Toddy, young children, Joe Toddy, Nashoshi Begay, Paul Jones in trading post trading with Bill Cousins, wife and child of Tom Big Gun, Lukachuka - also captive of Carson (Blackrock's brother - both medicine men). Navajo Refugee Site "Kinazin" (which means Standing House) near Wide Ruins, Pat Norton inside "Kinazin" ruins, Cliff Ruin in Canyon del Muerto, ceremonial jar washed out by rain, Bill Lippincott - Elvin Jonas and Jack Norton excavating the pot, climbing cliff at Canyon de Chelly - Larry Bell and Doyle Mulligan, Sallie and Bill looking at pictographs below Wide Ruins, pictographs near spring north of trading post, Navajo Fence at Wide Ruins, numerous sunsets'." New Mexico State Archives.
"Item is a film production of Dr. Willinsky's trip to Trinidad with his wife, Sadie. Filmed in the form of a travelogue, Willinsky intersperses footage of landmarks and the local population with captions that provide information about the country and its culture. Included are shots of sites around Port-of-Spain, cathedrals, mosques, a cricket match, a cocao bean farm, and the local population carrying out their daily activities. Sadie is regularly spotted sight-seeing and interacting with locals." Ontario Jewish Archives.
"The vivid pageantry and somnolent landscapes of Mexico assume a new grandeur as filmed by Ralph E. Gray, a cinematographer who has long been recognized as one of the most accomplished amateurs on the continent. The land of contrasts and contradictions is beautifully presented in Typical Times in the Tropics, for here is one of the few travel films that ignore the tourist penchant for flashy trivia, to reveal the spirit of a people and the pictorial splendor in terms of lasting values. Mr. Gray has lived in Mexico long enough to recognize what is really significant; consequently, his film — for all its 1400 feet — seems to be a distillation of the unique charm which continues to attract Americans on vacation. The Mexican's strange blend of religious sincerity and garish ceremony is evidenced in a ritual filmed in Cholula, in which the local livestock — besmeared with gaudy paints and dyes — are presented for the blessing of the village priest — to insure the animals' fertility. The bouganvillea and hibiscus that frame the vistas of sleepy Fortin are contrasted with a boisterous Cuernavaca carnival and the hard riding charros of Mexico City. The latter scenes give Mr. Gray an opportunity to display his technical prowess at its best, for his handling of exposure problems in filming sombrero shadowed faces, his revealing closeups of spectators and skillful following of the wild horses and steer roping are proof of his stature as one of our finest amateur filmers. One of Mr. Gray's most valuable assets is a keen eye for detail, whether it be in the embroidery of a shawl or the weird sculpture left in the path of a lava flow. Intelligent use of a polarizing filter heightens the tawny stuccos of the cathedrals and intensifies the architectural detail of the facades and bell towers; and a fine feeling for human interest gives his shots of a Tehuantepec celebration, the Tirada de Frutas, an added opulence. The cliff divers of Acapulco staged some hairbreadth scenes for Mr. Gray, and he has made the sequence even more breathtaking by cutting in shots of the rocky hazards which had to be cleared by these young daredevils. Saving his trump for a fiery finale, this second time Maxim Award winner winds up with a series of frames of Paricutin, smouldering under her own gray vapors. Sustaining interest throughout 1400 feet of film is no mean task, even when abetted by the natural resources of Mexico; but Mr. Gray has met his challenge with a maximum of taste, discrimination and a completely craftsmanlike approach to a subject that has seldom been presented with such polish and vitality." Movie Makers, Dec. 1946, 470-471.
"The Unexpected, by Ernest H. Kremer, is that rara avis of the amateur movie world, a perfectly produced and universally entertaining family film. It is no secret, surely, that taking pictures of one's family outranks all other reasons prompting a home filmer to buy his camera. It is an equally open secret that the results, generally, are those that only a mother could love. Judged impersonally and by even the simplest movie standards, the technique is sloppy, camera treatment dull and continuity non-existent. But now, with The Unexpected, family film making takes on new stature and its apostles may speak with new pride. The picture tells a simple tale: A man arrives home and finds a note from his wife. Unexpectedly, she writes, she has been called to the city, but there is food in the icebox, et cetera, etc. Later that evening, after a suavely developed interlude of husbandly miming, the wife returns and announces that she expects a baby. The rest of the rewardingly short reel records early activities in the life of the infant, capped by a swift and comic climax. A simple tale, but superbly told. Mr. Kremer's technical skill, developed through years of competent 8mm. work, is more than a match for this, his first 16mm. production. Perhaps most outstanding among the picture's many fine points is its admirable economy of footage. Running a scant 325 feet of film, it has a sense of pace regrettably rare in amateur movies. Mr. Kremer, for example, recognizes the lap dissolve as a spatial transition, not a specious ornament — and he uses it as such with telling effect. His editing is crisp, his camera treatment incisive and his continuity planned and purposeful. The Unexpected, in proving that excellence can join hands with the hearthside, should be a ringing challenge to all family filmers." Movie Makers, Dec. 1948, 474-475.
"An amateur comedy drama about a young Englishman pursued by Russian spies and the kidnapping of his girlfriend." (EAFA Database)
"'Vacation Highlights,' as the title implies, is a record of a vacation trip, but instead of the usual array of catch-as-can shots which make up so many vacation record films, Terry Manos has given this excellently photographed narrative substance by employing inserts of a letter to his wife and daughter, describing his trip, and a number of tie-in shots of the two to knit the whole into a pleasant continuity. The picture is remarkable, not so much from its narrative standpoint as for its consistency in exposure. There is not a measurable difference in exposure in any scene throughout the picture. The picture depicts the start of the trip by automobile, which takes the travelers across the U.S. border into Canada and thence through the province of Quebec. On the return trip they visit such interesting sights as a wood pulp mill and the famed Ausabel Chasm, in upper New York. The camera treatment of the pulpwood sequence and of the Chasm scenes definitely mark this filmer as a photographer of promise. Manos used a 16mm. Bolex camera and Kodachrome daylight type film." American Cinematographer, Apr. 1950, 134.
"Sometime during the summer of 1950, Fred Evans, L. A.'s genial maestro of 8mm movies, arranged to pick up a new Nash sedan in Grand Rapids, Mich. What better excuse need there be for packing up his two Southern California sons and taking them East to meet the land of their forefathers? Which is exactly what he did in Vacation Highlights of 1950. The lead title is commonplace, perhaps almost banteringly so; but the film footage which follows it is not. Niagara Falls, his native Vermont, Concord, Lexington, New York, Philadelphia and Washington are on the Evans itinerary of American history. There is a rewarding stop at the St. Louis zoo — for its incomparable Sunday shows — and soon the Evans are home again. But not without one final twist to the tale. "Hey, look-out here, Pop!" urges the oldest offspring as he returns from scouting the premises. The family cat, with inimitable feline pride and savoir faire has had kittens." Movie Makers, Dec. 1951, 410.
"Vida Pacoima, a two reel study of Mexican life in the southern California village of Pacoima, by Randolph B. Clardy, represents a near miracle in portraying a mood in motion pictures. Whether one likes (i.e., is entertained by) the film or not, there is no gainsaying the amazing emotional effect of its intelligent and beautiful cinematography. Here, in easy going and seemingly unstudied sequence, is the utter aimlessness of the slatternly village and its defeated people. Chickens and children, billy goats and black gowned old women, these are the life of Pacoima. Mr. Clardy has caught them all—either dreaming or drowsy in the sunshine—and presents them with a telling reiteration against the background of their broken homes and through the slats of their sagging fences. A sensuous delight, the photography is as nearly perfect as circumstances would permit, outstripped only by an unerring and often ineffable sense of motion picture continuity. In Vida Pacoima, Mr. Clardy is an artist to his finger tips and a movie maker down to the ground." Movie Makers, Dec. 1938, 617.
"Luc Fauvel is a Norman, and he turned to his own pays to contrive as sensitive and trenchant a study of French provincial life, in miniature, done by the medium of film, as did giants like Flaubert and de Maupassant through the medium of words. His Vieille France has irony, pathos, humor and plain reporting. It is the tale of an old bonnet maker of Normandy, who goes through her daily tasks, in which she has grown old, but who, at the end of the labor, reviews the past, by means of her photograph album, and meditates on her son, who died on the field of honor in the World War, and on her daughter who has become a great dancer and is far removed from the little Norman village of her origin. Mr. Fauvel accomplishes most by suggestion, by indirect statement and by a kind of insidious comment on life, never more than fleetingly presented. This young Frenchman, now studying at Cambridge, in England, will give us better and more technically well knit pictures as times goes on." Movie Makers, Dec. 1937, 630.
Total Pages: 38
Amateur Cinema