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On the Street and in the Garden

Date produced: 1929

Filmmaker(s):

Dubbins

Description:

"Groups of people assemble in town, meeting and chatting on the street. At the beach, women feed the seagulls, go on a fairground boat ride, and they feed chips to the gulls both on the beach and from a wooden pier, A family assemble in the garden - the girls are wearing school uniform - and sit together. There is a shot of horned cattle in a field, and there is a garden where an old man mows his lawn, while a very old man receives a buttonhole. The location shifts to a clifftop walk. In what seems like an earlier period, very formally dressed people play with a small child, and sit in deckchairs" (NWFA Online Database).


Perspective

Date produced: 1963

Filmmaker(s):

Derek A. Davy

Description:

"The audience, aided by the perspective eye of the motion picture camera, watches the converging paths of unrelated people. Gently, their separate activities draw them together briefly, to touch, and then send them on their separate ways again. A thoughtfully produced and completely enjoyable film that uses the best of the film-makers art. the skillful use of music as the "narrator" of the story brought to the maker of the film the George Cushman Trophy for the most effective use of sound on film" PSA Journal, Oct. 1963, 41-42.


Ramblings Around Sydney

Date produced: 1934

Filmmaker(s):

James A. Sherlock

Description:

"Ramblings Around Sydney, by James A. Sherlock, ACL, is a carefully planned and photographed motion picture study of a city, a happy example of what care and cinematic sensitivity can do for this type of subject. Although Mr. Sherlock did not commit himself to any strong continuity theme, the picture yet has a delicate cohesiveness that defied the best efforts of the earlier amateur movie makers. Outstanding are the filter shots, the shots made of city streets in the rain and the night scenes. Throughout there is a careful choice of camera viewpoint which succeeds in revealing many aspects of the city in relatively short footage. The whole is welded into an enjoyable subject that would entertain any audience." Movie Makers, Dec. 1934, 547.


Richmond Under Three Flags

Date produced: 1937

Filmmaker(s):

Waldo E. Austin

Description:

"To love a place so well that you can film it so well that the result becomes commercially sought is not the happy fortune of every movie amateur. Waldo E. Austin's Richmond Under Three Flags was paid for by the Morris Plan Bank of Virginia, in Richmond, and is distributed by the Virginia Conservation Commission. Here, a man of culture and a filmer of exceptional care and refinement has given us his own home, lovingly and interestingly presented, with a happy quota of cinematic ornaments. The pace of this accomplishment is leisurely, as was the Old South, yet its manner is modern, as is the new Richmond. In the title wordings, Mr. Austin is especially fortunate, avoiding banality on the one hand and '"fine writing" on the other, with just enough rhetoric to give the flavor of one of the country's most rhetorical centers. The interior scenes of public buildings have been accomplished with an apparent effortlessness that conceals a great deal of effort. Here is the publicity film in its most suave expression." Movie Makers, Dec. 1937, 627-628.


Risveglio [Awakening]

Date produced: 1936

Filmmaker(s):

Vittorio Cossato

Description:

"doc. a fantasia"/avant-garde documentary Risveglio, regista Vittorio Cossato, collabora­tore tecnico Antonio Marzari. Il film presenta in una successione di inquadrature rigorosamente fisse, il contrasto tra il passato e il presente espresso talora attraverso simboli (come nella prima parte l'uomo che, visto di schiena cammina per un terreno paludoso, triste e squallido) ma quasi sempre per visioni di natura, di nuove ge­nerazioni al lavoro nel traffico dei porti, delle strade e nelle adunate. Vi sono dei passaggi fre­schi e il film nel complesso non manca di una certa omogeneità ritmica. Awakening, director Vittorio Cossato, technical collaborator Antonio Marzari. The film presents, in a succession of rigorously fixed shots, the contrast between the past and the present, sometimes expressed through symbols (as in the first part, the man who, seen from behind, walks through a sad and bleak, marshy terrain), but almost always through visions of nature, of new generations at work in the traffic of ports, roads and rallies. There are some fresh passages and the film in its entirety does not lack a certain rhythmic homogeneity. —Il Ventuno 29 (Review of the G.U.F. of Venice), June 1935, p. 16


River Ribble From Its Source to the Sea, The

Date produced: 1935

Filmmaker(s):

Ernest Maynard

Description:

"The faded colours do not detract from this charming record of life in Preston, on the river Ribble. Children play in the street, women stroll in Avenham Park, and shoppers crowd an outdoor market. Community events and the bright lights of Preston at night complete this picture of life in the Lancashire town (now a city)." (BFI Player)


Rockefeller Center

Date produced: 1969

Filmmaker(s):

Cyrus Pinkham

Description:

"Black-and-white home movie provides a tour of Rockefeller Center, including scenes of Mary Pickford and Buddy Rogers at a garden event." oldfilm.org


Saturday

Date produced: 1933

Filmmaker(s):

Booth

Smethurst

Description:

"shows cinematically how a large provincial town spends Saturday. Each shot will be related to the preceding shot either by comparison or by contrast, and the success of the film will depend entirely on the photography and the editing" (HMHT 1933: 113).
"a picture dealing with the various activities of a town at week-ends. Many shots were taken in the streets of Bolton" (Kinematograph Weekly 1933: 21).


Song of a City

Date produced: 1941

Filmmaker(s):

John A. Flory

Description:

"Although Song of a City was probably as carefully planned as any film could be, it still got out of hand and grew on its producer. Try filming a great metropolis yourself sometime, and you will begin to understand what John Flory faced in this splendid study of the city of Cleveland. For this is no simple record, content with the physical surface of streets and skyscrapers, ships and steel. Song of a City is a heroic canvas, seeking to present in dynamic imagery the inner significance and meaning of its vast subject, relating the ships and steel, the workers and the wealthy, to the pulsating life of their community. Mr. Flory's sponsor in this new form of industrial publicity was the Cleveland Trust Company, and it is to this institution that the film turns recurrently in presenting its message of finance in the modern world." Movie Makers, Dec. 1941, 568.


South Devon

Date produced: 1936

Filmmaker(s):

Eunice Alliott

Eustace Alliott

Description:

"Film record of a visit to South Devon comprising shots of local beauty spots, visitor attractions and the activities of locals and tourists." (EAFA Database)


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