"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.
"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)
"Amateur travelogue of an extensive trip to Australia photographed and produced by "The Traveling Sebrings," Lewis B. Sebring, Jr. and Alice P. Sebring. Lewis B. Sebring, Jr. was a journalist and war correspondent for the New York Herald-Tribune, who reported on combat in the Southwest Pacific Area theater during World War II. The trip documented in this film, which they referred to also as "An Odyssey to Australia" covers the entire continent of Australia, from Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Port Augusta and Kalgoorlie, Perth, and Brisbane, and everything in between, usually documented via passenger train. In each city, the film expertly documents landscape, architecture, and people, as well as rural areas and animals." Wisconsin Historical Society.
"This film captures (in excellent pre-war Kodachrome) a day in the life of Stanley Park. An early effort at independent documentary production by a group of Vancouver film enthusiasts, including amateur cinematographers Oscar Burritt and Don Lytle. The Coast Films group intended to produce a series of films that could be distributed by the fledgling National Film Board of Canada, but World War II intervened, and this was their sole group effort. Stanley Park was restored in 1987 by the British Columbia Archives." (BC Archives)
"Local newsreel on events in Thetford filmed by Ben Culey, showing the Palace Cinema, which he owned and where people came to see his local news films." (EAFA Database)
"An impressionistic look at the sights of Venice from morning until evening." (EAFA Database)
"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.
"With an eye for the timeless and pictureque, Alec Paull of Colchester filmed these 1930s scenes on his travels by bike around Essex and the Suffolk border. The few cars, bikes and buses appear amongst snow-covered homes and gardens, and leafy country lanes where lambs and ponies graze amongst the spring blossom." (bfi.org.uk)
Travelogue exploring the history, sights, and people of the Virgin Islands.
"Films recording sightseeing excursions made by delegates from the Society of Chemical Industry (SCI) while attending the ACHEMA exhibition in Cologne in 1934, and street scenes in and around the Rőmerberg in Frankfurt in the mid/ late-1930s. (EAFA Database)
Total Pages: 6
Amateur Cinema