"From Capetown, South Africa, comes Help Yourselves, Boys!, by Lewis Lewis, a charming record of two handsome youngsters and their father engaged in planting, growing and harvesting zinnias. Using many effective angles and double exposed titles, Mr. Lewis relates a plausible tale of his boys raiding the grape arbor, being caught, and finally having their exuberance turned toward flower growing. Since the newly hatched garden is situated close to the ocean, the scenic backgrounds are startling as well as pleasant. Rich, black earth and flaming orange zinnias provide an attractive setting for an engaging family movie." Movie Makers, Dec. 1947, 538.
"Norman McLaren and Helen Biggar’s urgent work of animated agit-prop utilises a mixture of film forms (from found footage to title cards and staged action) stitched together with rapid editing to create an incisive and disorienting polemic against government armament spending. Made in 1936 as fascism was on the rise throughout Europe, the film was the result of collaboration between animator McLaren and sculptor Biggar, made during their tenure at the Glasgow School of Art. The idea was to use a rapid succession of violent images to jolt the viewer into demonstrative action against a new war, decades before such Brechtian techniques were employed by artists like Jean-Luc Godard. The result is one of the most striking and memorable of all animated political films" British Film Institute.
Hell Bound Train "depicts the devil as the train's engineer both driving his locomotive toward hell and tempting the sinner-passengers that occupy various cars on the train. The film is divided into episodes each one representing a different kind of sin or sinner and set in a corresponding car of the train" Tepperman, 233-234.
"A dog tells her story, and sings for you." UCLA Film & Television Archive.
"With the use of a time lapse device, S. G. Lutz has made, in The Heavens Declare the Glory of God, a highly competent record of clouds in motion. Although the subject, treated in a different manner, might easily become too static actually to constitute a true movie. Mr. Lutz has achieved a sure continuity and a sense of artistry that is unusual. In many instances, the film presents sequences of such an unusual kind as to be highly exciting and almost awe inspiring. Speeding the motion of the clouds creates, from the commonplace, a sense of eeriness and weird beauty. In many of the storm sequences, the motion is so greatly dramatized as to impart a nearly terrifying sense of impending disaster." Movie Makers, Dec. 1944, 496.
"Hearts Of The Golden West, 1200 ft., 16mm., filmed and directed by Theodore Huff and enacted entirely by youngsters under thirteen, is a delightful and whimsical burlesque of the Griffith melodrama of the days when titles were long and plots of villainy and intrigue laid in the great open places swept grandly to a moral conclusion in which "true hearts were united." In those days, producers did not hesitate to use a cyclorama or to place painted canvas scenery on an outdoor location. Mr. Huff revives all of the old technique, even to the dance hall set, with its inevitable balcony, and the fight to the finish at the edge of the cliff. Under his direction, the children act their parts with complete seriousness and, in some cases, with mimetic ability that would have given their prototypes pause." Movie Makers, Dec. 1931, 658.
"A colonial scene in the U.S. An old lady sits astride a bell while a man in blackface, wig, and livery pulls the bell rope. From an upper door emerges an old man, dressed as a dandy, who tips his hat to the woman as he walks down stairs grinning. Others leave the same door and walk down the same stairs: a shabby man, a cop, and, several times, the same dandy. The man in blackface hangs himself; the dandy continues to smile. A bell tolls, a grave beckons. In the dark, the dandy plays the piano. Is he Death?" IMDb.
Orson Welles' filmmaking debut, which was co-directed by William Vance. An amateur production, Welles later described the film as a parody of surrealist cinema and the films of Jean Cocteau and Luis Buñuel.
Total Pages: 299
Amateur Cinema