(Program running time: approx. 90 min.)
Join us for a fun evening of pure pleasure as we present a selection of weird, wild, and wonderful short films from cinema’s first 50 years. These rarities from the George Eastman House vaults include animation, experimental kaleidoscope films, and instructions on the art of growing mushrooms, and feature the work of such stars as Felix the Cat and Harry Houdini! Each film will be accompanied by the spellbinding live music of Dreamland Faces, featuring Karen Majewicz on accordion and Andy McCormick on musical saw. A complete list of titles can be found below. No Take-10 tickets or passes. Photo by Jenn Libby.
THE HAUNTED HOTEL (J. STUART BLACKTON, 1907) – 5 MIN.
Trick film with one of the earliest instances of stop motion animation – here’s the original advertising blurb – “Impressive, indefinable, insoluble, positively the most marvelous film ever invented. Here are some of the mysterious moments in the film: a house which changes into an organ, a table set by invisible hands, a knife which really cuts slices of sausage and bread. Wine, tea and milk pouring themselves. All without the aid of any hand. There is a quantity of other equally strange effects, among them, a bedroom which spins around completely while the poor frightened traveler trembles in his bed wondering what will happen next. A real novelty.”
MAKING A RECORD (C. 1919) – 3 MIN.
This is one of the 28mm educational films. This informative American Pathé production was first in the “Popular Science, Natural History” section of the Descriptive Catalogue of Pathéscope Safety Standard Films (Second Edition, c.1920). Making a Record shows in detail the entire process of how phonograph records are manufactured, and according to the Pathéscope catalogue, “will interest all those who have ever heard a phonograph”.
MUSHROOM GROWING (C. 1915) – 4.5 MIN.
28mm. The beautiful, warm golden tinting of the original diacetate print is recreated in our preservation and combined with time lapse photography it gives the film an almost surreal quality. Mushroom growing never looked more beautiful.
HOW THE COWBOY MAKES HIS LARIAT (1917) – 3.5 MIN.
28mm. A step by step lesson in making a real lariat from the source that 19th and early 20th century cowboys used: hair from their horse’s tail and mane. A demonstration is provided by Pedro Leon in obtaining the hair, spinning it into skeins, braiding it into a rope and then fashioning the rope into a lariat. This little known film captures a craft and technique that has long since passed into history.
THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA (C. 1914)– 2 MIN.
Animated. The animated adventures of a submarine are drawn with white lines on a black background as opposed to the usual black lines on a white background. This fragment is believed to be a copy of a 35mm Lubin film which was originally 600′ long. Unfortunately, this short glimpse is all that remains of this amusing tale of an exotic undersea world.
X-RAY FILMS (JAMES SIBLEY WATSON) – 3 MIN.
IN THE SHADOW OF THE PYRAMIDS (C. 1915) – 7.5 MIN.
28mm. This travelogue of the environs surrounding the ancient pyramids is lighthearted in its tone and breathtaking in its imagery. Modern Cairo has long since encroached on the sacred temples making this film a time capsule of the historic landscape as it looked at the beginning of this century. The 1922 Pathéscope Catalogue lists Lincoln Parker as the producer.
HOUDINI STUNTS (C. 1909-1923) – 5 MIN.
A diverse collection of Houdini material, spanning some 15 years. Included is actuality film of one of Houdini’s manacled bridge jumps, footage of Houdini extricating himself from straitjackets while suspended from skyscrapers in a number of different cities as tens of thousands look on, etc.
FELIX THE CAT FLIRTS WITH FATE (OTTO MESSMER, 1926) – 9 MIN.
FELIX TRIFLES WITH TIME (OTTO MESSMER, 1925) – 7 MIN.
DREAMY DUD (1916) – 2 MIN.
The art of animation is given a whimsical treatment as we watch the drawing process for little Dreamy Dud. He is impatient for the animator to finish and causes all manner of interruption. But the animator has the upper hand, and the pen, and hooks Dreamy Dud to a tree limb so he can finish the drawing. He adds a lion just in case to keep the little guy out of trouble. But when things get worse, we find that it’s all a dream, and Dreamy Dud wakes up, somewhat relieved, in his own bed.
KALEIDOSCOPE (C. 1925) – 9 MIN.
A test film made by Kodak Research Laboratories. During the mid-1920s Lloyd A. Jones, head of the Physics Department of Kodak Research Laboratories, worked on the production of dynamic color effects using glass prisms and glass discs irregularly coated with dyed gelatin. These moving discs were to be reproduced with the two-color Kodachrome process, a negative-positive process not to be confused with the later Kodachrome reversal principle.
LOVE, SNOW AND ICE [ICE CARNIVAL AT SARANAC] (1915) – 3 MIN.
28mm. This short nonfiction film is a unique document of the famous Saranac Lake Winter Carnival in the Adirondack Mountains. The long, cold Adirondack winters offered an array of snow-covered mountains and ice-covered lakes, begging to be enjoyed on skis, sleds and skates. Thus, to break winter’s chill and to promote “outdoor sports and games”, the Pontiac Club was formed in 1896, and a year later, they sponsored the first “Mid-Winter Carnival”. This film record features unique shots of the carnival in 1915, including a costume ball and lively music playing. The film also shows what has become the symbol of the Winter Carnival, the world-renowned Ice Palace. The palace was an outgrowth of the village’s ice industry, which, in the days before electric refrigerators, harvested ice from local lakes for use in ice boxes across the country and around the world. Despite some refinements in machinery, today the Palace is still constructed in the same manner as it was in 1898, the first year it was built.
LAUREATE (EMLEN ETTING, 1940) – 15 MIN.
Quote from Etting: “This film is a film poem wherein the pictures, their sequences and development are used in a poem as opposed to the customary story form. In literature we have the novel, short story, biography, essay, treatise, and poem. In the movies we have almost exclusively the novel and the documentary. There will be, I feel, a definite place in the future for the film poem when people ask more of a film than that it should tell a story. In the film poem, music, the dance, the theater, and the artist will all work together.”
Notes by Patti Doyen.
