Film Record: Frail Children of the Sun

Still image from Frail Children of the Sun in Movie Makers, Dec. 1943, 456.

Date produced: 1943

Filmmaker(s):

John Larson

Languages:

English

Length:

350 ft

Format:

16mm

Colour:

Kodachrome

Sound Notes:

Silent

Awards/Recognition:

ACL Ten Best 1943 - Honorable Mention General Class

Description:

"Butterflies are John Larson's subject in this carefully planned and filmed record of the life cycle of the lepidoptera which are the Frail Children of the Sun. We are shown the beauty of the highly colored flower visitors and their varied and geometrically startling decorativeness, in footage of comforable length which fixes our interest on the movie's main topic. This is then elaborated in sequences that are not only excellently recorded in Kodachrome, but that give real information about the brief but eventful existence of the butterfly through its various incarnations. The film ends with more footage of the beauty of the summer and of the butterflies that add to that beauty." Movie Makers, Dec. 1943, 477-478.

Resources:

Discussed by Larson in "A Butterfly's Life" (Movie Makers, May 1944, 187, 206-207).

The film won First Award in a Brooklyn Amateur Cine Club film contest in 1943 (Movie Makers, Feb. 1943, 74).

Subjects:

• Animals
•      Insects
•           Butterflies
• Nature

Genre:

• Nature

Form:

• Short

Screenings:

• Screened by the Metropolitan Motion Picture Club in 1943: New York City, N.Y.
• Screened by the Brooklyn Amateur Cine Club in 1943: Brooklyn, N.Y.
• Screened by the La Case Movie Club of Alhambra in 1948: Alhambra, CA

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