Film Record: Under Your Own Power

Image from Movie Makers, Dec. 1937, 603.

Date produced: 1937

Filmmaker(s):

Sidney Moritz

Languages:

English

Length:

400 ft

Format:

16mm

Colour:

Kodachrome

Sound Notes:

Silent

Awards/Recognition:

ACL Ten Best 1937 - Honorable Mention General Class
American Cinematographer Amateur Movie Makers Contest, 1937 - Honorable Mention

Description:

"The current and widespread revival of interest in cycling is the subject of Under Your Own Power, by Sidney Moritz. Carefully planned, attractively photographed in color and neatly edited, the production is a pleasing and happy record of bright days in the summer sun. Mr. Moritz has shrewdly remembered in his film the predominant human interest of this leisured sport, as well as the lovely scenic vistas to which it leads, and has embroidered both of these subjects with distinctive angles and some successful "effect" shots framed by cycle wheels. Amusing, effective and well worded titles in color round out this highly entertaining etude of modern wheeling." Movie Makers, Dec. 1937, 630.

Resources:

Discussed by Moritz in "Cine Cyclists" (Movie Makers, Sept. 1938, 439, 456-457). The article details "how a cycle club became the subject of novel film," and includes stills from the film.

"Sidney Moritz, ACL, found that his hardest job in filming Under Your Own Power was to stage a convincing spill, since all of his companions were such able cyclists." Movie Makers, Jan. 1938, 8.

Subjects:

• Locomotion
•      Transportation

Genre:

• Documentary

Form:

• Short

Tags:

Screenings:

• Screened by the Chase Bank Camera Group in 1938: New York City, N.Y.
• Screened by the Brooklyn Amateur Cine Club in 1941: Brooklyn, N.Y.
• Screened by the Metropolitan Motion Picture Club in 1942 and 1945: New York City, N.Y.
• Screened by the Bell Labs Motion Picture Club in 1945: New York City, N.Y.

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