"Dear Little Lightbird was entered as an experimental film by Leland Auslender, who also won one of the four top awards in the Class C category. He has a way with color, light and angles, and this talent easily put his film in the Top Ten. It's a story of a little boy born with an incurable disease, and how his three years of life brought into focus all the wonders of nature and this world around us. Perhaps this 18-minute film could be shortened somewhat, but it doesn't seem to matter for the film surrounds you with unusual shots of the simple things most of us miss in the helter-skelter of everyday life" PSA Journal, Oct. 1968, 49.
"Esta cinta se basaba en una idea de David Celestinos de enviar a diversos equipos de filmación a desarrollar historias sobre lo que ocurre un domingo en la Ciudad de México de manera simultánea. El resultado fue interesante, en la medida en la que muestra la cotidianidad dominguera de diversos personajes que provienen de distintas clases sociales: un borracho llega con su compadre a la casa de la vecindad y es recibido de mala manera por la mujer, un grupo de juniors pasa el día en Cuernavaca, un hombre solitario recorre las calles y parques del centro de la Ciudad de México, un velador se aburre en el edificio que custodia, dos sirvientas pasan el día en Chapultepec, una familia clasemediera que va a misa y a pasar un día de campo... La cinta sigue el planteamiento hecho por el neorrealismo italiano de no convocar actores profesionales para presentar historias sencillas, ligeramente dramatizadas" (Vázquez Mantecón, 2012.
"This film was based in an idea by David Celestinos of sending diverse filming crews to develop stories about what happens simultaneously on a Sunday in Mexico City. The result was interesting since it showed the Sunday everydayness of diverse characters from different social classes: a drunk man arrives at his friend's house in a poor neighborhood and is received in a bad way by a woman, a group of juniors that spend their day in Cuernavaca, a lonely man that goes through the streets and parks of Mexico City, a night watchman that is bored in the building he is in charge of, two maids that spend the day in Chapultepec, a middle class family that goes to mass and to have a picnic... The film follows the idea posed by Italian Neorealism of not using professional actors to present simple stories, slightly staged" (Vázquez Mantecón, 2012).
"Loosely scripted film in which people at play in a park are interrupted by an authority figure who prevents them from enjoying themselves. The actors include many friend of the filmmakers, such as artists Michael Morris, Robert DiCastro and Sally Gregson. Images on negative stock are incorporated into the film" (Duffy, 94).
"Doodlin' Along by W. L. Barton, a PSA member of Dallas, Texas. Bills clever idea with a "gimmick" toy and a prism lens and a combination of a title with a musical selection made a real shorty. You'll have to look quick so as not to miss this 1-minute 8mm film that was awarded an Honorable Mention" PSA Journal, Nov. 1971, 41
"Science fiction film influenced by the style of inter-war European art cinema." East Anglian Film Archive.
"Each year the contest sponsored by the American Society of Cinematographers through this magazine seems to bring forth a surprise. For several years the 8mm cinematrographers have been setting the pace, but never has any of them reached the goal achieved this year by Miss Ruth Stuart. Miss Stuart has been a contributor to this contest every year for the past three years; in 1933 she was given the medal for travel pictures. Her 200 ft. 16mm subject 'Doomsday' was also awarded honors in the British Institute of Amateur Cinematographers. In the American Society of Cinematographers contest just closed she was given a recognition for the Outstanding picture, in photography and Documentary pictures. It will be surprising to many that this unusual honor should befall a woman. Photography, by the unwritten law, is supposedly the realm of male species. Miss Stuart, however showed such a fine understanding of the value of pictures that move, how to fabricate these moving photographs into an interesting document that would hold any audience anywhere in the civilized world. For a person who films she must have developed a stony heart in order to cut as judiciously as the picture indicates. There is a tempo to the production that is very seldom achieved by an amateur. There are no obvious pet shots or scenes. Each sequence, each scene, each picture was left in production for a purpose to give it atmosphere to help the story along." American Cinematographer, Jan. 1937, 25.
"Well photographed, well planned film dealing with the contrasted fears of town and country folk and their reaction to catastrophe" (IAC 1975).
‘A fantasy based upon a fear which has preyed upon credulous minds from the beginning of time' is the maker's description of this ambitious attempt to show how people react to the possibility of a catastrophe and then to the real event. The story hinges upon a cosmic event that upsets the Earth's equilibrium, causes an imbalance of weather conditions and other natural forces, resulting in widespread panic’ (EAFA Database)."
"Structurally sustained by only the slimmest of plot incidents, Dummy Walks Out is in essence an etude in cinematics, sparkling with brilliant photography and bravura with striking angles. An evening of bridge, consistently bad cards to one player and, in time, the dummy walks out — such is the simple scheme of this masterpiece in miniature. Throughout its brief footage, however, the producers, M. P. Gamber. ACL, and Walter Mills, ACL, have contrived a gleaming glossary of cinematic imagination which delights the eye and beggars analysis. Near shot, closeup and extreme closeup (in several scenes, a single playing card fills the entire screen) follow one another with graphic beauty. Dummy Walks Out is a brilliant answer to the timid souls who "alibi" that the Eights can't take it." Movie Makers, Dec. 1935, 534, 550.
"Electra, 400 ft., 16mm., produced by Clyde Hammond, is a picturization of that Greek drama. Its most novel quality is the evidence of an intelligent search for the best motion picture treatment to present an accurate film version of the story. A series of tableau like sequences were finally used with much better results than if the plot had been adapted and scenarized in the customary manner. Certainly this film version is much truer to the original than would otherwise have been possible. Not being able to erect the complicated sets that would seem necessary, Mr. Hammond used flat gray walls, producing the suggestion of ancient Greek palaces and dwellings with "props," costumes and occasional wall ornamentation. The photographic quality is uniformly good throughout and, one sequence has very good double exposures." Movie Makers, Dec. 1930, 787-788.
"La cinta hacía un recuento de imágenes oníricas, en los que una mujer (Paloma Woolrich) sale de su casa para recorrer diversos espacios que en realidad parecen determinados por su imaginación: desciende los escalones de una calle en una zona peatonal, se muestra aprisionada por una roca gigantesca, aparece catatónica en una azotea con un bebé de plástico, lucha con un hombre contrahecho, apalea a un hombre amarrado, duerme con su pareja y su bebé de plástico en un cementerio, aparece desgreñada en una construcción en ruinas en medio del campo, donde es burdamente pintada por otra mujer" (Vázquez Mantecón, 2012)
"The film made a recount of dreamlike images, in which a woman (Paloma Woolrich, goes out of her house to go through several spaces that actually seem determined by her imagination: she goes down the steps of a street in a pedestrian area, then she is imprisoned by a gigantic rock, she appears catatonic on a roof top with a plastic baby, she struggles with a crooked man, she beats a tied man, she sleeps with her couple and her plastic baby in a graveyard, she appears disheveled in a construction site in ruins in the middle of the country where she is roughly painted by another woman" (Vázquez Mantecón, 2012).
"Primer súper 8 de Nicolás Echevarría, quien ya había realizado un trabajo experimental en 16 milímetros y veía en los superocheros una suerte de "comunidad de marginados" con la que se sentía a gusto, mostraba sobre el fondo de una pieza de Ravel las poses de un contorsionista que buscaba la autosatisfacción en un decorado que asocia la noción burguesa de confort al erotismo" (Vázquez Mantecón 2012)
"First super 8 film of Nicolás Echevarría, who had already filmed and experimental piece in 16 mm and saw in the supereighters a sort of "outcasts' community" that he identified himself with, it showed with the background of a Ravel musical piece the poses of a male contortionist looking for self-satisfaction in a setting that associates the notion of the bourgeoisie to the comfort of eroticism"
Total Pages: 16
Amateur Cinema