"A film of the family's pet K9 with its characteristic activities set to alphabetical prose with a pleasing pulse. Those who see the film will just love Suzy and the narrator, too" PSA Journal, Nov. 1959, 49.
"Okamoto's heroine was a Japanese girl making a doll as a birthday present for a friend. Pictorial values, backgrounds of the Japanese countryside in spring, and the delicate grain which Cinematographer Okamoto had achieved gave his film distinction." American Cinematographer, Feb. 1935, 78.
"'Tender Friendship,' in 150 feet of 8mm film, was sensational from the photographic standpoint. Its sheer beauty, its poetic rhythm both in story and photography, made it one of the outstanding pictures of the contest" American Cinematographer, Dec. 1934, 365.
"A clever puppet-toon, the making of which was described in a recent Journal. Clever, full of gags, well done." PSA Journal, Nov. 1956, 45.
"Interior footage of a woman playing the piano. A few shots also feature a young child sat on her knee whilst she plays. Includes close up shots of the woman's arms and hands, as she presses the piano keys" (NWFA Online Database).
"Family scenes outside a house in Greenbank, Keswick as two of the party prepare to leave. The car, a Trojan, reverses out of the garage." (NWFA Online Database)
"The excitement of a 1937 holiday starts with the packing of Arthur J. Dawson's initialled suitcase and the train ride from Saltash to Hemsby in Norfolk. Station staff wait to help passengers transfer their luggage to the wooden chalets of Hemsby Holiday Camp. Organised entertainments include following behind a carload of musicians including accordionist, exercising in swimsuits on the beach, silly sports and getting messy with flour and water." (BFI database)
"The Home Movie award went to [Joseph] F. Hollywood for his 8mm picture 'Two Kids and a Pup.' The subject was truly home movie in nature. A brief continuity that showed the pup being brought home; both boy and girl wanted it and finally a compromise where it is agreed one day the boy is to hove the pup and the next day the girl; the children thus to alternate for peace's sake. Then is shown how the boy plays with a dog. He goes to a wooded lot, pretends to be hunting, etc. The girl, however, treats the dog the same as she would a doll. Makes clothes for it, dresses it up and places it in the doll buggy. Then comes the day when the girl decides to cheat a bit and rushes home to be the first to have the dog. When the boy arrives she has the dog completely covered in the doll buggy. However, at the crucial moment it rears its head and the fight is on. The mother then decides to settle the controversy by having the children stand at one end of the yard while she takes the dog to the other end. They are to call the dog and the one to whom the dog goes is to play with it that day. They are set, the dog is let loose and just at that moment another dog passes by and the pup rushes between the children after the other dog and thus the story ends. Hollywood's cutting and photography were good. And the handling of the whole picture was highly commendable." American Cinematographer, Jan. 1937, 25.
"The Unexpected, by Ernest H. Kremer, is that rara avis of the amateur movie world, a perfectly produced and universally entertaining family film. It is no secret, surely, that taking pictures of one's family outranks all other reasons prompting a home filmer to buy his camera. It is an equally open secret that the results, generally, are those that only a mother could love. Judged impersonally and by even the simplest movie standards, the technique is sloppy, camera treatment dull and continuity non-existent. But now, with The Unexpected, family film making takes on new stature and its apostles may speak with new pride. The picture tells a simple tale: A man arrives home and finds a note from his wife. Unexpectedly, she writes, she has been called to the city, but there is food in the icebox, et cetera, etc. Later that evening, after a suavely developed interlude of husbandly miming, the wife returns and announces that she expects a baby. The rest of the rewardingly short reel records early activities in the life of the infant, capped by a swift and comic climax. A simple tale, but superbly told. Mr. Kremer's technical skill, developed through years of competent 8mm. work, is more than a match for this, his first 16mm. production. Perhaps most outstanding among the picture's many fine points is its admirable economy of footage. Running a scant 325 feet of film, it has a sense of pace regrettably rare in amateur movies. Mr. Kremer, for example, recognizes the lap dissolve as a spatial transition, not a specious ornament — and he uses it as such with telling effect. His editing is crisp, his camera treatment incisive and his continuity planned and purposeful. The Unexpected, in proving that excellence can join hands with the hearthside, should be a ringing challenge to all family filmers." Movie Makers, Dec. 1948, 474-475.
"Sometime during the summer of 1950, Fred Evans, L. A.'s genial maestro of 8mm movies, arranged to pick up a new Nash sedan in Grand Rapids, Mich. What better excuse need there be for packing up his two Southern California sons and taking them East to meet the land of their forefathers? Which is exactly what he did in Vacation Highlights of 1950. The lead title is commonplace, perhaps almost banteringly so; but the film footage which follows it is not. Niagara Falls, his native Vermont, Concord, Lexington, New York, Philadelphia and Washington are on the Evans itinerary of American history. There is a rewarding stop at the St. Louis zoo — for its incomparable Sunday shows — and soon the Evans are home again. But not without one final twist to the tale. "Hey, look-out here, Pop!" urges the oldest offspring as he returns from scouting the premises. The family cat, with inimitable feline pride and savoir faire has had kittens." Movie Makers, Dec. 1951, 410.
"Luc Fauvel is a Norman, and he turned to his own pays to contrive as sensitive and trenchant a study of French provincial life, in miniature, done by the medium of film, as did giants like Flaubert and de Maupassant through the medium of words. His Vieille France has irony, pathos, humor and plain reporting. It is the tale of an old bonnet maker of Normandy, who goes through her daily tasks, in which she has grown old, but who, at the end of the labor, reviews the past, by means of her photograph album, and meditates on her son, who died on the field of honor in the World War, and on her daughter who has become a great dancer and is far removed from the little Norman village of her origin. Mr. Fauvel accomplishes most by suggestion, by indirect statement and by a kind of insidious comment on life, never more than fleetingly presented. This young Frenchman, now studying at Cambridge, in England, will give us better and more technically well knit pictures as times goes on." Movie Makers, Dec. 1937, 630.
Total Pages: 15
Amateur Cinema