"A joint project of the members of the Motion Picture Photography Class of the Westchester Workshop, in White Plains, N. Y., Recreation Handmade is notable for its evenness of camera work. It presents in a naturally episodic fashion various handiwork classes available to children and adults of the community. If you like to work with your hands, this film will make you eager to enroll in one of the many activities offered — which, of course, is the purpose of its production. A rather full commentary describes how the courses work. Walter Bergmann, as instructor of the motion picture course, proves with his pupils' film that practical movie making can be taught — and taught well." Movie Makers, Dec. 1949, 470-471.
"Revelation indeed reveals the slow, but intense, life of flowers as they unfold. Hans J. Theiler, who built a special mechanism for the purpose, has made time lapse studies of blooms in their determined efforts to find sunlight. Other flowers lose as well as open. The time lapse sequences are preceded by closeup footage of various blooms impeccably filmed. In the chief section of the picture, Mr. Theiler has caught very dextrously the unusual and almost terrifying performances of plants as they carry on their exceedingly active careers. The time lapses are exceptionally smooth." Movie Makers, Dec. 1944, 496.
"A black-and-white silent animation, which Kaneko himself described as a visualization of a musical score, Hungarian Rhapsodie. He experimented with visual geometric abstraction as a means to express the musical score, and this film was his first attempt to use the koma-otoshi technique (the technique being used for time-lapse photography or stop-motion animation)." - Noriko Morisue, "Filming the Everyday: History, Theory, and Aesthetics of Amateur Cinema in Interwar and Wartime Japan" (Yale University: PhD Dissertation, 2020): 99.
"Amateur filmmaker, cinema historian and railway engineer H.A.V. Bulleid pays tribute to his dual loves of cinema and rail in an experimental short film. Bulleid uses 'metric editing' - the first of Russian director Sergei Eisenstein's 'methods of montage' - in which cuts are dictated by the number and sequence of frames, not what occurs on screen. First, Bulleid pays tribute to cinema, featuring the facades of picturehouses around Derby in static shots, which build to a dazzling crescendo of short shots. The section on trains features longer views of the railyards in operation, with trains shunting and coming into the station, before a final section focuses on trams, following electric streetcars as they move down urban streets" (EAFA Database).
"Film about how to make films." Library and Archives Canada.
"By a clever editorial feat, Charles H. Benjamin has transformed a series of animal scenes which he filmed at New York City's Bronx Zoo into a pseudo travelog of the African game belt. He achieved this effect by simply cutting shots of heavily wooded streams into footage of the uncaged animals in the famous zoo, and the illusion is pointed up by some striking title frames. Mr. Benjamin's camera work matches his editorial insight, for his exposures and composition are first rate. His use of back lighting gives his shots of flamingoes and drowsing lions a brilliance that puts them far above the usual run of animal pictures." Movie Makers, Dec. 1946, 488.
"Misdirected medical research, with gruesome and very exciting consequences, is the basis of the plot of The Scalpel, a photoplay produced by Richard H. Lyford, with the aid of a group of boys and girls of high school age. The plot is extravagant, the story is rather too filled with amazing action, and there is not a doubt that the melodrama as a whole puts too great a burden on the acting ability of a group of young people, even though they are surprisingly able. Nevertheless, here is an amateur made thriller of the Frankenstein and werwolf tradition that really sends chills chasing down your spine. The transition of the unfortunate doctor into a demented and abnormal creature involved makeup that is really astonishing outside of a theatrical studio. It can't be said that the handling of the episode is any less convincing in this amateur production than are the same undertakings in the best Hollywood films of this nature. In addition to being really successful in its object, this picture offers some excellent technical work and very competent management of a large cast." Movie Makers, Dec. 1936, 550-551.
The noted female impersonator Charles Pierce is invited to visit to the home of Norma Desmond (of Sunset Boulevard [Billy Wilder, 1950]).
"short abstract animation featuring visual rhythms created by the tempo and movement of circular, triangular, and square objects. Mori’s Senritsu was a black-and-white animation with synchronized music accompaniment, and Shimizu noted how the film attuned the visual images to the rhythm of the music, describing that “this kind of valuable experiment will inspire commercial talkies, more than Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphony do.” - Noriko Morisue, "Filming the Everyday: History, Theory, and Aesthetics of Amateur Cinema in Interwar and Wartime Japan" (Yale University: PhD Dissertation, 2020): 99.
"Film is a documentary on how to perform certain special effects in motion picture film. Film shows Toronto Movie Club members creating a double exposure, a humorous illusion, animation; shooting with a mirror and reversing motion" Archives of Ontario.
Total Pages: 9
Amateur Cinema