Watch Humorous Phases of Funny Faces, the First Animated Movie (1906)

in Animation, Film | September 9th, 2014

August and Louis Lumière might have made the first film – a sim­ple, sta­t­ic shot of work­ers leav­ing their fac­to­ry for the day – but George Méliès invent­ed the art form of cin­e­ma. Through his exper­i­ments, Méliès dis­cov­ered that mag­ic hap­pened when he turned the cam­era off and on. Peo­ple sud­den­ly dis­ap­peared into thin air. Objects appeared out of nowhere. A famed magi­cian, Méliès knew he was on to some­thing. His dis­cov­ery plant­ed the seeds for just about every cin­e­mat­ic tech­nique in the book — includ­ing ani­ma­tion. You can watch six of Méliès’ films here, includ­ing his land­mark 1902 short A Trip to the Moon.

The per­son cred­it­ed with mak­ing the first film-based ani­ma­tion, how­ev­er, is James Stu­art Black­ton with his film Humor­ous Phas­es of Fun­ny Faces (1906). You can watch it above. The short starts with the artist’s hand draw­ing on a chalk­board. Soon, how­ev­er, the draw­ing starts to move on its own. The film is as prim­i­tive as it is fun. A man in a top hat blows cig­ar smoke into a woman’s face. A clown dances. Imag­ine the shock and awe of an audi­ence not weaned on Pixar and Mick­ey Mouse watch­ing a pic­ture come to life for the first time.

Black­ton start­ed his career as a jour­nal­ist and a vaude­ville car­toon­ist. In 1896, he was assigned to cov­er Thomas Edi­son’s brand new inven­tion – the Vitas­cope, an ear­ly film pro­jec­tor. Edi­son proved to be such a good sales­man that Black­ton end­ed up buy­ing one. Soon he, along with his vaude­ville part­ner Albert Smith, found­ed one of the first ever movie stu­dios — the Amer­i­can Vita­graph Com­pa­ny. The com­pa­ny even­tu­al­ly became known for cre­at­ing some of the first movie adap­ta­tions of Shake­speare and Charles Dick­ens, but before that, they made short “trick” movies — flashy shorts to be shown dur­ing vaude­ville shows. One of those movies, The Enchant­ed Draw­ing (1900) is essen­tial­ly a filmic ver­sion of Blackton’s act with some cin­e­mat­ic sleight-of-hand thrown in. And as you can see below, it points the way to Black­ton’s break­through with Humor­ous Phas­es.

In 1911, Black­ton, along with his co-direc­tor, the spec­tac­u­lar­ly tal­ent­ed Win­sor McCay, made Lit­tle Nemo, a movie that hints at the true poten­tial of ani­ma­tion. Sure, their movie has way too much half-heart­ed live action slap stick, which pads out the run­ning time to an over-stuffed 10 min­utes, but the actu­al ani­ma­tion, which starts around 8:30, is utter­ly gor­geous. Watch it below.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Ger­tie the Dinosaur: The Moth­er of all Car­toon Char­ac­ters

Vis­it the World of Lit­tle Nemo Artist Win­sor McCay: Three Clas­sic Ani­ma­tions and a Google Doo­dle

Ear­ly Exper­i­ments in Col­or Film (1895–1935)

How Walt Dis­ney Car­toons are Made

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing one new draw­ing of a vice pres­i­dent with an octo­pus on his head dai­ly. 

 

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Kafka’s Parable “Before the Law” Narrated by Orson Welles & Illustrated with Pinscreen Art

in Animation, Film, Literature | September 8th, 2014

On Fri­day, we fea­tured Niko­lai Gogol’s “The Nose,” adapt­ed in 1963 through the work-inten­sive but aes­thet­i­cal­ly stun­ning means of “pin­screen ani­ma­tion” by Alexan­der Alex­eieff and Claire Park­er. But they had­n’t labored over it in total obscu­ri­ty; the year before, no less sol­id a pil­lar of Amer­i­can film than Orson Welles had com­mis­sioned their work for use in his adap­ta­tion of Franz Kafka’s The Tri­al, anoth­er work of lit­er­a­ture deeply con­cerned with the absurd. Crit­i­cal opin­ion varies about the film, which some con­sid­er Welles’ best work, oth­ers con­sid­er his worst, and oth­ers still con­sid­er a mix­ture of the two.

It cer­tain­ly remains one of his least-seen works, and yet it con­tains the most main­stream thing Alex­eieff and Park­er ever did. Very few deny the effec­tive­ness of the film’s pro­logue, which com­bines images straight from the hus­band-and-wife team’s pin­screen with Welles’ unmis­tak­able voice read­ing “Before the Law,” a para­ble from Kafka’s nov­el. Alex­eieff and Park­er’s images are still, rather than ani­mat­ed, which must have cut way down on the pro­duc­tion time.

“Before the law, there stands a guard,” Welles intones. “A man comes from the coun­try, beg­ging admit­tance to the law. But the guard can­not admit him. May he hope to enter at a lat­er time? That is pos­si­ble, said the guard. The man tries to peer through the entrance. He’d been taught that the law was to be acces­si­ble to every man. ‘Do not attempt to enter with­out my per­mis­sion,’ says the guard. I am very pow­er­ful. Yet I am the least of all the guards. From hall to hall, door after door, each guard is more pow­er­ful than the last. By the guard’s per­mis­sion, the man sits by the side of the door, and there he waits.” These words estab­lish the basis for not just The Tri­al, but seem­ing­ly Kafka’s own legal sen­si­bil­i­ty, and indeed world­view. The man waits for years, star­ing at the guard and lav­ish­ing him with bribes. He grows old and enfee­bled. Final­ly, he asks why, despite the fact that “every man strives to attain the law,” nobody else but him has ever come to attempt pas­sage through its doors. “Nobody else but you could ever have obtained admit­tance,” the guard replies. “This door was intend­ed only for you! And now, I’m going to close it.” Welles then com­ments that “the log­ic of this sto­ry is the log­ic of a dream… a night­mare.” One under­stands why the direc­tor, who endured so many futile and absurd expe­ri­ences in the enter­tain­ment indus­try, would feel drawn to such a fable. As for how he chose such appro­pri­ate imagery for it — well, maybe just good luck.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Niko­lai Gogol’s Clas­sic Sto­ry, “The Nose,” Ani­mat­ed With the Aston­ish­ing Pin­screen Tech­nique (1963)

Watch Franz Kaf­ka, the Won­der­ful Ani­mat­ed Film by Piotr Dumala

Kafka’s Night­mare Tale, ‘A Coun­try Doc­tor,’ Told in Award-Win­ning Japan­ese Ani­ma­tion

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Before The Simpsons: Homer Groening Directs a 1969 Short Film, The Story, Starring His Kids Maggie, Lisa & Matt

in Animation, Film | September 4th, 2014

The Sto­ry (1969) is a cute short film about two kids, Matt and Lisa, telling their younger sis­ter Mag­gie a bed­time sto­ry about meet­ing some ani­mals, and an alien, in the woods. You can watch it above. The Matt in this film is none oth­er than Matt Groen­ing, who would go on to cre­ate The Simp­sons. Their dad, Homer, made the movie. The Simp­sons, as Groen­ing admit­ted in an inter­view with Smith­son­ian mag­a­zine, is more than a lit­tle auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal.

I had been draw­ing my week­ly com­ic strip, “Life in Hell,” for about five years when I got a call from Jim Brooks, who was devel­op­ing “The Tracey Ull­man Show” for the brand-new Fox net­work. He want­ed me to come in and pitch an idea for doing lit­tle car­toons on that show. I soon real­ized that what­ev­er I pitched would not be owned by me, but would be owned by Fox, so I decid­ed to keep my rab­bits in “Life in Hell” and come up with some­thing new.

While I was waiting—I believe they kept me wait­ing for over an hour—I very quick­ly drew the Simp­sons fam­i­ly. I basi­cal­ly drew my own fam­i­ly. My father’s name is Homer. My mother’s name is Mar­garet. I have a sis­ter Lisa and anoth­er sis­ter Mag­gie, so I drew all of them. I was going to name the main char­ac­ter Matt, but I didn’t think it would go over well in a pitch meet­ing, so I changed the name to Bart.

Groen­ing incor­po­rat­ed oth­er auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal ele­ments into The Simp­sons too. For instance, the Groen­ing fam­i­ly, like Bart and com­pa­ny, lived on Ever­green Ter­race. In that same inter­view with Smith­son­ian, he all but admit­ted that the show is set in his native Ore­gon. And he even hint­ed that the names of a cou­ple despised school­yard bul­lies made their way into the show.

matt-lisa-maggie

The real Homer, how­ev­er, was very dif­fer­ent from the donut-obsessed rube in the car­toon. “My father was a real man’s man, you know. He was a B17 bomber pilot in the War, sta­tioned in Eng­land. So I grew up with this very intim­i­dat­ing, tough act to fol­low,” Groen­ing told the Tele­graph. “The nice thing was that he would leave his pens out for me to play with. But then he was not par­tic­u­lar­ly approv­ing of what I came up with.”

And while the ear­ly episodes of the Simp­sons, which show Homer being per­pet­u­al­ly irri­tat­ed by his smart aleck son, hints at the com­pli­cat­ed rela­tion­ship Groen­ing had with his father, he also cred­its him – and the movie above in par­tic­u­lar – for inspir­ing his huge­ly suc­cess­ful show.

He used to tape-record the fam­i­ly sur­rep­ti­tious­ly, either while we were dri­ving around or at din­ner, and, in 1963, he and I made up a sto­ry about a broth­er and a sis­ter, Lisa and Matt, hav­ing an adven­ture out in the woods with ani­mals. I told it to my sis­ter Lisa, and she in turn told it to my sis­ter Mag­gie. My father record­ed the telling of the sto­ry by Lisa to Mag­gie, and then he used it as the sound­track to a movie. So the idea of dra­ma­tiz­ing the family—Lisa, Mag­gie, Matt—I think was the inspi­ra­tion for doing some­thing kind of auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal with “The Simp­sons.” There is an aspect of the psy­cho­dy­nam­ics of my fam­i­ly in which it makes sense that one of us grew up and made a car­toon out of the fam­i­ly and had it shown all over the world.

via Laugh­ing Squid/Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Before The Simp­sons, Matt Groen­ing Illus­trat­ed a “Student’s Guide” for Apple Com­put­ers (1989)

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing one new draw­ing of a vice pres­i­dent with an octo­pus on his head dai­ly. 

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Derek Jarman Creates Pioneering Music Videos for The Smiths, Marianne Faithfull & the Pet Shop Boys

in Film, Music | September 4th, 2014

Today we think of music videos, per­haps quaint­ly and not always cor­rect­ly, as the cra­dle of mod­ern Hol­ly­wood’s sense-over­load­ing, log­ic-sac­ri­fic­ing, teen-tar­get­ing, “quick-cut” style. But the medi­um, espe­cial­ly in its for­ma­tive years, offered a wide-open can­vas not just to hacks, but to auteurs as well. Case in point: the British direc­tor, artist, and writer Derek Jar­man, well known for fea­tures like Car­avag­gio, The Last of Eng­land, and Blue, but maybe even bet­ter-known, depend­ing on which cir­cles you run in, for his short films meant to pro­mote songs from a vari­ety of musi­cal-cul­tur­al fig­ures: The Smiths, Mar­i­anne Faith­full, the Pet Shop Boys, Pat­ti Smith, the Sex Pis­tols, Bryan Fer­ry. At the top of the post, we see Jar­man push­ing the bound­aries of the music video, inten­tion­al­ly or unin­ten­tion­al­ly, as ear­ly as 1979, with a 12-minute visu­al suite inter­pret­ing not one but three of Faith­ful­l’s songs.

Jar­man goes a minute longer just above for anoth­er, 1986 three-parter: The Smiths’ “The Queen is Dead,” “Pan­ic,” and “There is a Light that Nev­er Goes Out,” songs which allow him to ful­ly exer­cise his pen­chant for nos­tal­gia-sat­u­rat­ed styles of footage and acid crit­i­cism of the direc­tion of Eng­land. He would also col­lab­o­rate with his equal­ly satir­i­cal coun­try­men the Pet Shop Boys in the late 1980s and ear­ly 1990s on no few­er than four sep­a­rate videos, two of which, both from 1987, appear below: “Rent” and “It’s a Sin.” What’s more, he direct­ed their 1989 live tour, which fea­tured not only elab­o­rate cos­tumes but whole new short films pro­ject­ed onstage. With his com­bi­na­tion of the­atri­cal sense and inter­est in abstract visu­al expres­sion, Jar­man must have seemed a per­fect fit for such an aes­thet­i­cal­ly mind­ed out­fit as the Pet Shop Boys. Those qual­i­ties also placed him well to define the nature of the music video itself — in which, at its best, we can still detect his influ­ence today.

Rent

It’s a Sin

via Net­work Awe­some

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wittgen­stein: Watch Derek Jarman’s Trib­ute to the Philoso­pher, Fea­tur­ing Til­da Swin­ton (1993)

Watch Car­avag­gio, Derek Jarman’s Take on the Baroque Painter’s Life, Work & Roman­tic Com­pli­ca­tions (1986)

Jim Jarmusch’s Anti-MTV Music Videos for Talk­ing Heads, Neil Young, Tom Waits & Big Audio Dyna­mite

Tim Bur­ton Shoots Two Music Videos for The Killers

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Quentin Tarantino Explains The Art of the Music in His Films

in Film, Music | September 3rd, 2014

To some direc­tors, the music heard in their films seems as (or more) impor­tant than the images seen or the dia­logue spo­ken. Maybe you’d make that case about Jim Jar­musch after read­ing — or, more to the point, hear­ing — our post on the music in his movies. And sure­ly many Quentin Taran­ti­no fans would regard a Reser­voir Dogs with­out “Stuck in the Mid­dle with You” or a Pulp Fic­tion with­out “Misir­lou” as not Reser­voir Dogs or Pulp Fic­tion at all. In the book­let that comes with The Taran­ti­no Con­nec­tion, a col­lec­tion of sound­track songs from Taran­ti­no’s movies, Taran­ti­no describes his per­haps unsur­pris­ing­ly musi­cal­ly-inspired method of film con­cep­tion as fol­lows: “One of the things I do when I am start­ing a movie, when I’m writ­ing a movie or when I have an idea for a film is, I go through my record col­lec­tion and just start play­ing songs, try­ing to find the per­son­al­i­ty of the movie, find the spir­it of the movie. Then, ‘boom,’ even­tu­al­ly I’ll hit one, two or three songs, or one song in par­tic­u­lar, ‘Oh, this will be a great open­ing cred­it song.’ ” Hence his use of Dick Dale, the “King of Surf Gui­tar,” for the open­ing cred­its of Pulp Fic­tion.

“Hav­ing ‘Misir­lou’ as your open­ing cred­its is just so intense,” writes Taran­ti­no. “It just says, ‘You are watch­ing an epic, you are watch­ing this big old movie just sit back.’ It’s so loud and blear­ing at you, a gaunt­let is thrown down that the movie has to live up to.’ ” He goes on to describe the tak­ing of songs and arrang­ing them in a cer­tain sequence in a movie as “just about as cin­e­mat­ic a thing as you can do. You are real­ly doing what movies do bet­ter than any oth­er art form; it real­ly works in this vis­cer­al, emo­tion­al, cin­e­mat­ic way that’s just real­ly spe­cial.” And did he already know, as he set Reser­voir Dogs’ un-unsee­able ear-slic­ing scene to that mel­low, then twen­ty-year-old hit from Steal­ers Wheel, that “when you do it right and you hit it right then the effect is you can nev­er real­ly hear this song again with­out think­ing about that image from the movie”? Cer­tain­ly his use of Bob­by Wom­ack­’s “Across 110th Street” has fused the song with Jack­ie Brown and not the epony­mous 1972 pic­ture for which Wom­ack orig­i­nal­ly wrote it. And who has Kill Bill and does­n’t asso­ciate it with Nan­cy Sina­tra’s ver­sion of “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)”? “I don’t know if Ger­ry Raf­fer­ty [a mem­ber of Steal­ers Wheel] nec­es­sar­i­ly appre­ci­at­ed the con­no­ta­tions that I brought to ‘Stuck in the Mid­dle with You,’ ” Taran­ti­no adds. “There is a good chance he did­n’t.” But when it comes to under­stand­ing a song’s cin­e­mat­ic poten­tial, Taran­ti­no has long since proven he knows what he’s doing.

Across 110th Street

Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)

via That Eric Alper

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Quentin Taran­ti­no Lists His Favorite Records: Bob Dylan, Fre­da Payne, Phil Ochs and More

The Pow­er of Food in Quentin Tarantino’s Films

The Best of Quentin Taran­ti­no: Cel­e­brat­ing the Director’s 50th Birth­day with our Favorite Videos

Jim Jar­musch: The Art of the Music in His Films

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Fans Reconstruct Authentic Version of Star Wars, As It Was Shown in Theaters in 1977

in Film | August 29th, 2014

I watched Star Wars for the first time in 1977 at the ten­der age of four. And like a lot of peo­ple in my gen­er­a­tion and younger, that first time was a major, for­ma­tive expe­ri­ence in my life. I got all the toys. I fan­ta­sized about being Han Solo. And dur­ing the sum­mer of ’83, I blew my allowance by watch­ing Return of the Jedi every day for a week in the the­ater. George Lucas’ epic space opera is the rea­son why I spent a life­time watch­ing, mak­ing and writ­ing about movies. And if you asked any movie crit­ic, fan or film­mak­er who grew up in the ‘80s, they will prob­a­bly tell you a sim­i­lar sto­ry.

Over the years though, Lucas suc­cumbed to the dark side of the Force. His pre­quel tril­o­gy, start­ing with tru­ly god awful The Phan­tom Men­ace (1999), is as visu­al­ly over­stuffed as it is cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly inert. (Some­where, there’s a dis­ser­ta­tion to be writ­ten about how wide­spread feel­ings of betray­al from the pre­quels psy­chi­cal­ly pre­pared Amer­i­ca for the anx­i­ety and dis­ap­point­ments of the Bush admin­is­tra­tion.)

Worse, fans who want to con­sole them­selves by watch­ing Star Wars as they remem­ber see­ing it back in the ‘80s are out of luck. Lucas has been qui­et­ly butcher­ing the orig­i­nal movies by adding CGI, sound effects and even whole char­ac­ters – like (gag) Jar Jar Binks — to suc­ces­sive spe­cial edi­tion updates. The prob­lem is these updat­ed ver­sions feel bifur­cat­ed. It’s as if two dif­fer­ent movies with two dif­fer­ent aes­thet­ics were clum­si­ly stitched togeth­er. Lucas’ spare, mus­cu­lar com­po­si­tions in the orig­i­nal movie sit uneasi­ly next to its car­toony, over-wrought addi­tions. Yet this Franken­stein ver­sion is the one that Lucas insists you watch. The orig­i­nal cut is just plain not for sale. Lucas even refused to give the Nation­al Film Reg­istry the 1977 cut of Star Wars for future preser­va­tion. “It’s like this is the movie I want­ed it to be,” said Lucas in an inter­view in 2004, “and I’m sor­ry if you saw half a com­plet­ed film and fell in love with it, but I want it to be the way I want it to be.”

Thank­ful­ly, hard­core Star Wars fans are telling Lucas, respect­ful­ly, to go cram it. As Rose Eveleth in The Atlantic reports, a ded­i­cat­ed online com­mu­ni­ty has set out to cre­ate a “despe­cial­ized” edi­tion of Star Wars that strips away all of Lucas’s dig­i­tal non­sense and restores the movie to its orig­i­nal 1977 state. The de fac­to leader of this move­ment is Petr Harmy, a 25-year-old guy from the Czech Repub­lic who with the help of a legion of tech­ni­cal­ly savvy film nerds has pieced togeth­er footage from exist­ing prints and old­er DVD releas­es to cre­ate the Despe­cial­ized Edi­tion v. 2.5. (Direc­tions on where you can locate it are here.) Above Harmy talks in detail about how he accom­plished this feat. And below you can see some side-by-side com­par­isons. More can be found on Petr Harmy’s page. Final­ly, in the com­ments sec­tion below, Harmy also points us toward pages with Despe­cial­ized stills for Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back.

Comparison014

Comparison031

Comparison032

Via The Atlantic

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How Star Wars Bor­rowed From Aki­ra Kurosawa’s Great Samu­rai Films

Frei­heit, George Lucas’ Short Stu­dent Film About a Fatal Run from Com­mu­nism (1966)

Watch the Very First Trail­ers for Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back & Return of the Jedi (1976–83)

Joseph Camp­bell and Bill Moy­ers Break Down Star Wars as an Epic, Uni­ver­sal Myth

Hun­dreds of Fans Col­lec­tive­ly Remade Star Wars; Now They Remake The Empire Strikes Back

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing one new draw­ing of a vice pres­i­dent with an octo­pus on his head dai­ly. 

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Watch the Films of the Lumière Brothers & the Birth of Cinema (1895)

in Film | August 28th, 2014

When Auguste and Louis Lumière unveiled their inven­tion, the Ciné­matographe, at the Salon Indi­en du Grand Café in Paris on Decem­ber 28, 1895, the art form of film was born. Pri­or to that, oth­er inven­tors looked for ways to pho­to­graph­i­cal­ly cap­ture motion in a com­mer­cial­ly suc­cess­ful way but failed. Thomas Edi­son, for instance, hawked a device called the Kine­to­scope that looked a bit like a View-Mas­ter strapped to a pul­pit. It was big, bulky and, most impor­tant­ly, offered an expe­ri­ence to a sin­gle view­er at a time. The Ciné­matographe, on the oth­er hand, pro­ject­ed images on a wall, cre­at­ing, for the first time ever, a movie audi­ence.

Cinématographe_Lumière (1)

The Lumière broth­ers screened 10 short films that night, each run­ning about 50 sec­onds long. They are, as you might expect, about as prim­i­tive as you can get. Basic ele­ments of cin­e­ma like edit­ing or cam­era move­ment were decades away from evolv­ing into the cin­e­mat­ic gram­mar that we take for grant­ed today.

The Lumière brother’s first film was called Work­ers Leav­ing The Lumière Fac­to­ry in Lyon (La Sor­tie des usines Lumière à Lyon) and that’s entire­ly what the short shows: a sin­gle sta­t­ic shot of dozens of men and women, all of whom seem to be wear­ing hats, leav­ing a fac­to­ry for the day. It is a doc­u­men­tary in its most ele­men­tal form.


Above is The Water­er Watered (L’Ar­roseur arrosé), cinema’s first com­e­dy. It shows a gar­den­er water­ing some plants before a naughty kid steps on the hose, cut­ting off its flow. When the gar­den­er looks down the noz­zle, the kid takes his foot off the hose and Bam! — the world’s first exam­ple of some­one get­ting punked on cam­era.

And below you can see the Lumière’s most famous ear­ly short, screened in ear­ly 1896. It shows a train arriv­ing at a sta­tion. The cam­era was placed right at the edge of the plat­form so the train sweeps past the frame on a strong, dynam­ic diag­o­nal. Leg­end has it that audi­ences thought that the train was com­ing straight at them and pan­icked. That’s prob­a­bly not true but it did, for the first time, demon­strate the visu­al dra­ma that can be cre­at­ed by a well-placed cam­era.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

40 Great Film­mak­ers Go Old School, Shoot Short Films with 100 Year Old Cam­era

What David Lynch Can Do With a 100-Year-Old Cam­era and 52 Sec­onds of Film

A Trip to the Moon (and Five Oth­er Free Films) by Georges Méliès, the Father of Spe­cial Effects

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing one new draw­ing of a vice pres­i­dent with an octo­pus on his head dai­ly. 

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The Five Best North Korean Movies: Watch Them Free Online

in Film, History | August 27th, 2014

Accord­ing to offi­cial pro­pa­gan­da, Kim Jong-Il was a remark­ably impres­sive indi­vid­ual. He learned to walk when he was just three weeks old; he wrote 1,500 books while at uni­ver­si­ty; and, dur­ing his first and only game of golf, he scored 11 holes in one. Yet for some rea­son becom­ing the world’s first North Kore­an pro­fes­sion­al golf play­er didn’t seem to inter­est Kim. He want­ed to make movies. So, in 1978, while his father Kim Il-Sung was still the country’s supreme leader, Kim set out to mod­ern­ize the film indus­try of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic People’s Repub­lic of Korea.

“The North’s film­mak­ers are just doing per­func­to­ry work,” Kim said to South Kore­an film direc­tor Shin Sang-ok. “They don’t have any new ideas…their works have the same expres­sions, redun­dan­cies, the same old plots. All our movies are filled with cry­ing and sob­bing. I did­n’t order them to por­tray that kind of thing.”

the-flower-girl.480.270.s

Of course, Kim’s bold plan to jump­start the indus­try was to kid­nap Shin and his wife, both celebri­ties in South Korea. He was abduct­ed in Hong Kong and, when he had the temer­i­ty to try to escape, he end­ed up spend­ing four years toil­ing in prison, sub­sist­ing on lit­tle more than grass and a lit­tle rice. Even­tu­al­ly, Shin was approached by Kim and giv­en an offer he dare not refuse: make movies in North Korea.

Like the films cranked out in Chi­na dur­ing the height of the Cul­tur­al Rev­o­lu­tion, North Kore­an movies are large­ly pro­pa­gan­da deliv­ery sys­tems designed exclu­sive­ly for a domes­tic audi­ence. After Shin’s kid­nap­ping, DPRK movies start­ed to get just a bit less didac­tic. Simon Fowler, who writes prob­a­bly the only Eng­lish-lan­guage blog on North Kore­an cin­e­ma, just wrote an arti­cle for The Guardian where he select­ed the best films to come out of the Her­mit king­dom. You can watch a few of these movies here and find the oth­ers at The Guardian. They might be goofy, maudlin and ham-fist­ed, but for movie mavens and afi­ciona­dos of Com­mu­nist kitsch, they are fas­ci­nat­ing.

Per­haps the most impor­tant North Kore­an movie ever is The Flower Girl (1972). Watch it above. Set dur­ing Japan’s colo­nial occu­pa­tion of Korea, the film fol­lows a young woman who endures one injus­tice after anoth­er at the hands of the Japan­ese before Kim Il-Sung’s army march­es into her vil­lage and saves the day. The movie set the tem­plate for many of the movies to come after­wards. As Fowler writes, “the impor­tance of The Flower Girl with­in the DPRK can­not be over­es­ti­mat­ed. The star, Hong Yong-hee, adorns the one won bank note in North Korea, and is revered as a nation­al hero. Although not always an easy watch, those want­i­ng to learn more about the aver­age North Kore­ans’ sen­si­bil­i­ties could do far worse than to watch this pic­turesque but trag­ic film.”

Hong Kil Dong (1986) is clear­ly one of the movies Shin Sang-ok influ­enced; it fore­ground­ed enter­tain­ment over ide­ol­o­gy, a rar­i­ty at that point in the coun­try’s film his­to­ry. The movie is about a char­ac­ter from Kore­an lit­er­a­ture who, like Robin Hood, not only robs from the rich and gives to the poor but knows how to deliv­er a beat­down. Hong plays out like a par­tic­u­lar­ly low-bud­get Shaw Broth­ers kung fu spec­ta­cle with plen­ty of fly­ing kicks, sword play and wire work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCKSR0JArUQ#t=5000

And final­ly, there’s Pul­gasari (1985), North Korea’s attempt at mak­ing a kai­ju movie. Set in feu­dal times, the film is about a stat­ue that comes to life, grows to mon­strous pro­por­tions and, unable to sate its unquench­able thirst for met­al, starts to smash things. Shin man­aged to get tech­ni­cal help for the movie from Toho, the same Japan­ese stu­dio that cranked all those Godzil­la movies. In fact, they even got vet­er­an kai­ju actor, Ken­pachi­ro Sat­suma, to don a rub­ber suit for this movie. Years lat­er, Pul­gasari was released in Japan about the same time as Roland Emmerich’s god awful Hol­ly­wood remake of Godzil­la (not to be con­fused with Gareth Edward’s god awful Hol­ly­wood remake from ear­li­er this year). Sat­suma pub­li­cal­ly stat­ed what a lot of Japan­ese pri­vate­ly thought – Pul­gasari is bet­ter than Emmerich’s big-bud­get dud.

Not long after Shin com­plet­ed Pul­gasari, he and his wife man­aged to escape in Vien­na thanks to the help of the CIA and a host of oth­er unlike­ly par­ties.  Kim Jong-Il might have had super human abil­i­ties, but tal­ent reten­tion did not seem to be one of them.

You can watch the three films list­ed above, plus Marathon Run­ner and Cen­tre For­ward over at  The Guardian.

More free films can be found in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

via Coudal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kim Jong-il’s Godzil­la Movie & His Free Writ­ings on Film The­o­ry

North Korea’s Cin­e­ma of Dreams

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing one new draw­ing of a vice pres­i­dent with an octo­pus on his head dai­ly. 

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