Land Between the Rivers: Ahlaam

The 20th of March marks one decade since the US-led invasion of Iraq. The ensuing war there lasted 8 years, 8 months, 4 weeks, and 3 days. 

Ahlaam (2006)

Called Dreams in English, Iraqi filmmaker Mohamed Al Daradji's debut feature is an ensemble piece concerning the lives of patients and doctors inside a Baghdad mental hospital during the opening salvos of the American invasion of 2003. It was filmed in the same city amidst some of the war's greatest hazards; several crew members were kidnapped and killed during production. The choice to shoot the film in country as fighting still raged is courageous and certainly brings the film a danger and authenticity that Post-WW2 Italian neorealism would envy. And any gracelessness or minor technical shortcoming can be overlooked given the circumstances of the film's production.

We spend the first act of the film in 1998. Our principal characters are Ahlaam, a young woman who's engaged to be married to the love of her life; Ali, a soldier on Iraq's frontier; and Mehdi, an idealistic medical student on the eve of graduation. We live with them as they go about their seemingly normal days under the heavy yet mostly unseen shroud of Saddam's dictatorship. In this Iraq, the people suffer a quiet terror which they attempt to bury with educational pursuits, romance, and song. Each character's world is shattered in one way or another, and then we fastforward to find them populating the asylum in a besieged Baghdad; Mehdi is a doctor there and Ahlaam and Ali are patients long ago driven mad by their respective trauma. Stewing in regret and sadness, they act out an interpretive dance of madness. 

In the third act the asylum is bombed and many of the inmates escape to wander a crumbling city that is quickly going crazier than them. I doubt much if any production design or set dressing was necessary to convey this urban warzone. Anywhere the filmmakers point their lens we see piles of rubble, bombed out buildings, and all over the city the specter of death hangs like a giant, suffocating cobweb. After years contained in the institution, Ali and Ahlaam spill into the streets to discover that their country has traded a familiar, repressed, whispered fear of the state for a blaring, new and bombastic terror. 

Ahlaam was the first film produced in Iraq after the fall of Saddam and was that country's entry into the Academy Awards the year of its release. It is a harrowing and poetic expression of how things must have felt in Baghdad when the bombing started; it tells a story that rarely finds its way to most American viewers, lost amid the jingoistic propaganda of the Shock and Awe period and then the war-weariness of the years that followed. Find this film and watch it. 

SPIES! Zero Dark Thirty vs. Argo

Zero Dark Thirty

Outwardly, master of suspense Katherine Bigelow's latest film is all about the desperate, decade long hunt for Osama bin Laden, but really it's all about obsession. This obsession belongs to and consumes CIA analyst Maya, played with dogged determination and grit by Jessica Chastain. Finding and eliminating the terrorist mastermind begins as simply a part of the job for Maya, but over the years she does "nothing else", in her words, and the international search comes to dominate her life so much that she must hunt for bin Laden for the sake of it; she becomes an animal of what she does.

The film displays a matter of fact treatment of history. The subject of the hunt needs little introduction, as does the nation's thirst for his blood; Bigelow simply begins the film with a title card indicating "Sept 11, 2001", along with a harrowing audio collage of emergency calls from that day against a black screen. The director knows that no images need to be shown to us to illustrate this event. Mentioning the date is enough to start the reel playing in our own minds, scarred as we are by the memory of the day when everything changed.  

Depicting a vast non-fiction story that stretches over many years can cause a movie to be tired and unwieldy, yet the events in Zero Dark Thirty feel fresh, spontaneous, organic, and unpredictable despite our knowledge of how it all ends. Chastain is the driving force of the film, but by no means is it a solo act; she's the center of a robust ensemble of sometimes morally ambiguous CIA intriguers and enforcers in Af-Pak torturing and tracking their way to UBL. Jennifer Ehle plays a more world-weary colleague who brings a breezy, southern-fried levity to many of her scenes and keeps Maya from being the token female in a relatively patriarchal milieu. Jason Clarke is introduced to us doing the ugly work of enhanced interrogation, and his cruel speciality is practiced in a very straightforward fashion that neither outright demonizes nor glorifies torture. Kyle Chandler plays Maya's boss in Pakistan for much her time there, and at first he comes off as stuffy and by-the-books, but we come to realize the twin pressures of violent culture clash outside his office window and demands from DC for results have crushed him into a timid, bureaucratic diamond.

The film draws us in so effectively and completely that we don't even notice when the narrative structure shifts in the last act from a montage of scenes over many years to a nearly real-time depiction of the 20 some-odd minute raid in a Pakistani suburb on bin Laden's now infamous compound by Seal Team 6. This kinetic and engrossingly suspenseful sequence is built meticulously from many bricks of details, and in some respects recalls the first-person robbery scene which opens Bigelow's 1995 sci-fi film Strange Days, though this raid is carried off with a great deal more deliberation and wise directorial confidence.
Along with tension and technical precision, the film is admirable for its humanity and restraint. The past decade of moving picture entertainment has been plagued with ugly and 1-dimensional portrayals of Arab and Muslim characters which are often reduced to mustache twirling evil geniuses or mindless, swarthy thugs. Zero Dark Thirty cannot avoid populating its world with folks who may or may not be Islamic extremists given the subject matter, yet even the smallest bit player is depicted with subtlety and without any reliance on racist or xenophobic preconceptions. 

Argo

Snark, bore.

Ben Affleck's third feature as director is based on the real life events which took place when CIA operative Tony Mendez coordinated with elements in Hollywood and the Canadian government to rescue, or exfiltrate, six US embassy workers from Tehran during the hostage crisis there in 1980. This premise should make for a fresh and intriguing movie-going experience, but instead it comes off feeling like predestine, paint-by-numbers storytelling. Even if you watched the film with no foreknowledge of how the events unfolded, their presentation here would still feel predictable. 

Ben Affleck foolishly casts himself as Mendez, and he is the stale saltine at the center of this parched mouth of a movie. He possesses no urgency, despite the high stakes subject matter, and he sucks the energy from every scene he's in, which is most of them. He surrounds himself with dependable and much more talented supporting players, but they don't break much of a sweat; John Goodman does his affable John Goodman thing, Alan Arkin does his snarky Alan Arkin thing, and Brian Cranston does his growly Brian Cranston thing. Kyle Chandler even shows up in this film as well, playing a government suit role similar in function to his character in ZD30 but without any of the nuance. The most prominent women in the story are two of the hostages to be rescued, yet they are left to spend most of their scarce screen time telling their husbands how frightened they are. 

Just about every Iranian in the film is one-dimensional and often downright cartoonish in their snarling villainy. Having taken in a fair bit of actual Iranian cinema, I know that even the most jack-booted government thugs can be portrayed with at least some shred of humanity, even as they harass women about their hijab or arrest young people for playing the wrong kind of music. Affleck had a great opportunity with this film to explore the very complicated relationship between Iran and the US, but he elected instead to play it safe and rely on tired and counterproductive stereotypes.

Argo was given several Oscars, including Best Picture, along with a number of trophies from other contests. I suspect all the Tinseltown love is due to the film's perceived theme of Hollywood saving the day, which isn't much of a stretch considering how self-important and -congratulatory the movie industry is in general, and especially so when award season hits. I wonder if Affleck knew this and counted on such collective narcissism to buoy his lazy little film to far more acclaim than it deserves. 

"Her Third Dream"

Another thing keeping me away from the blog has been working on my own films. Mostly I've been writing, but I also decided to revisit a short I made at the beginning of last year and make a few needed changes. Here is how it looked before - https://vimeo.com/36998603

And here it is all shiny and new-like:

Beyond the Black Maria: Not All Accounted For/ "A Cure for Pokeritis"

This blog has fallen silent recently, and mainly this is because I've realized that not all of the 600 films on the National Film Registry are necessarily at my finger tips. Due to this, I've regrouped and decided to go ahead and watch those films that I can and keep searching for those which are more elusive. With that, our next film takes us into the world of early slapstick.

20. "A Cure for Pokeritis" (1912) Watch

This entry is pretty silly and cartoonish. The story concerns a man, played by the massively rotund silent film slapstick comedian John Bunny, who is racked by a hopeless poker addiction, or 'pokeritis' as the movies title bizarrely puts it. The vice drives his frustrated wife to enlist the help of the local constabulary to cure her husband through a series of strange interventions. Some of the behavior is baffling, but I don't know if that has more to do with how temporally removed I am from the picture. I have to admit, I had difficulty even beginning to write about this little film; it simply does not speak to me. Even after multiple views, I am not moved by the piece whatsoever. Not by the hammy scenes of the poker addict's spouse pleading with him to give up the game, not by the frantic tableaux of lawmen flipping over card tables. This movies simply fell at my feet like a wet rag and I felt nothing. 

Beyond the Black Maria: "Little Nemo"

"Little Nemo", 1911. (public domain)

18. "Little Nemo" (1911) Watch

One trend in the brief history of cinema is relatively quick evolutions. In only the last decade, we've seen almost an absolute eclipse, at least in the US, of hand-drawn animation by the sparkling juggernaught that is CGI, led by the galactic success of Pixar and to a lesser extent Dreamworks. Not since the advent of commercially viable talkies in 1927 all but wiped out silent films has there been such a rapid and monumental shift in the business of moviemaking.

"Little Nemo" is metafictional. The short film consists mostly of live-action scenes depicting New York Herald cartoonist Winsor McCay trying to convince a group of his colleagues that the Little Nemo comic strip which he created can be adapted into moving pictures. We see him toil away at his drawing table cartoonishly surrounded by stacks of hundreds of sheets of paper which will make up his animated film. The story culminates after a month's time when McCay shows off his efforts in 2 minutes of well drawn but crudely animated characters from his comic strip. Not only is this film an early example of animation, but also the genre of films about filmmaking, and given that it was adapted from an existing comic strip, it could also be considered the first comic book movie. It's really somewhat astonishing just how rapidly the very new medium of cinema began to change and grow even in the first decades of its existence. What an excited time to call oneself a filmmaker, when there were really no rules and the future of the art form must have been a Wild West of endless possibilities. 

Beyond the Black Maria: "White Fawn's Devotion"

"White Fawn's Devotion", 1910 (public domain)

16. "White Fawn's Devotion" (1910) Watch

Though depictions of racial minorities in American cinema, and indeed contributions to the art by members of those groups, have increased in number and authenticity with each passing decade, Native Americans remain to this day criminally underrepresented, both as characters and artists behind the scenes. And on the rare occasions when Native Americans are cast in films, they are usually in supporting roles which all too often perpetuate one-dimensional stereotypes. Even a self-proclaimed liberal cinephile like me is hard pressed to summon up a substantial list of prominent Native American filmmakers from this or any era of cinema. It is against this backdrop that I marvel at the existence of "White Fawn's Devotion", a short film starring Red Indians and directed by James Young Deer of the Winnebago tribe; this title is the earliest known example of the work of any Native American director. The director's wife hauntingly portrays White Fawn, who's settler husband has just been informed that he must leave the homestead to collect a far off inheritance. Overwhelmed with the thought of living without her spouse for even a moment, White Fawn attempts suicide, the optics of which leads the nearby tribe to accuse her husband of murder. 

Despite some over-exaggerated acting from some of the cast which I suppose was typical of the era, along with a few unnecessary and obvious inter-titles, the film is a compelling tale full of irony, melodrama, and veiled social commentary, all elements which post-WWII Italian filmmakers would  later embrace to create the genre of neorealism. "White Fawn's Devotion" is a rare and singular piece of filmmaking, not only for its improbably successful journey through time, but also for its much too uncommon portrayal of Native Americans in a medium which is still reluctant to give this country's first people a proper voice. 

Beyond the Black Maria: On Reaching into the Past

A kinetoscope parlor, 1894. (public domain)

When I began this journey to view every film included on the Library of Congress' National Film Registry, which covers almost every year from 1891 to 1999, I suppose I should have anticipated that some of them might be scarce. So has been the case with at least two entries so far - The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight (1897) and "Lady Helen's Escapade" (1909). Corbett-Fitzsimmons was only added to the list this past year, so it is understandable that the Library of Congress has not yet made it available. It's really quite amazing that any of these old films still exist at all. I'll continue to do research and contact the appropriate parties until I am able to view these films and any others which are hard to find, but in the mean time I will keep going down the list and watch as many of the 600 hundred movies as I can locate. The closer I get to 1999, I think the easier and more accessible the films will become.

The notion of accessibility brings me to a peculiar element of this project. Since I'm viewing the films beginning with the earliest, so far all of the films I've viewed have been on the internet as they are now in the public domain. I'm utilizing the 21st century's answer to television to consume a few of cinema's first titles, some of which were originally exhibited inside a kinetoscope, which was the device that introduced motion pictures to the public in the late 19th century. With only a couple of exceptions, I have been able to effortlessly reach back into the past and view these films at my leisure and at no cost. Soon my journey will see me making regular visits to Scarecrow Video in order to obtain copies of the films I require, but for the time being I will use this amazing wormhole which sits on my desk to summon movies made by and starring people who are all long dead.

Beyond the Black Maria: "Princess Nicotine, or The Smoke Fairy"

15. "Princess Nicotine, or The Smoke Fairy" (1909) Watch

This 5 minute short is very silly. Most of the bloated products lumbering out of Hollywood every year are nothing more than thinly written and badly acted excuses to showcase the latest in visual effects technology, and this little film is an early example of the same. The piece's main effect, cutting to a set built to look like props at a huge scale so that the 'fairies' will appear tiny, is actually pulled off with surprising success, though some glaring jump cuts at certain moments help to ruin the illusion. It seems there is even some rudimentary forced-perspective used at one point; this is a method used to make an actor seem bigger or smaller than reality by placing them at different distances from the camera along the z-axis. In this case the fairy is farther from us than the man, yet they cheat their eye lines to give the illusion of being the same proximity from camera. This same technique is still used in such relatively recent films as The Lord of the Rings and shows us that the simplest special effects are often the most rewarding and seamless. 

Beyond the Black Maria: "A Corner in Wheat"

"A Corner in Wheat" 1909 (Library of Congress)

13. "A Corner in Wheat" (1909) Watch

This socio-politically charged short film is the earliest of many entries on the Registry directed by the staggeringly prolific D.W. Griffith. The infamous cinematic pioneer simply and effectively uses cross-cutting and what the soviets would later refer to as the 'collision montage' to juxtapose the greed of a wealthy tycoon who decides to corner the world wheat market with the plight of the destitute masses who can no longer afford bread as a result. We are shown a succession of tableaux vivants displaying the tycoon in question, a violent trading floor on Wall Street, and the poor in a general store as they grapple with rapid inflation. This all culminates in a classically ironic ending, when the tycoon takes some wealthy friends to visit the grain elevator where he suffers an accident and is crushed to death by his own greed. 

Bookending all this economically harrowing action are scenes of a farmer and his family working a wheat field. This storyline also constitutes the only exterior location shooting, in an agrarian setting that is shockingly gloomy and downright funereal. The field might as well be a desert, and the wind tugs at people's ratty clothes and what sparse vegetation there is in a subtle and haunting fashion which suggest a stinging chill in the air. These elemental effects are lacking in the studio-shot scenes and lend an integral yet undefinable quality of authenticity to the film. Nature is an unpredictable but always compelling costar. 

Beyond the Black Maria: In San Francisco

"A Trip Down Market Street" 1906. (Library of Congress)

11."A Trip Down Market Street" (1906) Watch

If you operate similarly to myself, then you can't deny that when you travel down a street in your city or town, you do not notice the details. You don't notice the ebb and flow of all your fellow citizens who are late for work or about to buy some coffee or walking with no purpose at all; you don't notice the great variety of clothes they choose to wear and so you don't wonder about where they acquired the articles or why they selected them for this particular day. You don't notice the unwritten agreement these pedestrians have with their automobile-bound counterparts, and you don't notice the silent ballet between foot traffic and the steely, rubbery river of cars which takes place mostly flawlessly hundreds of times as you move along the thoroughfare. 

"A Trip Down Market Street" was filmed on the eponymous road in San Francisco shortly before the earthquake and fire which almost completely destroyed the city, though just how shortly before is a matter of some debate; one theory puts it in 1905, another says early April of 1906. Whenever the exact date, this one-take film was captured by attaching a camera to the front of a cable car and shooting as it traveled down Market Street for about 10 minutes. The method is simple but the effect is compelling and in fact a little moving for an urbanite like me. It's a hypnotizing look at the pulse of a city, something only cinema can capture in this way. The steady pace of the cable car sets a beat for the shot, while the people and their insane myriad of conveyances, be they feet or hooves or engines, provide a palpitant rhythm which bangs around haphazardly against the canyon of buildings containing the action. 
Many differences are apparent between the world captured here and the one I live in. The clothing all appears very similar in the film, almost like metropolitan uniforms, though my chronological distance from the subject could have less to do with this than the city I reside in and am native to (Seattle), whose citizens I've been told all look like they're in costume. Another difference I notice is that evidently the people of the time had not yet learned an efficient way to manage the convergence of automobiles and people on the street. Several San Franciscans can be seen almost being rundown by cars or trolleys as they leap in front of the machines like frightened deer. 

12. "San Francisco Earthquake and Fire" (1906) Watch

One way I know we are living in a more modern era is that our cities don't burn down quite as much as they used to. On April 18th, 1906, San Francisco was struck by an earthquake which ruptured underground gas lines and precipitated a blaze that destroyed most of the city and killed around 3000 citizens. The rebuilding process began immediately, but was plagued by looting by civilians and United States soldiers sent in to maintain order. 

This film is an incredibly early example of moving news pictures, yet many of the common 'disaster porn' tropes we've come to know and tolerate on CNN can be seen in this primordial example of sensationalist journalism. Narrated with fancy intertitles, the 14 minute piece begins as we land on a smoking shore which appears almost alien. Quickly the camera moves to survey a nightmarish hell scape, full of crumbling ruins and smoldering piles of rubble, which barely resembles the once mighty city by the bay. We're then shown a rather awkward scene of a family dining in a flotsam-strewn street which very well could have been staged to increase the drama.
Are all depictions of real-life catastrophe inherently exploitative? Should a tragedy be left for only the victims to experience? I don't know if the makers of this piece contemplated such questions, but I know they should certainly come to the mind of any journalist who finds themselves running towards the latest disaster ready to get a story. 

Beyond the Black Maria: Westinghouse Works, 1904

Westinghouse Works, 1904 "Steam Hammer" (Library of Congress)

10. Westinghouse Works, 1904 (1904)

At a time when the horse was still a common mode of transportation,  giant mechanisms of industry thundered. Working for the American Mutoscope and Biograph Co., cameraman G.W. Bitzer captured these images of humans and machines at work, a compelling ballet of metal-working, in East Pittsburgh. Did Americans of the day take consumer goods for granted in the same way as we in the 21st century do? Have people always felt thus? Did the fact that a greater share of products were manufactured in the US, perhaps by yourself or a neighbor, give you more of an appreciation for them? These films are a huge comment on the changes that have shaped the global economy in the past century, especially when juxtaposed with the thought that an analogous present-day project would most likely feature Chinese or Bangladeshi women and children hard at work, in tandem with machines, making many modern conveniences possible for our oblivious American minds and bodies to enjoy and take for granted. 

This collection consists of 21 short films, each capturing a different scene within the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company and offered without explanation or much context. Three pieces in particular stick out:

"Steam Hammer"

I'm not sure exactly what is happening in this scene, but it is compelling and fascinating nonetheless. A great glowing hunk of metal is pulled from a furnace and repeatedly pounded with a giant hammer in a way that is hypnotizing and nearly cartoonish in its violence. It is dramatic to witness, though the drama is diminished somewhat when one realizes that the men in the film must have carried out this task so routinely that such an incredible display of metallic smashing and leaping sparks very well might have been ordinary in their minds. 

"Girls Taking Time Checks"

Here we see about 200 female workers passing by in a great river of stacked hair and ankle-length dresses in order to collect their time checks. Judging by the gleeful expressions on many of their faces, this might have been filmed at the end of the work day, though they could simply be mugging for the camera; I don't doubt the possibility that they were threatened with termination by their supervisor if they did not make themselves look happy at work. Though their faces flash upon the screen for only a few seconds apiece, I cannot help wondering about the thoughts that occupied them in that moment, and what kind of life they went home to each night. 

"Welding the Big Ring"

This piece is an entertaining and fascinating symphony of movement. The first visual rhythm so to speak is the almost exaggerated movements of a man working some kind of pulley. His action is theatrical and would be at home in a production of H.M.S. Pinafore. The next and predominant movement is the percussive pounding on the big ring by two to three men with sledgehammers, used almost like instruments. Though the film is silent, I can hear the sound of hammering that my mind is injecting into this viewing experience. 

Beyond the Black Maria: "The Great Train Robbery"

Still from "The Great Train Robbery", 1903. (public domain)

9. "The Great Train Robbery" (1903) Watch

The Western was an early member in the vast fraternity of film genres, and "The Great Train Robbery" was its introduction. This 12 minute film, directed by former Edison cameraman Edwin S. Porter, famously pioneered many elementary conventions of the cinematic language, such as intercutting between scenes and camera movement. 

Each scene is a stage, a box, for the action to flow through. Movement in the static frame is ever present. Things change; the shot is changed by time. From the initial action, movement announces itself as an integral element of the film. A lone clerk has his back to us, at work in a telegraph office. A window sits in the upper righthand corner of the frame, but is empty. Immediately a group of bandits rush in through a door at the left of the scene, startling the clerk into a panic and setting the screen aflame with crackling action. Concurrently, a train can be seen passing by outside through the window, moving from right to left, in the opposite direction that the bandits entered the scene, creating a directional discord that adds to the visual cacophony. The clerk is shot and bound by the criminals, who vanish out of the door as quickly as they appeared, followed by the train which finishes its path across the window. 

The visual tryptic of fore-, mid-, and background is used effectively. Take the scene at the end when the bandits, seemingly free of the authorities, stop in the woods to assess their take from the train. The robbers stand in the foreground, their horses sit idly in the mid-ground, and the background, seen through the trees, is quickly filled with law men. A smokey gun fight commences, the horses jump and scatter in alarm, and the stoic camera captures the whole ordeal with a clinical eye. Time, the camera's partner in crime, mercilessly erodes the bandits good fortune. 

"The Great Train Robbery" is actually a pretty compelling short film. The bandits' motivation for their violent crime is never explained; they are simply a malevolent force of nature which blazes across the landscape, leaving a bloody trail of dead, wounded, and traumatized citizens in its wake. The clerk and the train passenger who is shot down after an escape attempt are victims of slipping into the wrong place at the wrong point in time, which is perhaps what each one of us is at some moments. It's likely that the filmmakers never intended for their audience to ponder such esoteric notions, but these notions are pondered nonetheless.

Beyond the Black Maria

Joseph Jefferson as Rip Van Winkle in 1896 (public domain)

5. "Rip Van Winkle"(1896) Watch

It makes sense that cinema has deep and robust roots in live theater, from the Shakespearean to vaudeville and all betwixt. This series of eight short scenes was adapted from the play of the same name co-written by and starring Joseph Jefferson, who'd become famous in the 19th century for his on-stage portrayal of Rip Van Winkle and reprises the role here.

The presentation of these brief scenes, filmed in the woods, looks downright rudimentary and crude; most cellphone-shot videos of idiots hurting themselves in different hilarious ways display more nuance and understanding of the cinematic language than these bits of filmed theater. It actually reminds me of the first film I every made, which I shot on a camcorder in the 10th grade. The inclusion of "Rip Van Winkle" in the National Film Registry is a little baffling; I'm not sure what aesthetic, cultural, or historical significance it has to justify such a decision. What are your thoughts?

6. The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Title Fight (1897)

This film is proving elusive; details can be found here.

7. "President McKinley Inauguration Footage" (1901)

The telegenic quality of a president is practically essential in the modern era, and has been for some time, but it was not always thus. This short collection of two films shot by Thomas Edison himself documenting various parts of the eponymous event lives at the beginning of the time when the relationship between the president and the media was about to go through monumental changes. Until the advent of cinema, these quadrennial events took place and then were finished, visually undocumented except for a few photographs; a president's inauguration, and indeed his entire term in office, passed through time safe from capture by the net of the moving image. These ceremonies happened in their own time and place and remained there forever. By contrast, the sight and sound of JFK's inauguration in 1961 for example has been replayed and broadcast at thousands of times and in thousands of places, not to mention the fact that it is carried in signals that tumble deeper and deeper into the cosmos with each passing moment.

8. "Star Theatre" (1901) Watch

One very popular trend in short-form filmmaking this decade is known as tilt-shift. It's a method of capturing urban scenes, usually shot from a high angle, which causes the people and vehicles going about their business to appear to be miniature, using either a special lens or applying the effect in post production. only a slice of the frame is in focus, and the action plays out faster than real time. The "Regatta Scene" from David Fincher's The Social Network takes advantage of this technique. Tilt-shift is a cousin of time-lapse, one of the earliest examples of which is "Star Theatre", a short piece filmed over the course of about 30 days showing the dismantling of the title building. It is as compelling as any tilt-shift video.

Naturally, the Star Theatre housed staged productions of plays. As mentioned earlier, cinema was born partially from live theater, so the nexus of the subject and medium of "Star Theatre" is fascinating to contemplate. Here, a movie camera observes the death of a house of its own forebear. The film is like a cinematic laser blasting the art of theater into oblivion; a rapidly growing child eating its mother. 

Beyond the Black Maria: in Search of The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Title Fight

Still frame from Corbett-Fitzsimmons, 1897. (Public domain)

The sixth film on my list is The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Title Fight, a documentary depicting the eponymous boxing match. Released in 1897, it was the first feature length film to be exhibited to the public and was instrumental in establishing cinema as a mainstream form of entertainment.

Most of the oldest films in the National Film Registry can be found on the Library of Congress' YouTube channel, but not Corbett-Fitzsimmons. A broader search of the internet brings up some pieces that could possibly be the film in question, though the quality of each is poor and the authenticity difficult to verify. After this initial hiccup, I called Scarecrow Video in Seattle's University District to ask if the film I'm looking for resides in their vast and eclectic collection; it does not. This is the very first time that Scarecrow's immense catalogue has been stumped by one of my searches. The man I spoke with was very helpful nonetheless and did some web searching of his own, but came up against the same dead ends I have discovered. Some reports and reviews claim that only 11 seconds of the film survives, while the Wikipedia article on the subject claims a New York resident by the name of Jean A. Le Roy owns the most complete print, but there is no citation provided and a google search of the name gave no illumination. I may have to place a phone call to the Library of Congress in order to augment this:

@librarycongress Can you tell me where I can find a copy of THE CORBETT-FITZSIMMONS TITLE FIGHT from 1897, or if the film even still exists?
— Dan Howes (@danwhowes) January 8, 2013

My search will continue, but unfortunately I will have to skip The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Title Fight for the time being in order to continue apace on my year-long journey through the National Film Registry. Hopefully I can turn it up, and before the year is out.  

Welcome to the Black Maria

Thomas Edison's Black Maria (Library of Congress)

In 2013 I am giving myself the task of watching all 600 films in the National Film Registry. These are the movies that the United States National Film Preservation Board has deemed worthy of inclusion in the Library of Congress. Each year since 1989, around 25 films from all throughout cinema history are chosen based on standards of cultural, historical, and aesthetic significance. I'll be watching them chronologically based on when each was made.

600 films in a year may seem like a giant commitment, but its really not as immense an undertaking as it sounds; it averages out to about 11 films a week, which is one per weeknight and 3 on each day of the weekend, and is really no more film-viewing than I'm already accustomed to. Considering many of the early films are quite short, some less than a minute, I should be able to get way ahead of schedule within the first two weeks of the year.

Now, it'd be a shame to go on a cinematic adventure like this and not document the experience, so here begins my journal of a year in the National Film Registry.

1. "Newark Athlete" (1891) Watch

This now-visibly damaged, 10 second clip of a young man swinging Indian clubs around was made by William Kennedy Dickson, a movie camera inventor who worked for Thomas Edison; he filmed the piece in Edison's Black Maria, a little eccentric-looking building used to produce many of the inventor's kinetoscope films (including the four earliest entries on our list), and which is widely considered one of the first movie studios. To my hopelessly modern eye "Newark Athlete" is unremarkable, but remembering the historical context helps me to ponder what a citizen of the day must have thought, unburdened by a lifetime of acclimation to cinema. What in my era is an analog to this brief strip of boring film? What modern wonders amaze and confound me by their mere existence?

2. "Blacksmith Scene" (1893) Watch

Not only was this piece the first Kinetoscope film to be publicly shown, but is also infamously the very first example of actors performing a scene in a motion picture; three blacksmiths take turns hammering a piece of metal, breaking momentarily to share a drink before getting back to work. The action is simple, mechanical, and dull, but nothing had done what "Blacksmith Scene" does before then, and it is a universal truth that once a thing is shown to be possible, it becomes ever more so in the minds of all who witness it. Every scene played out on the screen since owes its being to this piece.

3. "Dickson Experimental Sound Film" (1894 or 1895) Watch

This is a bizarre little clip. It shows a violinist playing into a phonograph, and it constitutes the first time the sound and movement of a thing were recorded simultaneously. Perhaps to avoid boring the viewer, the director, again the afore mentioned Dickson, chose to feature two men dancing to the music. Such an image begs the question - was it a social norm of the time for men to dance together in this way, or could no women be found to take part? Another strange detail is that, though this is technically a sound film, no method (such as a slate) was used to sync the picture and corresponding wax record, and it would be over 30 years until, with the release of The Jazz Singer, the talkies would reach public awareness. For the intervening decades cinema would gestate in silence, and the art is better for it. 

4. "The Kiss" (1896) Watch

The two-shot has become a perhaps over-used part of the cinematic language over the decade, and can be found in nearly every movie. This early example shows a couple chatting jovially and sharing a silly and awkward kiss. The action is simple and ordinary yet this snippet is fascinating nonetheless. Seeing these living faces, watching them interact, I am intrigued to know what they are saying and who they are to each other. It has been said that all films are simply documentaries about people's faces, and "The Kiss" certainly supports that assertion. Having only observed these two folks for roughly 45 seconds, I am already finding myself invested in their lives. Cinema gets at not only the look of people but how they act and relate to each other; its an art that captures us as we move relentlessly through time. 

Thus concludes the part of our journey that took us into Edison's Black Maria. Next we move beyond 19th century New Jersey to find theater in the woods, the great-grandfather of tilt-shift, and the beginning of the long marriage between cinema and the boxing ring.