African-American film 'Bert Williams: Lime Kiln Club Field Day.' With Williams and Odessa Warren Grey.* Rare, early 20th-century African-American film among San Francisco Silent Film Festival highlights Directed by Edwin Middleton and T. Hayes Hunter, the Biograph Company's Lime Kiln Club Field Day (1913) was the film I most looked forward to at the 2015 edition of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival. One hundred years old, unfinished, and destined to be scrapped and tossed into the dust bin, it rose from the ashes. Starring entertainer Bert Williams – whose film appearances have virtually disappeared, but whose legacy lives on – Lime Kiln Club Field Day has become a rare example of African-American life in the first years of the 20th century. In the introduction to the film, the audience was treated to a treasure trove of Black memorabilia: sheet music, stills, promotional material, and newspaper clippings that survive. Details of the...
- 6/16/2015
- by Danny Fortune
- Alt Film Guide
Amaaaazing experimental cinema from Henri Chomette, entitled Jeux des reflets et de la vitesse (Games of Reflection and of Speed, 1925/6). Quite a few filmmakers were exploring the possibilities of abstract movement in the twenties, dispensing with narrative and focusing on the unique formal properties of film. Chomette just happens to be one of the best.
There are bits here of Kubrick-Stargate-kinetic-awesomeness, especially when he dissolves between movement forward and movement backward, and you get a vertiginous tromboning of space that arches your back and goggles your eyes. I'm also reminded of the sequence in Rodney Ascher's Room 237 when The Shining is projected forwards and backwards on top of itself at the same time...
And there's an excellent surprise moment when we emerge from a tunnel and find ourselves... not where we might have expected.
Backstory: Chomette had partnered up with Man Ray, as I understand it, to produce...
There are bits here of Kubrick-Stargate-kinetic-awesomeness, especially when he dissolves between movement forward and movement backward, and you get a vertiginous tromboning of space that arches your back and goggles your eyes. I'm also reminded of the sequence in Rodney Ascher's Room 237 when The Shining is projected forwards and backwards on top of itself at the same time...
And there's an excellent surprise moment when we emerge from a tunnel and find ourselves... not where we might have expected.
Backstory: Chomette had partnered up with Man Ray, as I understand it, to produce...
- 7/25/2013
- by David Cairns
- MUBI
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