What 16mm Films Did You See Last Night?

[Larry Arpin]

A beautiful example of excellent effects from all the stop motion by Ray Harryhausen and Pete Peterson to all the miniature effects.

[Steve Klare]

Glad to hear your Xenon isn't arguing with that Security Cam anymore, Phillip! My LED porch lights were kind'a flatulent through my speakers tonight until I ran over and snapped their switch off! (ENOUGH modern technology messing up my fun!)

Tonight here on 16mm: The Saga of Wind Wagon Smith!

A great old Tall Tale from the era when Disney told them well!

-a Sea Captain decides to take it overland and mounts a deck, sail and tiller atop a Conestoga wagon, intendin' to sail 'er from Eastern Kansas to Santa Fe. As I said, It's a Tall Tale, with music and action and color and generally a lot of smiles.

I saw this one at CineSea and I just had to get it. I haven't seen it since I was a grade-school kid and it just seemed to want to come home with me!

[Phillip Campey]

Now my xenon is playing sound without interference I watched my print of Harry Potter, it looked and sounded amazing.

[Oliver Feld]

I screened the Walt Disney Production of „Night Crossing“, based on a true story.
An amazing print and a phenomenal feature. John Hurt is outstanding and the music by Jerry Goldsmith deeply touching and heart-pounding.

[Steve Klare]

I've been hearing this talk that the optical sound in 16mm isn't quite up to par for many years now. Well, tonight I projected a newly received 16mm "Tales from the Vienna Woods" performed by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra on the grounds of a castle in Salzburg.

(It was a little like Fantasia without Disney or maybe A Corny Concerto without Elmer Fudd!)

I'd say that tonight's optical sound would have pleased Herr Strauß just fine!

[Dominique De Bast]

Les casse-pieds (The Pain in the Neck People), a 1948 French film. It's a sketchs film, with some known (French) actors. Interesting streets scenes in Paris (one with a tram) The main actor is Noël Noël. Noël means Christmas, but is also a name :-)

[Ken Souza]

I watched a beautiful LPP print of The Harvey Girls and Laurel and Hardy in “Chickens Come Home”. Both very fun movies 😊

[Douglas Meltzer]

Evan,

Fun movie. I recall they used the Hyatt Regency in Houston and the Dallas Market Center because of their futuristic design. Way to go, Texas!

[Evan Samaras]

If you can stand some fade, I found and brought this dystopian classic all the way back from Spain, in my backpack!

[Graham Ritchie]

For those not familiar with both the "The Red Balloon" and "White Mane", this trailer might help. To date I have never come across a 16mm print of "The Red Balloon" but it was released on Super8 for quite a while as a 600 footer. My guess is, and with a bit of luck those Super 8 prints will still have good color.

[Graham Ritchie]

Gave the old B/H a run last week with a couple of different titles, one being about "Studebakers" the other a French film, a X library print, cant remember how I came across it, the title is "White Mane" winner of the Grand Prix at Cannes in 1953. Albert Lamorisse who made White Mane would later go on to make "The Red Balloon" 1956. I remember Derann selling that title new but never got around to getting it, it like so many

The 16mm print of "White Mane" has seen better days, there is one scene that I don't like, and that's where both horses are fighting each other, it gets a bit much, so decided to remove it, not something I would usually do, but it makes the film a bit easier to watch, in fact I think its better without it. I will have to get through more 16mm shorts that I have not watched in a while. One interesting 16mm film is from NASA on the box of Apollo 9, the color on the leader looks fine, so that's one to look at soon

A couple of screen shots the Studebaker ones are from a earlier screening, White Mane last week.





White Mane

[Steve Klare]

Tonight another Bill Mason NFB film: In Search of the Bowhead Whale

Bill Mason joins a crew of biologists and divers to search for the bowhead whale, which was made rare by industrialized hunting earlier in the 20th Century. They filmed the whale in Artic waters both from a helicopter and under sea ice using blimped 16mm cameras (-and dry suits!). They also recorded the Bowhead's song for the very first time utilizing hydrophones. Before then, nobody was sure they could sing.

As a cameraman, Bill Mason often did something kind of unusual: he made himself the star of the movie. In several of his films, he appears on screen with a really impressive 16mm camera with a telephoto lens that must have cost enough to buy a pretty decent car! (-the tools of the wildlife cinematographer), and this is one of the first of these. He also narrates and directs.

I guess after being Oscar Nominated for Paddle to the Sea and sitting next to Natalie Wood at the Academy Awards, he developed a taste for stardom! (Typical of Bill Mason, he drove out to Los Angeles with a canoe on his car!)

The Print? Wellll...it's one of those only a mother could love! It's what's often described as having "some color left" and it's a veteran school library print: plenty of mileage in terms of lines and scattered gouges and the occasional wonky splice. With a cyan filter and some allowances made, I still enjoyed it. (It has some beautiful sequences.)

-still: not one I'd invite people over to see!

(At the very least, it's found a place where it will be appreciated.)

[Steve Klare]

I bet everybody on this Forum has a couple of "bucket list" prints they'd love to have. I got one of mine a few days ago and we watched it last night.

Bill Mason is one of my favorite filmmakers. His specialty was nature films as seen from a canoe, which is one of those other things I do besides messing around with films and projectors (The sun can't be down ALL the time!). He had a pretty unique eye as a filmmaker: you see, he never had any kind of classroom filmmaking instruction, but went through art school as a painter. It shows in how he handled a camera. He is famous for people with formal film training noticing that he fairly often violated basic rules of filmmaking as traditionally taught, yet somehow made it work very well on screen. He had the freedom of not knowing any better!

Because of Bill Mason, I have been buying National Film Board of Canada titles since the late 1980s, first on VHS, then on DVD and even more recently on 16mm.

Paddle to the Sea is a fairly early Bill Mason title (He is still "Wiliam Mason" in the credits.). It is based on a children's book by an author with the really interesting name "Holling Holling" (-middle name "Clancy", in case you were at all concerned...I sure was!). The story presents the geography of the Great Lakes by showing a boy carving an Indian in a canoe and then putting him in a stream north of Lake Superior, with the goal the Atlantic Ocean over a thousand miles away. "Paddle" has some amazing adventures all the way down to the Atlantic Ocean at the end of the film. He gets frozen in ice all winter, washed through the spillways on several dams, nearly burned up in a forest fire, run over by several Great Lakes freighters and just when you thought he'd been through enough, washed over Niagara Falls! People keep finding him, but because "Put me back in the water." is carved in the bottom of his hull, they keep letting him continue his journey. At the end, he is picked up by a lighthouse keeper who decides even though he has made it to the ocean, there is still a big world out there and sends him on his way once again: who knows where he will go! (Just this once, there was NO sequel!)

This is a beautiful film. There are really awesome nature shots including animals, landscapes and night-time scenes. It isn't very often somebody puts a 16mm camera in a waterproof case and sends it over Niagara Falls, either! Back in its day, it was the top-requested title at the NFB for quite some years. This particular one is also a wonderful print too: an occasional thin line here and there that quickly goes away, other than that, sharp, bright and colorful.

I'm very pleased to have this one. I was actually pretty severely sniped for a slightly faded one on e-Bay within the last 6 months, which I'm removing from "one that got away" and now re-filing under "count your blessings"!

It also says a lot that I've had this title on a very nice DVD for a couple of years which projects beautifully, but the experience of threading this one up on a real film projector makes the extra money and space this 16mm print consumes well worth it! Both will get their chances on screen: Projectionists Prerogative!
.

(Bonus points for the original NFB reel and can!)

[Steve Klare]

Understood, Dominique! I am far from fluent myself!

-I must have about 10 German language films and the ones I understand the best are the ones made for American German-Language students! (maybe because I AM one!)

I find with the ones made for native speakers, I go for a while and then struggle to keep up: the problem is not understanding German, but still thinking in English and having to translate everything in my head! I still get the main ideas, which is better than nothing.

I have "Die Kuh": a 16mm German TV show in a can marked "West German Embassy, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada". I got about halfway through this one last time before my German language skills went into overload...maybe it's time to try it again!

My Uncle in Germany is no help! Once he told me (-in really good English...) "What's the big deal? My Granddaughter speaks really great German and she's only five years old!" 😉

If ever (for some reason...) I ever really need to develop a headache, all I need to to is translate something from Spanish to German with no English in between: that should do it!

[Dominique De Bast]

Very interesting, Steve. I wish I could speak fluently German. My level is too low to understand a movie.