What 16mm Films Did You See Last Night?

[Janice Glesser]

I had my cousin visiting out from Texas for Thanksgiving. We watched FEDS (1988) in 16mm .

https://8mmforum.film-tech.com/vbb/f...2&d=1583461863

[Douglas Meltzer]

Janice,

I remember Feds! Rebecca De Mornay & Mary Gross worked well together. I just wish the script was as good as they were.

[Melvin England]

In my last post in this section, I mentioned that next Saturday (now tonight) I would be watching my second 16mm purchase from Blackpool this year.
Well, earlier in the week I decided to view it. I knew it had low sound, but not only was it low it was also fuzzy. Consequently, for once I think I have got a bit of a dud. The picture quality was okay, but the bad sound rendered it unwatchable.

However.....

Tonight I stuck to 16mm and watched a purchase from the auction at Blackpool 2023 which was.....

The Jazz Singer - 3x 1600' - Neil Diamond. The soundtrack on this was great!

The warm up cartoon was Woody Woodpecker in Fowled Up Falcon.

.

[Larry Arpin]

This is SON OF KONG and Tom and Jerry cartoon CUE BALL CAT.

[Janice Glesser]

I watched a double header last night. First film was Laurel and Hardy in March of the Wooden Soldiers... Also known as Babes inToyland. Then the 1963 Gregory Peck movie Captain Newman, MD. Bobby Darin shows off his excellent dramatic acting chops in this film along with Eddie Albert, Robert Duvall, Angie Dickinson, and Tony Curtis.

[Phillip Campey]

Watched my technicolour prints of Disneys Aristocats and 101 Dalmations.

[Steve Klare]

-Another Dual-Gauge show!

(-both 8mm+16mm and 36" gauge+standard gauge)

Sunday River Productions' The Complete Silverton: (Super-8)We ride a Denver and Rio Grande narrow gauge excursion train from Durango to Silverton Colorado through the Animas Canyon. The scenery is awesome: riding it for real is big on my personal bucket-list.

This 8mm print once played on the big screen at CineSea courtesy of Doug and his Xenon GS. It received a great compliment for a Super-8 print on a big screen: it was later mistakenly called "16mm".

Grand Central (16mm) We celebrate the Supreme Court upholding New York City's Landmarks Preservation Law by experiencing the building the legal actions were focused on either demolishing or preserving: Grand Central Terminal. James Earl Jones narrates with added commentary by former New York Mayor Robert Wagner and the iconic (then) present day mayor Edward I. Koch. There's a lot of appreciation for the architecture of the building and the history and the meaning of such a great common space. There are also a lot of great cinematic moments shown that were based at Grand Central during the glory days of the big screen.

The Complete Silverton is much more purely a railroad film: engines, cars, trackage and scenery. Grand Central is much more a people film: history, society, art and architecture (-and some trains!)

I'm often divided on where to land shows like this. In this case Silverton was about 20 minutes and Grand Central was about 30 minutes, so "What 16mm Films Did You See Last Night?" gets this post.

What's interesting is Silverton is above average in sharpness and Grand Central...welll, could be better, especially as a 16mm prints typically look(could be worse, too...), so between the two of 'em, the Super-8 print looked the best on screen.

I enjoyed them both.

[Steve Klare]

I got this one recently and watched it last night:

There was this 16mm film from the Electric Boat division of General Dynamics on e-Bay with this kind of vague title "Marine Technology". Electric Boat is a company up in Groton, Connecticut that has been building submarines for the US Navy for more than a century, including all the nuclear ones starting with Nautilus. I find this stuff fascinating and I really wanted to have this film!

There's a certain amount of gambling associated with collecting films. Until it's in the gate, you often don't know exactly what it's about or what kind of shape it's in. In this case, the source was very interesting, but what of the title? For all I knew, "Marine Technology" was 10 minutes of cleaning and servicing a ship-board sewage pump! ("The final step should be for all involved personnel to police the work-zone and then thoroughly shower.") -but the screen shots looked nice, so I put the coin in the slot and pulled the lever!

It was a win in this case. It was kind of a public relations film about a line of small submersible craft that Electric Boat was building for coastal exploration, rescue and salvage. It showed the boats being prepared for service, launched and recovered, including operations on the surface and submerged. The film condition, color and sound are all excellent.

Where this became even more interesting is the label on the can. It is a printed label "General Dynamics, Electric Boat Division" with "Marine Technology" typed in. Underneath those is a man's name, handwritten.

I googled him and he turned out to be a very prominent design engineer who had made important contributions to submarine technology. I assumed he would be a presenter during the film and that's the reason someone scribbled his name on the label. He was nowhere in the film. Even if he narrated, I would have expected this man to have an accent based on his biography, and that was not the case at all.

-my new theory is that this was his personal print and maybe he wrote his name on the label to keep it that way.


Would have been a little concerning if I rolled the film and a narrator and title said "The following information is Top Secret and not for public disclosure.", don't you think?

-Fortunately this one is rated "G"!