CineSea 30 in Pictures

[Steve Klare]

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Welcome to CineSea in Pictures (Edition XXX)!

A week ago those of us who attended CineSea 30 were headed home, and now it’s time to tell the tale. 30 in an astounding number considering that in the end of 2009, John Black and Shorty decided to give this thing a shot, and we bunch of strangers thought we’d take a chance as well. I was there. I knew of Wildwood because we vacationed nearby that summer, and spent a day in town, but here I was venturing 200 miles from home to a place I never stayed before. Was I even in the right place? It all started to come together after I walked past a door and heard that familiar to us yet rarer and rarer sound of a movie projector. I WAS in the right place, and it’s been steadily getting better and better in the years since.

Setting The Scene:

The Weather

We’ve had all sorts of different weather at CineSea. Being right around the two equinoxes, there are all sorts of possibilities. We have bumped off the frost point a few times and been in T-shirts and shorts once or twice as well. We had one a few years ago where it was basically raining sideways.

Number 30 was on a weekend best described as “grim” it often rained and the sky was never bluer than a bluish-gray (-hence the title shot above that I borrowed from some other time!). It was decidedly an indoors kind of weekend, which cut back on most of the outdoors activity. (We left our bikes home…), but fortunately for us, we had plenty to do on and off screen to make the weekend memorable.

The Hotel

The place was once again the Shalimar Resort and Conference Center. This worked out great for us: a nice meeting place with excellent access to the rooms. The rooms are clean and comfortable at a great price at the ends of the season.

Thursday (-and earlier)

It’s true that CineSea officially begins on Thursday, insofar as that’s the first day that there is an official Event. Truth be told, it starts easily 6 months earlier. We usually go home from one with a date in-pocket for next time. Many people have a reservation for that particular weekend in place before they leave if there is a room they especially like.

Closer in, maybe a month before, crates start to fill with films for the weekend and the real business of planning and packing gets going closer and closer to the time.

Some arrive as early as Monday or Tuesday: Wildwood is a quiet town at both ends of the season and there is nothing wrong with a little relaxation. I’ve been there as early as Wednesday afternoon, and we had a little low-level film-watching with a single machine and a tripod screen that night.

It happened again this time with TWO gauges:
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Unnamed, Spontaneous Wednesday Night Show
(Who knows? -maybe in a couple of years, both named and planned!)

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On the Thursday afternoon of CineSea 30, the screen was already in place and machinery was being brought online for Thursday Night and later.
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So stay with us a little while, and we’ll find out what happened!

Coming Up Next: Thursday Night Theme

[Douglas Meltzer]

The 12' screen arrives on Thursday, so we've made do on Wednesdays by hanging a bed sheet up to watch film! It was nice to actually have a real tripod screen this time (courtesy of Joe G.) at our disposal. No planning involved, no big setup. You brought something? Let's watch it!

[Steve Klare]

Spontaneity is part of the joy of how film collectors often do things!

-and doing things as a group can lead to almost kind of...anarchy!

(That's where things like the Theme and a few commonsense guidelines are needed to keep us away from presentation-icebergs.)

[Steve Klare]

Thursday Night Theme

The Theme continues after several other great ones these recent past years. The idea is simple: a very general idea is thrown out and the Crowd responds by bringing in films. They can be dramatic cartoons and comedic ones. They can be live-action or animated, old or new: just along as they are a film short less than 20 minutes.

For CineSea 30 the Theme was The Ocean. This is kind of a BIG theme, coming behind “The Earth” for being general. It’s a great one for me in particular: I did a very informal survey of my own collection recently and noticed that I seem to have a thing for Boats! (I live next to an Ocean: maybe that has something to do with it!)
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Doug stepped up and welcomed us all to CineSea.

There were just way too many films to show them all here, so let’s look at some highlights of the night:
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It Came from Beneath the Sea
(With GREAT enthusiasm, too!)

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The Pink Panther Himself joined us on the shore in Bicep Beach

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Jacques Cousteau (and Company) joined us courtesy of Piccolo Films.

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I saw for the very first time in my life Diver Dan, a TV show that even I am too young to remember! It is delightfully hokey, and in a way I really respect: hokeyness seems to a goal here and they certainly hit the bullseye!
(-Nobody criticizes Airplane! for being silly!)
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Now here’s one I actually have and didn’t think of! Buccaneer Bunny is a great Sea-Goin’ tale! Pie-Rate Sam is at his short-tempered best¹: entirely appropriate for a guy who not only gets shot in the face with a canon about 5 times, but he also ends up losing his ship because of his own stubbornness.

(I’m glad someone else covered for me by bringing a nice print!)

Note 1: Sam is what Sam is: he will never play a philosopher or a landscape painter: there is no tranquility anywhere within him!

[Brian Fretwell]

All I can say about the Bugs Bunny one is "Polly wants a cracker." One of the best jokes in it.

[Steve Klare]

(Continued)
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.A Mini-Sub in an Electric Boat Corp. promotional film. What’s kind of cool about it is a man’s name is on the case. He turns out to be the Managing Engineer of that product line and judging from the condition of the film he may never have projected it!
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-and of course the greatest Animated Sailor in the history of the Seven Seas!

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Deep Blue World: a wonderful sea-scape backed up by music from Jerry Garcia.

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Little Toot wins our hearts with some pretty destructive antics, a shot at redemption, and more than a little help from the Andrews Sisters.
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-and we celebrate the great days of sail with the Blackhawk Square Rigger, about a Polish Navy training vessel at sea in the 1930s.

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We shouldn’t forget that if we get up out of our comfy-chairs at CineSea and walk maybe 1,000 feet East, we will be standing on the Atlantic Shore. Wildwood is a great beach town and has been for more than a century. A wonderful 1950s travel film from the Wildwood Chamber of Commerce reminded us of this exactly!

-and so it went, not only these films but many others. When the last film came, we headed for a good night’s rest: tomorrow morning at 8:30 sharp, CineSea left for Uncle Bill’s in Cape May and we didn’t want to miss that!

Coming up Next: Friday!

[Douglas Meltzer]

Steve, I remember watching Diver Dan as a kid. I later found out that the series was filmed by shooting through a fish tank!

Brian, you're absolutely right!



Polly want a cracker?

[Steve Klare]

Yes, I did notice the fish tank foreground myself!

That's the way it was before people just added in digital fish later on.

Wikipedia 'sez Diver Dan stopped broadcasting in the greater New York area when I was about five months old! I've heard the name used many times, but it's the first time I'd actually seen it. Maybe it's also the fact that we had only one TV in the house, and most of the time that was for Mets games, Walter Cronkite, Ed Sullivan and Dick Van Dyke! (Dad worked nights, so I did sneak in some Bugs Bunny on Saturday Mornings...)


Bugs Bunny: "Hea ya' arrre Sweetheart!"

Pie-Rate Sam must'a been one of the greatest mariners ever to go to sea: sailing that entire pirate ship with just himself and a parrot!

[Graham Ritchie]

"Little Toot" is brilliant, I have it on Super 8 and the color is really outstanding

[Dominique De Bast]

Looks great. Lucky you!

[Paul Adsett]

What no Jaws?

[Steve Klare]

Excellent point, Paul! You would think that would be kind of inevitable.

It's like last time when we did "Space" and nobody brought anything 'Star Wars".

We lived long and prospered, but the Force was nowhere to be found!

[Douglas Meltzer]

No Jaws, but the briny was beautiful!



We did have a giant squid,



plus a dancing anchor!

[Steve Klare]

Friday (and the features)

Friday is usually two features: matinee and main feature. Lately, Friday seems to be getting some “bonus footage” in terms of some kind of surprise event. CineSea 30 was one of these, but before anything else, we need to start with the most important meal of the day:

Breakfast
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We had a hearty and traditional breakfast at Uncle Bill’s Pancake House in Cape May. What’s interesting is that Cape May is much less seasonal than Wildwood, so even though the Wildwood Uncle Bill’s is much more local, it is usually closed when we are in town. Cape May’s is open year-round.

A Change of Plans:

Due to a family emergency, we lost our 35mm projectionist and therefore 35mm for the weekend. Two runners-up took place of the two 35mm ones that were scheduled. These will be on-screen Friday at CineSea 31 next Fall.

We wish our friend and his loved ones all the best during a difficult time.


Friday Matinee
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Dave introduces the Matinee.

Early Friday afternoon we gathered to see Dave’s 16mm print of Rodney Dangerfield in Easy Money. Rodney plays Monty Capuletti, a Regular-Guy from Staten Island with a certain…zest for life. That zest comes as a large indulgence in lively things like gambling, smoking (…inclusive), eating and drinking. His mother-in-law disapproves and specifies in her will that Monty has to mend his…zestful ways or Monty’s wife will have to pass on a 10-million-dollar inheritance. Monty’s biggest obstacle is he is immersed in a sea of temptation and life keeps trying to force him off the straight and narrow.
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Monty Earns his living as a baby photographer: he’s a Large-Format kinda-guy!

Friday Main Feature

Lou and Louis’ family owned Derann S8 print of Poltergeist was our main feature. It’s tempting to call it “Friday Night Feature” but there were other plans for Friday night. Back in the day, this was a pretty eventful film: one of those that people tend to talk about.
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Maybe this was even a good date film back then, but not on an early date! It is abundantly freaky! Get to know each other first!
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The Friday Night Bonus

We have had a number of really good Friday Night special presentations these past few, so much that it is common. At #29 we had a presentation on the restoration of an original Star Wars from existing prints and at #25 we had Peter Flynn presenting a working version of his Film is Dead, Long Live Film. #30 had CineSea Regular Evan join us with his co-collaborator George to present their 16mm originated feature Projection.
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Evan and George talk about Projection.

Projection is a very skillfully crafted, very well-written film. It is the story of Thomas, a young man dealing with the recent death of his father, who happened to be a filmmaker. In the film, he is preparing to make a film about his father. In this film, Thomas and his father are also preparing to make a film. The film within a film is a common plot device, but in this case, it actually takes the next step and becomes a film within a film within a film!

This main character is obviously in a very emotionally compromised state and his grip on reality is compromised as well. Projection plays with this by leaving ambiguity in the story about what is real and what is not. Every so often some little plot twist catches the audience by surprise and makes this one kind of a wild ride! This evolves it into a horror film and there are several murders, then again given this ambiguity, maybe there even…aren’t!
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The bonus for somebody that loves film, is Projection was created by film-collectors and includes a lot of plot elements and visuals that grab our attention. At one point, someone offers to buy Thomas’ favorite print, and his desperation is shown by him reaching the point of having to sell it. Eventually, father and son have a heated argument about digital editing versus splicer and tape, and to me this became a metaphor for keeping traditions versus accepting change. This is especially an important theme because Thomas is himself becoming a father, and he has to figure out what, if anything from his past he should bring forward or leave behind.
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There are public 16mm shows within the story and the projector used is a Kodak Pageant (-just like mine!)
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In true Alfred Hitchcock fashion, Evan “auditions” for a role in the movie within his movie!

Special presentations like this one are part of what makes CineSea worth attending. They provide tremendous value, considering that the cost of admission is pretty much just showing up!
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Coming Up Next: Saturday (…early!)