Seal Island
"True-Life Adventures"
Seal Island is a 1948 American documentary film directed by James Algar. It won an Academy Award in 1949 for Best Short Subject (Two-Reel).
"True-Life Adventures"
Seal Island is a 1948 American documentary film directed by James Algar. It won an Academy Award in 1949 for Best Short Subject (Two-Reel).
Winston Hibler
Narrator
Seal Island is a 1948 American documentary film directed by James Algar. It won an Academy Award in 1949 for Best Short Subject (Two-Reel).
A look at the life of the fur seals on Seal Island (in the Aleutians) which co-inhabit the island with reindeer and scrawny looking foxes, lupins, lichens and other colourful plants that also thrive here in the lighter months. Bull seals (weighing almost as much as an horse... big horse, little horse?) arrive. Apparently seals have a common ancestor with a bear? Seals are polygamous and may have 100 wives... Yes, you get the drift. The narrative is very fact-based but despite trying to give some of the creatures human names and traits ("Mrs" etc.) is actually rather dry. The photography is quite innovative though, especially with the puffins and other seabirds. Then the female seals arrive and the bulls start to get a bit broody - the month of June, and hormones go a-raging. The score is quite jolly and carries the Hibler narration along for an entertaining half hour and the nimbler cows create quite a sense of fun on land and sea. Worth a watch, I think.
When Allied forces liberated the Nazi concentration camps in 1944-45, their terrible discoveries were recorded by army and newsreel cameramen, revealing for the first time the full horror of what had happened. Making use of British, Soviet and American footage, the Ministry of Information’s Sidney Bernstein (later founder of Granada Television) aimed to create a documentary that would provide lasting, undeniable evidence of the Nazis’ unspeakable crimes. He commissioned a wealth of British talent, including editor Stewart McAllister, writer and future cabinet minister Richard Crossman – and, as treatment advisor, his friend Alfred Hitchcock. Yet, despite initial support from the British and US Governments, the film was shelved, and only now, 70 years on, has it been restored and completed by Imperial War Museums under its original title "German Concentration Camps Factual Survey".
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Ten of Muhammad Ali's former rivals pay tribute to the three-time world heavyweight champion.
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