Cinematic Era: 1951 Vintage

Short film about the Swabian Alb

A young man starts working in a millionaire's home to take care of his daughter.

HK horror film.

This documentary which opens with a ten-minute period drama about the importance of Williamsburg in 1774, explains the mission of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and Dr. W.A.R. Goodwin in the 1920s to restore Williamsburg to a colonial American icon. Through the painstaking research of curator, historians, and architects, the town's restoration plan is mapped out. Construction tradesmen from the twentieth century transform rundown exteriors into period edifices. Interiors are modified and restored to livable, sometimes elegant, period condition. This vast undertaking leads to mid-century historical interpretation about the importance of the people and ideas of Williamsburg that forged a new nation.

A Secrets of Life short.

This film presents agricultural cooperative in Heřmánkovice an example of a collective in which women seize the initiative in terms of renewal after the men find themselves all at sea when it comes to making progress. Women introduce the system of the division of labourers into working groups and evaluation based on units that were actually worked. A decision is taken to do work in the fields as a form of competition in order to ensure that workers’ morale is as high as possible. In the end, the men in the collective feel ashamed by the fact that it was not them who have come up with these steps forward.

Vignettes covering S.S. Lurcher, a celebration in Windsor, Ontario and the Sullivan Mine in British Columbia.

Short Belgian documentary on volcanos in the former Belgian Congo

Short by Ernst Niederreither.

“A pink moving screen will stand at the entrance to the theatre, in the night. One hour before the screening a projectionist will show Griffith’s Intolerance on this screen. The start of the film will be announced at 8.30 but no one will enter before 9.30. During these 60 minutes of waiting, people on the first floor of the building will shake out very dusty carpets, and someone else will throw ice water on the heads of those spectators waiting for the screening. Some actors who have infiltrated the crowd will insult other actors on the first floor. At this moment only, and to stop the beginning of a scandal, the doors of the theatre will open…”

Shipmate Öman comes to the north-African city of Jazzablanca, a nest of sin with prostitution and organized crime.

What Hockey player do on their time off.

The story of the development of oil tankers during the last hundred years, produced with the co-operation of the British Tanker Shipping Organisation of the British Petroleum Company

An industrial film about the Finnish war reparations to the Soviet Union

Dances of the Kwakiutl is composed of fragments filmed in 1950 in Fort Rupert, British Columbia. They were made during a performance by those still familiar with the tradition of ‘Hamatsa’ or cannibal dancing. This type of dance was brought to impressive artistic heights by the Kwakiutl people of the Northwest coast.

Aroha depicts a young Māori chief's daughter who embraces the modernity of the Pākehā world (attending university in Wellington) while confronting her place with her own people (Te Arawa) and traditions at home. The NFU-produced dramatisation is didactic but largely sensitive in making Aroha's story represent contemporary Māori dilemmas (noted anthropologist Ernest Beaglehole was the cultural advisor). Watch out for some musical treats, including an instrumental version of classic Kiwi song, 'Blue Smoke' and a performance of the action song 'Me He Manu Rere'.

A professional thief rents a room in the house of a downtrodden lady to observe the bank he will assault.

This documentary reports on the well-known winter sports resort of Oberhof in Thuringia and the "2nd Winter Sports Championships of the GDR" with thrilling competitions in downhill skiing, ski jumping, slalom, cross-country skiing, and bobsleigh racing.

A German Film Award Silver Bowl winning short documentary.

The Hawaiian Islands, located 2,000 miles from the U.S. West Coast, primarily rely on agriculture for their economy, as they lack significant minerals and manufacturing. Sugar cane and pineapple are the two main crops. Sugar cane, first cultivated in Hawaii over a century ago, is harvested after 1.5 to 2 years of growth, with fires used to clear leaves before gathering. Pineapples are planted using a paper mulch technique, and the ripe fruit is quickly processed for canning. Shipping plays a crucial role in transporting these products to the mainland U.S. and bringing necessary goods to Hawaii, making it vital for the islands' prosperity.

A film by Jean Rouch.

Short educational film about the democratic decision-making processes in a small community.

Fayrouz Hanem is a minor girl, but at the same time she is the owner of property that she inherited from her late father and mother. She has been appointed as a guardian for her money, and some poor people live in her property, but the guardian wants to evict them for not paying the rent, so Fayrouz sympathizes with them and stands next to them, and they therefore stand up to the guardian who He wants to steal the underage girl's money and steal it from her.

Romantic comedy with elderly people and scenes at a pharmacy.

Part of the “Are You Ready for Service?” series, this film was shown to high school boys at school or church youth groups. It illustrates how many drafted young men succumb to temptation after being “cut loose” from the moral standards of their family, church and community. Alcohol, gambling and venereal disease were big problems for the young, wide-eyed recruits who could be kept out of combat due to imprisonment or hospitalization.

Doctor Rougel is so absorbed in his work that he neglects his wife Nadine, who is subjected to the advances of Gérard Bérault, an admirer. A series of unfortunate events leads the doctor to doubt the fidelity of his wife, and he shamelessly throws her out. Michèle, the Rougels' little daughter, sick from despair, will eventually reunite her estranged parents.

This is an anthropologically rich documentary, focusing on worship of temple deities, how the gods and the demons interface with Bali life, and the dances, trances, legend restagings, etc. that serve as both the Balinese "language" and the basis for their interactions with the immortals.

Kwakiutl, Kwakwaka'Wakw, potlatches. British Columbia tribe as a civilization in decline as assimilation has almost obliterated native culture. Fort Rupert, Britsh Columbia Canada

A film by P. K. Atre.

Massillon, Ohio, known as "Touchdown Town USA," where football is not only a sport is also a civic enterprise and a cult. It high-school football stadium seats 20,000 fans, and every new-born baby boy is presented a football on leaving the hospital.

Life and work of frontier force, guarding national safety.

This film was a progress report of the American propaganda campaign the Crusade for Freedom.

Produced by the North Carolina Board of Health and sponsored by the New York-based Mental Health Film Board, this film focuses on "the trials of adolescence," in particular the experiences of a girl named Susan who feels misunderstood by her parents and others. She chafes against their rules, and is also deeply disappointed when she doesn't get the part in the school play that she was expecting. She feels lonely and unimportant. A sympathetic adult from school helps her talk through her concerns, encouraging Susan to try to understand her parents' need to protect her. This adult also speaks with Susan's mother, and encourages tolerance of adolescent ups and downs, the importance of listening to one's child, and flexibility in household rules.

A home movie from 1951 called Autobiography, shot by Belson and Smith in Belson’s North Beach apartment, depicts the classic Beat pad with Smith and Belson’s paintings on the wall, a 16mm projector, and appearances by filmmakers Hy Hirsh and Chris Maclaine and poets Philip Lamantia, Weldon Kees, and Gerd Stern.

A BAFTA Special award nominated documentary presenting some of the demonstrations in use at Princeton University for research into perception. Shows distorted rooms, rotating trapezoids and size-likeness demonstrations.

Highlights from the 6th Farnborough Airshow in 1951.

Documentary showing the lives of the Swedish footballers who have moved to Italian clubs.

A romantic musical that imagines what might happen when American sailors land in the Philippines.

Madame Guérin, who has been suffering from cancer, benefits from a period of remission and she tries to regain health at any price. That is why she decides to consult a healer. But when her friend, also affected by cancer, is saved by an operation, she hesitates between traditional and parallel medicine.

The Naked and the Wicked

Abandoned in the forest by their father, King Rama, the twin sons Lav and Kush are raised by a sage and train as fierce warriors, only to unknowingly challenge their father's army in a pivotal battle that forces the exiled queen, Sita, to finally confront her past.

If it's a vacation, then collective meetings and obtaining the Mountain Tourist Badge are mandatory, "banditry is the first, still primitive form of class struggle."

A educational of how to handle fire, focusing on teaching the kids.

Act I pas de trois from Swan Lake.

And the children love to play soldiers. This 10-minute anti-war film lost to posterity was a very loose adaptation of Franz Kafka's short story In the Penal Colony. Vesely presents the execution of a prisoner of war as a serial event that happens over and over again, ad nauseum. As of this project, Tichat worked as set designer and occasional co-author for Vesely, here also appearing in front of the camera as an actor together with H.C. Artmann. Gerhard Ruhm contributed his Musique concrete to the soundtrack.

The three portrait sketches of the title are called 'Claudia', 'Fernando Birri' and 'Saulat Rahman'. Presumably made when Margaret Tait was a student at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematographia, Rome.

A 1951 performance at the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival.