tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-89520227276805977692024-03-21T21:56:10.788-07:00Berkeley Underground Film SocietyBUFS or the Berkeley Underground Film Society is an all ages, analog cinema club for collectors, researchers, and film enthusiasts in the East Bay and San Francisco Area. Our goal is to share and review buried or rarely projected 16mm, Super 8 and 8mm prints in our collection. We're open once a month, Fri. - Sun. from 7pm-10pm at the historic Manasse-Block Tannery, 708 Gilman @ 4th St.Berkeley Underground Film Societyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03634272866740088271noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8952022727680597769.post-83462944053342451132014-07-09T02:38:00.001-07:002014-07-09T02:45:54.009-07:00Lost and found | SF Bay Guardian<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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A man with a dream (and 3,000 films) powers the Berkeley Underground Film Society</div>
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<span class="submitted" style="color: #999999; font-family: Arial, Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 0.9em; line-height: 18.003999710083008px;"><span class="timestamp">07.08.14 - 2:55 pm</span> | <span class="authors"><a href="http://www.sfbg.com/category/author/cheryl-eddy" style="color: #555555; outline-style: none; outline-width: medium; text-decoration: none;">Cheryl Eddy</a></span></span><span style="color: #999999; font-family: Arial, Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 0.9em; line-height: 18.003999710083008px;"> </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 22.049999237060547px;"><br />"His collection includes silent films, home movies, B movies, made-for-TV movies, educational and industrial films, cartoons, and classic Hollywood films that aren't available on DVD. There are also foreign films that never made it into US theaters — like 1972's Godzilla vs. Gigan, which he's showing in 16mm July 18 — in their original, uncut forms. (Other BUFS screenings this month are July 19 archival shorts program "Cartoon Carnival #5: Kids and Pets," and a July 20 showing of Charlie Chaplin's 1921 The Kid.)"</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 22.049999237060547px;">Read more here: </span></span><br />
<br /><a href="http://www.sfbg.com/2014/07/08/lost-and-found#.U70MuYFfwg9.blogger">Lost and found | SF Bay Guardian</a></div>
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Berkeley Underground Film Societyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03634272866740088271noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8952022727680597769.post-32270906991972571912014-02-23T22:08:00.000-08:002014-04-01T22:46:43.326-07:002014 MEETINGS & PROGRAMS<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Please note that our programs are now consolidated into one schedule on the Lost and Out of Print site.</span></span><br />
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<a href="http://lostandoutofprintfilms.blogspot.com/">http://lostandoutofprintfilms.blogspot.com/</a></span><br />
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<a href="https://www.facebook.com/lostandoutofprint/">https://www.facebook.com/lostandoutofprint/</a></span><span style="font-size: large;"><br /><br />Thanks for your continued support. </span></span><br />
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Berkeley Underground Film Societyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03634272866740088271noreply@blogger.com708 Gilman Street, Berkeley, CA 94710, USA37.8787289 -122.3044209999999937.8786799 -122.30449999999999 37.878777899999996 -122.30434199999999tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8952022727680597769.post-40464002653419246292011-05-29T18:42:00.000-07:002011-05-29T18:42:43.767-07:00STARTING YOUR OWN FILM PRINT COLLECTION<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="post-bottom"> <span class="meta-date"></span><span class="meta-author"> </span> </div><div id="social-actions" style="position: relative; top: 0pt;"> <!-- Tweet Button -->The age of the VCR was a bit of a strange experience for Steven Spielberg. The director believed that with a film print, it took work to transport it, run it through the projector, and show it, and you'd feel the work went into making a movie. So it felt a little strange to have it all reduced to a lightweight video cassette. (Can only imagine how he felt about it being transferred to a little metal disc, or a file on YouTube.)</div><br />
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As Quentin Tarantino once said about his print collection in a magazine called <em>Entertainment At Home</em> (now defunct), "Steven has the same feeling about prints that I do...He said, 'Quentin, for a really long time, E.T. wasn't available on video, and that was really cool...And the only way I could see it was to drag out all these film cans and thread it on the projector, feel it between my fingers...' That's why I love my prints. They feel more substantive...It takes more involvement to view one."<br />
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A lot of filmmakers have big collections of their favorite films on 35mm, and when a lot of directors first make it, they either get a state of the art home screening room, or a car collection in an airplane hangar. But as several friends of mine have proven to me, you don't have to be a big, pimpy Hollywood director to start a collection of prints.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtWuqq0XDou6rKOpsy64B65KF18ZiAq3zYy1jJN8Wir46pL1wMlKwHM1Xe3KyX0JWtLtS4VJDBw_Op4EATpmr5fXLpai3x549Qdih6-gEiWg3aAMEztnN1EXpVTKQ0ubBHwQQOBI-XePM/s1600/film-reel-pola.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtWuqq0XDou6rKOpsy64B65KF18ZiAq3zYy1jJN8Wir46pL1wMlKwHM1Xe3KyX0JWtLtS4VJDBw_Op4EATpmr5fXLpai3x549Qdih6-gEiWg3aAMEztnN1EXpVTKQ0ubBHwQQOBI-XePM/s320/film-reel-pola.jpg" width="263" /></a><br />
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Before the days of the VCR, low budget filmmaker Charles Band started collecting 16mm prints when he was a kid and organized his own movie clubs to show them, which eventually lead to him starting one of the first American video companies, Media Home Video. <br />
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"I was always a collector, kind of out of control collector of 16mm prints, and back in the day three quarter inch reels, every movie I had, I would share with friends who were also avid film buffs," Band says. Because you couldn't put a whole movie on 8mm, there were companies that used to put sections of movies on 8mm you could buy through magazines like Famous Monsters.<br />
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Before you could buy prints on EBay and Craig's List, they used to be listed in a magazine called The Big Reel. Richard Lee Christian, who has done special features for a number of DVDs, recalls seeing prints of Terminator 2, The Doors and Jacob's Ladder listed for $150 each at the same time the studio Carolco went under, and the prints were probably sold at auction. <br />
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<a href="http://www.tgdaily.com/games-and-entertainment-features/56247-how-to-start-your-own-film-print-collection">READ MORE HERE.</a><br />
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<span class="meta-date"> Posted on May 28th 2011 by </span> <span class="meta-author"> David Konow for TGDaily.com</span> <br />
</div>Berkeley Underground Film Societyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03634272866740088271noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8952022727680597769.post-215096648282128102011-04-17T00:58:00.000-07:002011-04-17T00:58:26.199-07:00Charlie Chaplin Gets A Birthday 'Doodle' From Google<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">He's a comedy and cinema legend, a man still cited as an inspiration decades after his death. And now, in honor of what would have been his 122nd birthday, Charlie Chaplin has inspired one of the most ambitious Google "doodles" ever. On Friday, the space on Google's homepage that usually contains its multicolored logo instead featured a black-and-white YouTube tribute to Chaplin, whose birthday is Saturday. The short "silent" film is Google's first-ever video doodle and was created with the help of the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum. <a href="http://articles.cnn.com/2011-04-15/tech/charlie.chaplin.google_1_google-doodle-google-s-doodle-google-homepage?_s=PM:TECH">Read the full article by CNN's Doug Gross here.</a><br />
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The Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum is more than a repository of photographs, posters, books and artifacts; it is a resource for all facets of silent film-making, from their planning and production to their presentation. The museum offers a way to rediscover America's movie pioneers, and see their remarkable work in an authentic setting - a theater where Charlie Chaplin and his contemporaries, saw themselves on the screen. This museum keeps the spirit of silent films alive. <a href="http://www.nilesfilmmuseum.org/theater.htm">Read more about the Silent Theaters Programs here</a>.</div>Berkeley Underground Film Societyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03634272866740088271noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8952022727680597769.post-396485769165700562011-03-29T12:53:00.000-07:002011-03-29T12:57:16.247-07:00FILM SCREENING 0001 - 03/30/11 - HAZMAT HOUSE - JACK LONDON SQUARE, OAKLAND<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitvmT6CnVFgud14d0KASdSms0SQPI7mmCbwtOkjQv_uety7d6lzGqq3bEds5BF2HLTW4hzOBYpErJXIZe99eEEzEiNCrEsmIk1Gd1uei1-zoowcLaelHJjWBToELpHDA98U0KaLgbNIgI/s1600/BUFS+0001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitvmT6CnVFgud14d0KASdSms0SQPI7mmCbwtOkjQv_uety7d6lzGqq3bEds5BF2HLTW4hzOBYpErJXIZe99eEEzEiNCrEsmIk1Gd1uei1-zoowcLaelHJjWBToELpHDA98U0KaLgbNIgI/s400/BUFS+0001.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
</div>Berkeley Underground Film Societyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03634272866740088271noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8952022727680597769.post-64710774473999991082011-01-25T07:56:00.000-08:002011-01-25T07:57:59.796-08:00VIDEO RENEGADE BECOMES A FINANCIALLY PRECARIOUS INSTITUTION<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">"One step inside Artists’ Television Access, a complex smell of incense, must and cedar awakens the nose. Underfoot, hardwood floors creak, and just through a small hallway, red movie theater-style seats await. It’s the perfect place to screen under-the-radar films, and that’s what the nonprofit ATA has done on Valencia near 21st Street since 1986 — a time when people came to Valencia for underground punk shows, not upscale food." - <span class="entry-byline"> <a class="url fn n" href="http://missionlocal.org/author/lisette/" title="View all posts by Lisette Mejia">Lisette Mejia</a></span><br />
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<span class="entry-byline"><a href="http://missionlocal.org/2011/01/film-theater-hosts-auction-to-stay-afloat/">Red the full article here on Mission Log.</a> </span><br />
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<a href="http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/archives/2011/01/13/what_remains_of_quentin_tarantinos_first_film_my_best_friends_birthday_leak/">Read the entire indieWIRE article here</a>. What remains of the film is available to watch here on youtube:<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/0xCGSWJDfLM?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>Berkeley Underground Film Societyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03634272866740088271noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8952022727680597769.post-41868920562352401152011-01-11T12:09:00.000-08:002011-01-11T12:09:41.797-08:00“THE ENDLESS SUMMER”: A FILM THREAT INTERVIEW WITH FILMMAKER BRUCE BROWN<b>Bruce Brown</b> (born December 1, 1937 in <a class="mw-redirect" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco,_California" title="San Francisco, California">San Francisco, California</a>) is an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States" title="United States">American</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_film" title="Documentary film">documentary</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_director" title="Film director">film director</a>, known as an early pioneer of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surf_film" title="Surf film">surf film</a>. His surfing films were <i><a class="new" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Slippery_When_Wet_%28film%29&action=edit&redlink=1" title="Slippery When Wet (film) (page does not exist)">Slippery When Wet</a></i> (1958), <i><a class="mw-redirect" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surf_Crazy_%28movie%29" title="Surf Crazy (movie)">Surf Crazy</a></i> (1959), <i><a class="new" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Barefoot_Adventure&action=edit&redlink=1" title="Barefoot Adventure (page does not exist)">Barefoot Adventure</a></i> (1960), <i><a class="new" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Surfing_Hollow_Days&action=edit&redlink=1" title="Surfing Hollow Days (page does not exist)">Surfing Hollow Days</a></i> (1961), <i><a class="new" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Waterlogged_%28film%29&action=edit&redlink=1" title="Waterlogged (film) (page does not exist)">Waterlogged</a></i> (1962), and his most well known film, <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Endless_Summer" title="The Endless Summer">The Endless Summer</a></i> (1964) which received a nationwide theatrical release in 1966. Considered among the most influential in the genre, <i>The Endless Summer</i> follows surfers <a class="new" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mike_Hynson&action=edit&redlink=1" title="Mike Hynson (page does not exist)">Mike Hynson</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_August" title="Robert August">Robert August</a> around the world. Thirty years later Brown would film <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Endless_Summer_II" title="The Endless Summer II">The Endless Summer II</a></i> with his son in 1994.<br />
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He recently spoke to FILM THREAT and here is that interview..<br />
<a href="http://www.filmthreat.com/interviews/29212/" rel="bookmark">'“THE ENDLESS SUMMER”: AN INTERVIEW WITH FILMMAKER BRUCE BROWN"</a>Berkeley Underground Film Societyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03634272866740088271noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8952022727680597769.post-58936218201773895752011-01-04T08:33:00.000-08:002013-01-25T11:12:06.122-08:00EIGHT QUESTIONS FOR: TOM STATHES<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
He is a collector of early SILENT ANIMATION, a projectionist, writer for his <a href="http://cartoonsonfilm.com/">C</a>artoons of Film. His research, film acquisitions and early film exhibitions are an asset to the community and film enthusiasts. He lives in New York and soon, he will launch a new version of his website Cartoons On Film, and The Bray Animation Project's official site, and BUFS will update this change as it happens.<br />
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We asked silent era animation historian and archivist Tom Stathes to take us on tour of his personal thoughts through an interview conducted over email shortly after the 2010 holiday season. So, without further ado...<br />
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1. BUFS would like to know about your first experience projecting a film. What are your roots in underground cinema?<br />
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TOM STATHES: "I started projecting films casually for one or two friends at a time almost immediately when I first collected around the age of 10 or 11, which was only a decade ago. I didn't get a whole lot of enthusiastic response from peers at that age, as you might imagine. As I amassed more and more for my collection, I decided a couple summers ago that I should start sharing these old films with the public. I had my first public "Tom Stathes Cartoon Carnival" screening in June of 2009 and I've just finished my 8th screening. The response has been very rewarding, and times and tastes are a little bit different ten years after I began collecting, at least here in NYC. The young arts communities are a bit more keen to discover these forgotten obscurities and ingest them happily."<br />
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2. Early animated films have preserved the art of homonyms, sight gags, and multiple story arcs. In your view, what makes a good early animated film stand out from the others?</div>
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T.S.: For the record, I collect silent animation of all kinds- "good", "bad", funny and mundane. I highly respect the art form and am trying to preserve an area of film history that isn't given much mainstream attention in the preservation community. To answer the question though, a really "good" silent cartoon stands out from the rest based on two aspects, as I've found. One would be the presence of timeless gags; period pop culture reference and jokes are lost on today's audiences, especially if they are textual and not visual. Second, good timing and fluidity in the animation helps greatly to elicit praise from today's viewers.</div>
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3. The destruction of some films such as Winsor McCays "The Centaurs" reveals the importance of preserving film, in terms of preserving the history of man. Can you tell us why you collect and preserve certain films?</div>
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T.S.: As said earlier, I seek to collect and preserve every single area of silent animation even down to technical and industrial type films. If a film was made before the sound era and contains any sizable amount of drawn or stop motion animation, it is of interest to me and I advocate for its preservation. In a grand sense, silent cartoons as a whole body of works gives personification to what the public was consuming in the area of humor and comical adaptations of real life. Silent animation differs from <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1294158259_0" style="border-bottom: 2px dotted rgb(54, 99, 136); cursor: pointer;">silent comedy</span> or silent drama because it shows how man made light of (or educated about) life at that time through a more humanistic art form than film itself: drawing.</div>
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4. The heart of <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1294158259_9">film preservation</span> is really influenced by one's love of moving pictures, as if the people projected are resurrected and alive again. <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1294158259_10" style="border-bottom: 2px dotted rgb(54, 99, 136); cursor: pointer;">Little Nemo</span> in Slumberland (1911) is an early example of this innovation. Bobby Bumps seems to follow this tradition too, and perfect it. Can you comment on <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1294158259_11">Bobby Bumps</span> Starts a Lodge (1916)?</div>
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T.S.: <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1294158259_1" style="border-bottom: 2px dotted rgb(54, 99, 136); cursor: pointer;">Bobby Bumps</span> Starts a Lodge is part of a small group of what I refer to as "everyday silent cartoons." These are the films that have been circulated and shown the most to the public for the past two or three decades. Though I tend to shy away from this group because it has already had so much exposure, "Starts a Lodge" is an important entry in a very important <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1294158259_2" style="-moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 50%; border-bottom: 2px dotted rgb(54, 99, 136); cursor: pointer;">cartoon series</span>. Bobby Bumps was the creation of Earl Hurd who utilized celluloid sheets (cels) to perfect and streamline the animation process. His patent became an important factor in the Bray-Hurd Process Company (1915), a joint venture with animation pioneer J.R. Bray and these two issued licenses to other animators like <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1294158259_3" style="-moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 50%; border-bottom: 2px dotted rgb(54, 99, 136); cursor: pointer;">Walt Disney</span> until the early 1930s. </div>
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"Starts a Lodge" is crucial today because it shows Bobby Bumps, a little white boy, sinisterly initiating his black friend Chocklit into a [Masonic] lodge or kid's club. The presence of Chocklit in the Bobby Bumps cartoons might easily be misconstrued today for being a racist counterpart of the cartoons but as I've seen in viewing many Bumps cartoons, Bobby and his friend are equals and simply a product of their time. Viewing hundreds of <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1294158259_4" style="border-bottom: 2px dotted rgb(54, 99, 136); cursor: pointer;">silent films</span> doesn't dilute the issue of racism that exists in early film, which it does, but it desensitizes the harshness of these characters and allows one to see that sometimes their treatment is not always purely negative. </div>
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5. McCays' 'Chalk Talks' led to his animated films. Disney then mimicked McCay and Chaplin which, eventually ushered in his successful <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1294158259_13" style="border-bottom: 2px dotted rgb(54, 99, 136); cursor: pointer;">Steamboat Willie</span> (which was a parody on <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1294158259_14">Buster Keaton's 'Steamboat Bill Jr</span>.'), and a began new way of looking at animation and ideas that came from those parodies. Which children's stories influenced your cinematic voice?</div>
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T.S.: As a child, I was highly influenced by children's' stories such as <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1294158259_5">Goodnight Moon</span>. Interestingly, this particular book has text but the action in the narrative is static--it can be said that the 'narrative' is purely a form of observing and interpreting stillness in this case. One might say a story like this is not particularly 'exciting', and some will say also that of silent animation. I believe interests and curiosities regarding stories like this are affected greatly by mentality and <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1294158259_6" style="-moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 50%; cursor: pointer;">attention span</span>, some of which probably forms extremely early on in a child's growth. I was a very patient and observant child and the few early cartoons I loved at the age of two or three were no zany, screwball <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1294158259_7" style="-moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 50%; cursor: pointer;">Golden Age classics</span> with dazzling color; yet the simple monochromatic images and twinkly soundtracks resonated deeply with me. <br />
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6. What do you see in cinema that you can not find anywhere else?</div>
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T.S.: In cinema, there is a vision. It is true that literature, as a form of entertainment, creates possibly the most autonomous experience because a person must create his own vision of a narrative. However, in the cinema, the artists behind the camera demonstrate their creative visions and share them with us through the film. In literature, we read about the past and we see the words that were once commonplace, the places that no longer exist, and we learn of past events that way. Film is unfortunately limited by a past of only some 115 years, yet it presents the whole 'picture' of what literature conveys. We can see the past before us, we can see past events and we can see past interactions between people. The cinema is a truly dynamic sensory stimuli. </div>
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7. What can you tell B.U.F.S. about your current film screenings?</div>
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T.S.: My current <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1294158259_8">film screenings</span>, the "Cartoon Carnivals", picks and chooses items from my collection that are either bizarre or fit a certain theme behind a show. For instance, my last screening was Christmas-themed. I selected a few mainstream favorites (the few I own, as I don't invest much in popular titles) and filled out the show with extremely obscure items from the 1920s and 1930s. I began doing shows without themes and just threw random oddities together, but I think audiences are definitely relating to and enjoying the themes far more. I've had the great pleasure of collaborating with groups like the Cinebeasts and Kings County Cinema Society who have been a great help in organizing the shows and pooling audience members together.<br />
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8. History has a funny way of repeating itself, what do you hope comes back that we don't get from films today?</div>
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T.S.: Today's films, save for an extremely few indies or student short films, are highly devoid of patience in narrative. Hollywood's productions are overloaded with special effects which steal the spotlight. Its dramas cut to the chase in every scene, none of which last for a great length. Films are always reflecting current trends, especially in attention span, and I hope that trends continue to sway back and forth so audiences evolve and so do the films. I would love to walk into a neighborhood theater (a venue quickly disappearing from the American landscape) and see a film with the directorial insight and pacing that could be seen in some 1920s and 1930s films. They say what is old is new again, so maybe this will again be commonplace some other time in my life span.</div>
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END.<br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">That was an interview with Tom Stathes, 21 year old proprietor of Cartoons On Film. The Berkeley Underground Film Society thanks him for his time and insights into the art of early animated films. His website notes; "I've been collecting vintage animation for over a decade. In pursuit of this forgotten art form, I have found that much of it is simply unavailable. Although I've located a good amount of silent animation, it still eludes the public. That is why I started COF—to share these masterpieces and prevent them from being forgotten ever again. My colleagues, collaborators, and friends share my goal.</span>"<br />
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Berkeley Underground Film Societyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03634272866740088271noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8952022727680597769.post-70226377564517467052010-12-28T11:18:00.000-08:002010-12-28T11:19:12.127-08:00OUR LADY OF THE SPHERE (1969) - LARRY JORDAN<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/dqBFhkWipjQ?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>A leading figure in the California Bay Area independent film movement, Lawrence Jordan has crafted more than 40 experimental, animation and dramatic films. Jordan uses "found" graphics to produce his influential animated collages, noting that his goal is to create "unknown worlds and landscapes of the mind." Inspired by "The Tibetan Book of the Dead," "Our Lady of the Sphere" is one of Jordan’s best-known works. It is a surrealistic dream-like journey blending baroque images with Victorian-era image cut-outs, iconic space age symbols, various musical themes and noise effects, including animal sounds and buzzers.<br />
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This film has been selected to the <a href="http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2010/10-273.html">2010 National Film Registry of the Library of Congress</a>.Berkeley Underground Film Societyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03634272866740088271noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8952022727680597769.post-24006516239256738832010-12-21T20:01:00.000-08:002010-12-21T20:01:51.815-08:00WINSOR MCCAY - THE CENTAURS (1921)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><object width="320" height="266" class="BLOGGER-youtube-video" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0" data-thumbnail-src="http://2.gvt0.com/vi/_6N3giozPbI/0.jpg"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/_6N3giozPbI&fs=1&source=uds" /><param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" /><embed width="320" height="266" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/_6N3giozPbI&fs=1&source=uds" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"></embed></object></div>A female centaur (a creature half-human and half-horse) enters a clearing in the woods, and picks some flowers. She is soon met by a male centaur, and the two then romance each other. They then seek parental consent for their union.Berkeley Underground Film Societyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03634272866740088271noreply@blogger.com