This 1963 film was nominated for an Oscar. Director Geoffrey Jones captured the shovel work being done to keep British rail lines open during the winter. It’s an elegant and beautifully edited short film. You can read more about its origin and rhythmic beat editing at the BFI site.
Made available by the British Film Institute.
While visiting Your Daily Cartoon, I watched an animated film by Hungarian painter György Kovásznai. I liked the calm mishmash of drawing styles and quiet humor. The 1965 film is called Mesék a m?veszet világából (Tales From the World of Art). It has no subtitles but is pretty easy to follow, taking a bemused look at several kinds of art. The first part is an action movie, the second is a theatrical piece, the third is a piano recital.
This one is called Várakozni jó (Waiting for Good). It’s about a traffic jam with a truck that suddenly opens its back doors and explodes into a 1969 rock & roll jam. The wild sketchy ever-changing animation style is more psychedelic than most commercialized sixties psychedelia could ever be.
This one is Gitáros fiú a régi képtárban (Boy Guitarist of the Old Hits) from 1964. It’s simply a guitarist playing and dancing his way through artworks by old masters presented in a very avant-garde fashion. Understanding the art is one thing, but the person who can truly enjoy it is far ahead in the game.
MATURE CONTENT AND LANGUAGE:
I got a nice surprise submission to my Vimeo Candlelight Stories Short Film group this week. It’s a fascinating documentary about one famous actor’s experiences during the turmoil of the civil rights movement in the 1960s.
John Cromwell, the son of actor James Cromwell, directed this short film with Joshua Bell. It’s about his father’s experience with members of the Black Panther Party civil rights organization in 1968. It’s a fascinating short documentary look at someone who finds himself in an unfamiliar world just trying to lend a decent helping hand. James Cromwell has been involved with the defense of the Black Panthers and other human rights causes for decades. I like the film’s professional quality and easy capturing of the sixties look. It presents its important and dramatic subject matter with a good dose of rather charming humor.
Here’s an article and interview with the director and his father.
Chris Koelsch made this slyly humorous space tale by appropriating footage from an old sixties science fiction cartoon called Space Angel. He put the footage to his own wise uses and came up with something memorable.
A great example of mid-twentieth century English pride in… office buildings! This is a 1963 production of the Rank Organization. My depressing view on modern city skylines, regardless of how beautiful they may be at night, is that all those magnificent towers are simple stacks of flimsy cubicles and low ceilings with ugly lighting. Modern cities are nothing more than support structures for desks.