This is a real find–a lovely ten or so minute travelogue style journey around Greenwich Village featuring lots of the fashion of the time and plenty of views of streets and buildings that are all pretty much still there. From the look of things I think we’re in 1968–a close
In 1960 a filmmaker named Stewart Wilensky spent the summer shooting footage of New York’s Greenwich Village which he turned into a twelve minute doc called ‘Village Sunday’ which was completed in 1961. If you were watching the film back then then you’d likely see it as a sort of
The previous two posts of ColorSonics short jukebox ‘videos’ failed to mention the company’s predecessor Scopitone. Which brings us to today’s little look inside the Scopitone ST-36 jukebox. Somebody clearly put a lot of love and care into restoring this thing and putting it into working order, complete with the
Now this is going to take a little explaining. Yesterday I posted one of Robert Altman’s mid-60s Color-Sonics music ‘videos’ (check it out if you haven’t already–you’ll be glad you did). Here’s another one that he did with the famous ecdysiast Lily St. Cyr called ‘Don’t Call Me’. Except the
What happened to the massive cassette tapes pictured in the above posted RCA promotional film about the ‘revolution in tape?’ Huge consoles seemed to hold four of these biggies which required no threading–imagine! It’s easy to be amused by dead technology but this one is a real puzzler. Did it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbAx6oznWKw Why, you may ask, are we watching a women’s prison musical number called ‘The Lockstep’ featuring an act known as ‘The Dodge Twins’ photographed in two-strip Technicolor on a lavishly vertical set (if one can refer to a prison as ‘lavish’) accompanied by dozens of imprisoned chorus girls all
I freely admit to never having had any specific interest in Elvis. He’s been part of the wallpaper of pop culture in my mind ever since I was a kid–always identifiable, sometimes fun, more often than not a subject of ridicule or pity. Now, in light of Baz Luhrmann’s towering
There is something hypnotic and more than a little melancholy about this three minute silent reel of 8mm film shot in New York City in 1983 (our ‘year of the week’–see previous post). It appears to document a family outing on a warm spring or summer day. Our family appears
It’s easy to mock or criticize the 1980s but I have rose-colored glasses on when it comes to that decade. I turned 16 in 1980 and spent the happiest decade of my life roving around the quirky, edgy and still dirty and crime-laden New York City on display in this
Today I’m posting the last of the three short interview films made in 1931 under the series title ‘Intimate Interviews’ (see previous two posts to catch up on what little history I’ve been able to figure out about the how and why of the existence of these fascinating little oddities).