~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Located in Los Angeles, California, the POP Film
Library contains almost 400 educational films from the 1960s and
1970s. The intended audience level of these films ranges from
kindergarten to high school. In addition to the educational films, we
have a smaller collection of our own film productions exploring modern
society with humor and surrealism.
For more information about the library and its holdings, please contact
People of the Pavement at
vschwan@cinema.usc.edu.
| |
A is for Apple, Food from A to Z (8 min.) Handel
Film Corp. 1983
Origin of apples, how the plant grows, various apple products. Budding
and grafting trees. Greek stories about apples. Bobbing for apples at
school with kids in cheap halloween costumes.
About Decibels
(17 min.) Impact Production Associates, General Motors
Train, jackhammer, oscilloscope with high and low piano notes. Narrator
asks, "Do you recognize this sound?" We hear sound then see source
moments later: blackboard screeching, old-fashioned roller skates on
sidewalk, others. CU of ear, tuning fork splashes in water. Guy at old
sound mixer with goofy elevator music. Target shooter wears earplugs.
People listen to a band at a "club" (set up in studio). Inside GM plant.
They do research to see how to lower the noise levels of machines to
protect workers. Lots of cool shots of machines with decibel levels
indicated. "Eliminate the cause" graphic superimposed on machine.
Logarithmic progression of decibels graphic. Guy holds a microphone up to
a truck radiator to measure decibels. Pavement-breaking machine.
Ah, Man, See What You've Done! (18 min.)
1971
Opens with a folk song by this same title that has a very happy melody but
with sad lyrics. Ocean as our source of food, destruction of the ocean.
Underwater shots of fish, sea urchin. Kids look at plankton in
microscope. We see diatoms with renaissance music in the background.
Crop-dusting, DDT, pelicans can't lay enough eggs. Field trip to Anacapa
Island. Submarine goes to sewer outlet under the sea. Santa Barbara oil
spill. Hawaii.
American Bald Eagle (18 min.) Cornett Films, Cornell
University
Eagles soaring, hunting, catching fish. Trees with nests. Narration on
habits of birds. Seventy-four-year-old eagle man studies the birds,
climbs huge trees up to nests to band eaglets. Nest is bigger than the
man! Maps of eagle distribution. Other birds shown: osprey, spoonbill,
frigate birds. Everglades. Baby eagles practice flapping. Many killed
by insecticides in fish. Need for conservation. They eat salmon that are
dying after spawning.
American Wilderness Part 1 (25 min.)
Uses for people, the necessity for wilderness, why we should protect
wilderness... From the perspective of sustaining human life on the
planet. Ironies abound, such as the scene where the host, wearing a
rawhide coat with fur collar, sits at a campfire with a guy who is cooking
bacon and talks about sustainable management practices for wilderness.
Recommended.
American Wilderness Part 2
Animal Homes Churchill Films 1980
Close ups snail and tortoise. Hermit crab changing shells. Kids in boxes
stop playing when it rains. Raccoon, badger, squirrel, snow. Bees in
comb, spider spinning up a fly. Ants, egret makes a nest, baby birds,
baby gnu, possoms hang onto mom. Coyote babies, mouse babies. Cleverly
edited sequence of a cat chasing a mouse.
Ant World (10 min.)
How ants are like humans. Great CUs, music, and narration.
Art from Found Materials (9 min.) early 70s
Rad 70s music -- hilarious. Lots of CUs of found materials that seem more
like trash than art materials. CUs of the making of silly "art."
Narrated "instruction." A great shot of a dog made of boxes and
cardboard, painted (the only truly interesting piece).
Balance in Nature (15 min.) BFA Educational Media 1975
Nature CUs with "pretty" music. Snake CU. Film showcases an 80-acre
preserve in the middle of suburbia. Shows the "building of the preserve
that used to be flat farmland, using bulldozers to make hills and lakes."
Great ominous music with bulldozers. "This is the home of many living
things": fox, frog, turtle, crawdad. CU of mouse. This film attempts to
sum up the idea of balance in nature using foxes eating mice on an 80-acre
preserve. "Sometimes there aren't enough mice; sometimes there are too
many." Simple-minded and stupid. Freeway in the background of one shot
makes me ask, "What about road kill in the scheme of things?" El Dorado
Nature Center, Long Beach.
Bees: Backyard Science (10 min.)
Cute jazzy background music, narration. Good CUs of bees in the wild and
in honey-producing hives. Wax and honey extraction machines shown in use
as they are described. Message: "Bees are good."
The Beach: A River of Sand (15 min.) Encyclopedia Brittanica
Earth Science Series
Cool graphic at beginning. Opening shots of Hendry's Beach, Santa
Barbara. Black sand beach. CU of sand components. Quartz and feldspar.
Follows stream to mountains. Time lapse sand castle with tide
destruction. Wave machine shows difference between winter and summer
waves. Santa Barbara harbor sand bank and dredger. Model of this area is
used to do research on sand movement and problems of man-made structures.
Aerial photography of Santa Monica pier and sand movement obstructions.
Graphics show natural sand movement along beach.
Bicycle Safety
Bill of Rights in Action: Story of a Trial (21 min.) Film
Associates early 60s
"Ducktail" haircuts. Matter-of-fact description of getting arrested and
going to court. Accused of petty theft. Reading of rights. Guy calls
his cousin, gets bail. Shot inside jail as cop opens door. In court,
Judge explains rules of arraignment. Misdemeanor pleas. The public
defender requests a trial by jury for petty theft of hubcaps! Jury comes
in. Case is presented. Sentencing occurs. Strange tone.
Bitter Fruit: Modern History of Cypress (20 min.)
A vivid and moving film. UN Peacekeeping forces destroy the culture of
this island.
Blueprint for Survival
Bob and Karen and Ted and Janice
Cool opening sequence of people playing in a band on the beach in
hilarious 70s outfits.
The Boundless Sea Part 1
The Boundless Sea Part 2 (20 min.)
Recap of Part 1. Many shots of sea. Continental shelf, topographical map
near Philadelphia. Continental shelf is where most life, oil, and mills
are found. Kelp swim-through, coral reefs. Manta ray, fish schools.
Phytoplankton. Hip 70s elevator music. Zooplankton. Pink anemone
catches fish. Underwater sound, catfish. Sea lion. Dolphin in an
aquarium. Humpback whales. USS Kate breaks ice in Arctic in 1959.
Antarctica, penguins with funny music. Mass fishing, shrimp farm in
Japan. Salmon hatchery near a paper mill. Kelp harvest, desalination.
Mineral wealth of the ocean bottom, mining vacuum-cleaner. "Rockeater."
Vandenberg rocket, ocean surveillance program. Message: "The ocean is for
human exploitation."
Boy Prepares for Manhood
A Polynesian boy proves his readiness for manhood by climbing the
mountain on the neighboring island. Idyllic island life that no
longer exists.
Bozo Daily Life
Building a House on the Niger
Chemistry of Digestion
Animation with voice-over.
Children of the Fields (15 min.) Xerox Films 1973
The story of a migrant working family, with attention a the middle
daughter.
Chromosomes of Man
People work in labs and look into microscopes.
Clothes Around the World (8 min.)
A short look at some exotic clothing styles. Limited but entertaining.
Cocaine and Human Physiology (13 min.) AIMS Media 1987
Opens with funeral dirge in background. Doctor narrates and shows
problems with cocaine: Streptococcus, scratching sensations, bad effects
on nose. Testimony from recovered coke users, shots of paraphernalia.
Models of body areas with problems caused by the drug: nose, mouth, brain,
lungs,heart. Graphic examples and testimonials with a jovial doctor host.
Captivating.
Community Bakery (10 min.)
An old-fashioned portly local baker makes bread, treats, and a cake for
his co-worker. Ridiculous! Faded to red. Kindergarten-level.
Comparative Geography (18 min.) BFA
Bedouin shepherds, desert living in tents. Women doing chores: grinding
coffee, spinning thread. Family moves from nomadic life to government
housing project. Shots of market place.
Computer Revolution
Contour Drawing
How to do it. Super boring.
Cotton to Clothing (16 min.)
Courtesy for Beginners
A teacher instructs grammar school class about how to be courteous.
Crash Boom Bang
Noises made by percussion. Nothing rhythmic except marching beat.
Patriotic.
Crosstown Adventure (15 min.)
A boy takes a not-so-wild ride and gets lost because he wanders onto a
delivery truck. Semi-boring but OK.
Culture and Costumes: The Great Clothes Put-On (15 min.)
"Man's" history of clothing, from animal skins to modern styles. Great
shots and entertaining commentary.
The Cutting Edge (25 min.) Journal Films 1984
The energy of mining and man. Arctic mining, oil rig burning off extra
gas. "We MUST locate new deposits!" Landsat animation and images,
helicopter shots. Amazing scene inside an African mine, miles below the
surface. Shows the temperature control room for the mine with big tubes
and lots of dials and meters as well as a giant ice-making machine. Shows
human testing to see who is physically prepared to go into the mine:
wires are hooked up to guys who are using excercise machines. Guys work
with jackhammers, narrator states: "We must mine everywhere." Economics
is stressed -- a miner is referred to as a "labor effective unit." Final
stages of mining are shown using froth floatation and floatation
separation. Some amazing shots! A man sticks his head in a fire with a
mask on! Beautiful microscope shots of minerals. Fabulous images
accompany exploitative propaganda.
Darwin
Not deeply informative. Very dull. A couple good CUs of
bugs on pins.
Desert Ecology (13 min)
Shots of many desert-dwelling animals, with narration about their
adaptations and habits. Wildflowers, cactus blossoms, bee in flower,
kangaroo rat. Cute, faded to red.
The Dime (12 min.) Little Red Filmhouse 1976
From raw metal to finished coins, we follow dimes down the conveyor belt
through cool mass production machines set to Bach on the Moog. An
armoured car takes the dimes to be rolled and distributed. We follow a
dime that has been accidentally marked by nailpolish as it gets passed
around: through a parking meter, telephone, newspaper stand, candy machine
etc. Coin sorting machine, and lots of shots inside various vending
machines.
Discovering the Music of India
A Drop of Water: Microorganisms
Drugs: Don't be Fooled (15 min.) American Educational Films 1983
Set in Jr. High Chemistry class, the teacher narrates and prompts the
students to answer questions about drugs as he writes on the chalkboard.
Kids names and describe (in a slightly stilted, rehearsed manner)
catagories of drugs: alcohol, hallucinogens, amphetimines, barbituates,
and marijuana. Different groups of kids try to get others to try these
different drugs, and various consequences are seen. Tame.
Early Rockets and Dreams of Space (18 min.)
ACI Release 1975
3-D solar system in blue/green/red. Stonehenge, people watching eclipse.
History: Chinese astronomers, Greeks, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton.
Chinese rockets. Description of action/reaction, shown using dump truck
toy and marbles. Man holds a phallic rocket while he talks. Jules
Verne's From the Earth to the Moon.
Earthquake Prediction: Tomorrow's Quake
Earthwatch: Your Chance to Live (11 min.) Defense Civil
Preparedness Agency, California Office of Emergency Services 1970s
Stills of galaxies (kinestasis), forest pans, small waterfalls. Negative
images of natural disasters, hydrogen bomb, pollution, sewer waterfall.
"Frailty of human life": people in stretchers. Crop dusting and mining
explosion in reverse. Tornadoes are coming, run to the cellars!
Narration tells you to be prepared for natural and man-made disasters,
shows people getting hurt and acting worried, but does not give any
information on how to protect yourself. I cannot figure out how anyone
would use this film to teach preparedness.
The Ears and Hearing (20 min.) 1970
Ear superimposed on top of different machines and things that make noise.
Oscilloscope sign wave of sound superimposed over still of the thing
generating the sound. The entire ear is explored and its workings
explained with trippy graphics and exploratory surgery cameras. We
witness ear surgery where the stirrup of the middle ear is removed, and
parts are replaced with metal and "gel-foam."
The Eating on the Run Film (16 min.) 70s
A pseudo-educational film. How to "eat right" even if you're in a hurry.
Food game show scene reinforces the "four food groups" model.
Ecology: Relationships of Plants and Animals to Their
Environment
Eighteenth Century Life in Williamsburg: Home Life (15 min.)
Standard of living propaganda. Assumes all white settlers had slaves.
Shows slaves doing everything in upper-class Virginian household.
Viewpoint is that this is normal and okay.
The Electric Grandmother (35 min.) Learning Corp of America,
Hillgate Pictures 1981
Based loosely on "I Sing the Body Electric", a Ray Bradbury Teleplay.
A strange story of a family who gets an automated grandmother when their
real grandmother dies. The Fake grandmother never gets any older, and is
still around when the children are old themselves. Slick production, some
cool shots inside the workshop where the electric grandmother is
manufactured.
Every Day of Our Lives
Eye of the Storm
A teacher in Iowa teaches her pupils about discrimination by telling them
that children with blue eyes are better than those with brown, and giving
the "better" children priviledges. Great "NOW" graphic at the beginning
with flash of pot plant. Tuesday morning pledge of allegiance.
Eyewitness to History: Lifestyles (18 min.)
Disney newsreel compilation with narration about modern U.S. history. A
promotional look at upper-middle-class American idealism.
Faces
Boxes full of faces pop onto screen. ECU of eyes. Trapeze act, hand
lifting out of box of flowers, sousaphone geek.
Families are Different and Alike
Boring families eat breakfast, talk at the table. Depressing.
Farrallon Light (24 min.) 1971
Farallon Island lighthouse, San Francisco. Balance of wildlife and
humans' effect on this island. History, interviews and narration,
interspersed with nature photography set to semi-sappy 70s music with the
intent of evoking emotional reaction. Excellent ambient film.
Interesting and important, but long.
Feeding Habits of Insects
Some pretty cool shots of bugs. Very bad narration, shows bugs primarily
as destoyers of man-made objects and therefore pests. Also shots of
spiders, preying mantis, and flies sucking on sugar coated glass seen from
below!
Flowers (13 min.) The Many Worlds of Nature, Screenscope
Distribution
Intricate descriptions of pollination. Specific details about common and
uncommon methods developed by several types of flowers. Lots of close ups
of flowers, some with bees, butterflies and moths on them. Informative.
Focus on 1958
Highlights of 1958 include rocket launches and the hula hoop craze.
Food Chains: A Bond of...
Folk Art in Latin America
Super-dumb and horrible. Shows tourist crafts, never the artisans
themselves. Lame narration. Tracking and dolly shots of dumb tourist
crafts from Tijuana.
Food Fads and Facts (15 min.)
Propaganda aimed at "dispelling the myths" of organic and health food fads
and promoting better life through chemical-based agribusiness. Priceless
quips and quotes.
Der Fuhrer
Future (19 min.)
Scientific advances are scrutinized by social commentators. Great
footage.
Garbage (8 min.)
We follow a record album from the factory to the landfill in this montage
of garbage imagery set to jazz music.
The Garbage Explosion
Lots of landfill footage, burning waste, compression bales. A
non-progressive look at the garbage problem, in that the question is
posed, "how do we solve this problem?," but no ideas are hinted at about
possible solutions. Good footage.
The Gas Turbine (13 min.) General Motors 1973
Very informative film describing the basic mechanics of turbine engines,
from the simplest design to the regenerative turbine engine. Almost
exclusively animated. Shows how a jet plane uses its engine to slow down.
Getting Angry
Getting Sick, Getting Well (11 min.) Barr Films, Sandler
Educational Films 1977
Puppet animation, including singing puppets. You should wash your hands
before eating! A Boy gets germs because he doesn't wash an apple.
Inside his veins, we watch germs fencing. The body protectors are not
strong enough, so a pill brings soldiers that kill the germs. Total
misinformation that would confuse children about their bodies. Trippy.
Glasses for Susan: A New Day (11 min.)
Narrative of a girl and her experiences in school and with friends as she
realizes she needs glasses and decides to get them. Snappy 70s happy
music. No parents in this film! Fun.
Goodness Snakes
This film implies that it's OK to steal snakes from the wild and take them
home in a bag. Must be destroyed. Good CUs of snakes slithering around.
Grapes (8 min.)
Green Eyes
Jonathan Winters (I think, I don't remember for sure) reads a super-dumb
story book about a cat with green eyes and we see some of the
pages.
Habits of Health: Keeping in Top Shape (10 min.)
1970s
Posture, hygiene, exercise, "diet," lots of milk in every shot. Great
shots. Grade school kids walk to school, eat the four food groups.
Presidential Physical Fitness Award. Kids eat school cafeteria food.
Sleeping girl time-lapse.
Handling Money (10 min.)
A cash register is set up in a sound stage, back lit with different
colors, where cashiers demonstrate the proper way to handle money as it
comes and goes in the checkout line. A narrator describes the proper way
to count change, and common mistakes are dramatized. Mildly boring and
repetetive, but amusing. Gratifying to those of us who dislike being
handed bills before the change.
Healthy Feet, Happy Feet (9 min.) Stanton Films 1980
Close ups of feet jumping rope, running on playground to peppy happy
music. A drawing shows bone structure, muscle and tissue. Different
animal feet: eagle, duck, sealion (in zoo), cassowary, dog digs hole.
Boy with guinnea pig. Badger. Close up of clipping giant toenails. Wild
horses in a dry canyon. Shoeing a horse, fitting shoes in a shoestore.
Herding Cattle (8 min.)
Beautiful ambient film. No dialogue, only moos and noises made by the
cattle herders as they escort their cows across the Niger River.
The Hero as Artist
The Renaissance Rome and Florence, Michelangelo's art. Lots of dolly
shots. Yawn-provoking narration by SIR snotty Kenneth Clark.
Holland, Terra Fertilis (9 min.) ACI
Fast-paced montage sequences of Holland's food and flower production
industries. Bizarre and hilarious: Man patting cows' butts, crop dusting
and courtship, factory produce packing, time-lapse flowers blooming.
Holy Men of India (9 min.)
Bulk of film focuses on yogi performing grotesque contortions. Narrator
repeatedly says, "Remember, this is not done for show or entertainment..."
Homework and Study Habits (8 min.)
Animated. A boy is given two chances to do his homework instead of
goofing off. Cut outs with narration. Psychotic.
How Life Begins Parts 1 & 2
Eddie Albert hosts. The birds and the bees.
How to Raise a Puppy and Live Happily Ever After
Great shots of people telling basset-hound puppy "NO! NO!" Mom moves
"Corry's Slug and Snail Death" inside the shed.
The Human Body: Chemistry of Digestion (12 min.) Coronet
Films
Repetitive but entertaining and informative. Explanation of digestion on
a molecular level with graphics illustrating sugars and starches. X-ray of
moving colon. "X-ray" style graphic of digestive system showing enzymes
produced in stomach, pancreas and small intestine. Skeleton X-ray of
clean cut boy in white shirt eating meat and potatos. X-ray of digestion
throughout body with explanation of enzyme action, graphics superimposed
on top of X-rays.
Hurricane (19 min.)
A couple wander through a hurricane-torn town and narrate philosophical
reactions to hurricane devastation and what it has done to their lives.
Nonsense.
I Am Me and I Want to Be
We follow a silly little girl through her day as she tells us and sings to
us about what it's like to be her.
In Out Up Down Over Upside-down
Kids run around and demonstrate these words.
Insect Life Cycle: The Periodical Cicada (13 min.) Encyclopedia
Brittanica
Many shots of the cicadas with narrator explaining their strange life
cycle. A team of researchers are shown studying these creatures.
It Was an Island: Cypress TV
Ito and His Kite: Boy of Japan
Just One Me
We follow a little black boy around and see why everyone is special.
Not great.
Kuumba-Simon's New Sound NGUZO SABA films
1978
Cut out animation story about a boy in Trinidad, looking for a new sound
for carnival. He makes his insrument out of an old garbage can lid. A
dramatization of the birth of the steel drum, with music. Very cool head
and tail leaders.
The Learn From Disappointment Game (8 min.)
Alfred Higgins Productions 1978
Old man in workshop consoles little girl who is disappointed by telling
her stories of people who learned things from their disappointment.
They converse in rhyme. These stories are shown to us, and whenever
disappointed people are shown, hallucinogenic superimposed multicolored
copies of themselves float over them. Includes: close up of parrot, fast
motion shot of person running with shocked people watching, old man saying
to camera, "It's no good to pout."
The Lemonade Stand
Some children make a lemonade stand to make money, then argue
about the profit and who did the most work.
The Life Story of a Hummingbird
The Lost Mission
The Magic Lantern Show and How it Grew (18
min.)
The beginnings of film production and exhibition. Strange abrupt ending
takes you from the 20s to the 70s with no summary or conclusion.
Making Word Pictures (11 min.) Cornet Films 1973
A game-show style competition where two children compete to use vivid
language in their oral and written compositions. A panel of their peers
judge their performance as a narrator explains what's going on. The
contestants tell impromptu stories and read compositions as the panel of
judges listens. A screen above the judges shows the images that the
contestant's words are bringing to mind. Very silly and surreal. The
girl contestant tells a white person's story about an Indian princess and
her tribe.
Man, The Measure of All Things (28 min.)
Kenneth Clark snottily narrates the history of Florentine high culture
and talks about why Men from Florence are better than everyone
else. No women mentioned or pictured.
Maps Add Meaning to History
Marche des Petites Soldats de Plomb (5 min.)
Faded to red. Africa: giraffes, lions, hippos, alligators, birdies,
elephants, and insects cruising around to music. Split screen shots of
bugs -- cool!
Marie Curie: A Love Story (25 min.) 1970s
By Terrance Hardeman, dramatization in British English. Feels like a PBS
movie. Early romance of the Curies -- they meet at a fancy party. They
get bags of pitch blende (uranium ore), and pick it up with their hands.
He abandons his research to help her. Good laboratory sets and props.
They carry uranium residue in burlap sacks. "It's from the Australian
government, they've been dumping it in the woods, there are mountains of
the stuff!" They work with beakers -- CU of experiments, details of old
tools. The windows turn blue from radioactivity. They discover radium.
He shows it to some colleagues at a presentation and holds the glowing
stick in his hand. We see his radium burns while he hypothesizes that
radium can cure cancer. She gets sick, their daughter dies, she wins the
Nobel prize for physics. CU of Pierre lecturing at podium: "Is man ready
to derive more good than harm from this discovery?" He is trampled by a
horse, she has flashbacks of their life together. She gets old fast and
is very sick, gets Nobel prize for chemistry on her deathbed. Her
personal papers are radioactive. "This is testimony to her total
dedication to science."
The Medieval Mind
The Mime of Marcel Marceau (19 min.) Learning Corp. of
America, a subsidiary of Columbia Pictures 1972
Putting on makeup intercut with CU of stage performances. Alone in the
dressing room. Taking bows with flower. Mime school with subtitles of
his instructions as students follow. Hand dancing -- how to control the
hand to evoke emotions. Different mime teachers. Gymnastics, fencing,
mime throwing ball. Some nice stage performances. Makes you want to
stretch out and do yoga.
Miracle of the Mind (20 min.)
Excellent! A socio-political science film about brain research using
chemicals, drugs, and electroshock. Brain-wave studies and animal
experiments.
Movement Exploration: What am I? (8 min.)
Young children pretend to be other things as the narrator explains what
they are doing. They mimic pigeons, streets, oil derricks, and the ocean.
Totally ridiculous. Pro-industry.
The Music of Africa
Mysterious Message-Handwriting 1982
Cool SMPTE, shots of lightning. Narrated as if this is a horror story.
Humorous anecdotes that demonstrate the importance of good penmanship.
Nature Boy
Puppet-animated. Silent.
Nature's Half-Acre (20 min.)
Birds build nests and feed young. Insects, caterpillars, and bees cavort
in all seasons of the year. Energetic musical track with narration.
Carnivorous plants, ant lion, chameleon, toad, and praying mantis.
Time-lapse plants and butterflies. Narrator keeps saying, "Here in
nature's half-acre..."
Negro Heroes of American History (15 min.) UCLA, Atlantis
Kinestasis of historical illustrations. John Baptiste left Mississippi,
married an Indian, became a Chief, discovered a path to California.
Worked for American government to carry out "peace missions" with Indians.
Harriet Tubman, militant. Shot of slave crew on a ship. 1909: Admiral
Perry's North Pole expedition, Hansen was trailblazer. Henry Johnson,
sergeant in WWII. Shots of soldiers coming home, front lines. Sailor
guys at Pearl Harbor, battleship, medals for shooting down planes. This
film implies that the only way to be a hero if you are a post-slavery-era
black in America is to do something patriotic.
Neurotic Behavior
Great graphics of toilets, lips, etc. floating through the air as the
neurotic guy's subconscious mind is shown to us.
Night of the Squid (20 min.)
Squid converge and gather for a night of courtship.
Night Sky
Niko: Boy of Greece
Great shot of a beautiful windmill by the sea.
No Man is an Island
Instantly forgettable.
Noise (7 min.)
People go through their daily life, but are constantly bombarded by
irritating loud noises. Dad on street in car, kids in a classroom...
Nothing
A brother and sister walk home from school separately (for miles!) and
look at/don't look at lots of suburban and urban landscapes and details.
Later when asked, "What did you see?" they say, "Nothing." Weird 5-second
shot of a shadow of a hand making a devil symbol.
Nuclear Weapons: Can Man Survive?
A few good explosion shots with narration and history.
Off Your Duff
Exercise film. Long. Ted Kennedy cameo.
Oh, Freedom!: The Story of Civil Rights (18 min.) NY Times
Co., Sterling Educational Films 1970
Drawings, historical photographs, and clips with narration. Opens with
civil disobedience training with a group of young people, mostly black.
Biblical analogies made by a black woman. Stills with narration of 1941
march on Washington. Early protests, segregated schools. Rosa Parks
bus boycott. Civil disobedience advocates: Jesus, Thoreau, Ghandi.
Section on Thurgood Marshall and the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference. 250,000 march on Washington in 1963, singing "We will
overcome." Klan burns cross. Voting rights bill of 1965. "A new
generation of men!"
Our Active Earth (25 min.) Jerry Fairbanks Productions
3-D animation of orbs in space, lava flows with description of early
Earth. Gassing earth cracks, lightning, rain, lava falls into stormy sea
-- magnificent. Earth rotating with red background. Big ocean waves.
Viking ship recreation, old sailing ships. Alvin prepares for a dive.
70s guy talks into radio during preparation. Underwater mountain range,
mid-Atlantic ridge. Graphics and narration of rifts 15,000 miles long.
Great radio talk! Undersea fiery rifts! Icelandic volcanoes and islands
growing out of the sea. New island -- Xerxes. Rift earthquake shots.
Gulf stream currents. Flag blowing superimposed over waves. Giant ocean
storm with boats. Back-lit wave machine in slow motion. Outer space
shots of hurricane, flight over hurricane, shore shots. 25-foot tsunami
wave. Shot from high shore during hit in Nova Scotia. Tidal movement
time-lapse. Southern Californian grunion. Dredges and lake mining.
Borax mule teams. Strip mines and oil fields with happy elevator music.
Offshore oil production described happily and excitedly. North sea oil:
modern technology wins! Ending quote for a pro-industry film: "The sea --
it is never at rest -- it is our heritage."
Our Land Needs Your Help
Parents: Who Needs Them?
A little boy turns invisible and can no longer interact with his family.
The PCP Story (28 min.)
Boring, not very informative. Scene with a guy who is out-of-it on PCP.
Peasant's Pea Patch
Don't remember. Boring.
People Who Work in Factories (10 min.)
Bicycle factory.
Pioneer Living: Preparing Foods
Planning Ahead: The Racer
A young boy wants to learn about cars from his mechanic uncle, and
builds a go-cart racer.
Pontiac Pours it On (24 min.)
Factory production of cars to lively music.
Population and Pollution
Primary School Bus Safety
Prisoners of Chance (23 min.) 1979
"This film is based on fact." Interviews with teenage parents. Why it is
better to wait. All go through hardships.
Problems of Conservation (18 min.)
Propulsion (18 min.)
Simple history and mechanics of steam, internal combustion, and rocket
engines.
Puffins, Predators, and Pirates (20 min.) 1972
The story of the Atlantic Canadian puffin. Shot of the puffin and
Atlantic mir. Unbalance on this North Atlantic island where herring gull
population explosion threatens the puffin breeding colonies. The herring
gulls thrive on garbage piles of humans. Beautiful, tragic, sad.
Remember Me Pyramid, UN and UNICEF
Earth zoom. Interviews with different poor children around the world who
must do very hard and yucky work. Child laborers.
The Restless Earth (20 min.) 1972
Charleton Heston lectures on disaster preparedness. Mostly
earthquakes. Scene with a wild, goofy professor showing what to do
if your house falls down. Cameo of Ronald Reagan. Geology of Earth with
philosophical overtones. Shots of giant mining trucks. Greenland rocks
are brought to Oxford geology lab for dating. Geologists crush up rocks
and measure trace tritium. Geologic time referenced.
Rise of Labor
Rollerskate Safely (12 min.) Fiesta Films 1981
Cool head leader. Old-Style skates. Stunt pool-skating set to pop disco
music. History of roller skates illustrated with old photos; rollerskates
originated in Belgium. Lots of shots of skaters, shots at Venice Beach,
Ca. Skate club with matching clothing. Close up of scrape, skating guy
with briefcase falls down. Pro rollerskate instructor shows best way to
lace and how to adjust skates. Skate lesson on blacktop, demos how to
stop and fall to varied aged students. Trick skating around small orange
pylons, skating in a giant transparent tube. Southern Cal period piece.
Romance and Reality Part 2 (25 min.) BBC
Sir Kenneth Clark appears and narrates in his high-society stuffy way!
Giotto and 14th century Italian society and art. Architecture and
paintings are examined and commented upon. Dante mentioned.
School Day in Japan (12 min.) Bath
Films 1965?
Valarie's dad will love this film. All in Japanese. Two children leave
their house in the morning for their day. Young children in class learn
from instructor how to do calligraphy with a brush. They play baseball.
Great shots of interior of house and of all activities. Very nice.
School's in Soviet Style (25 min.) Journal Films 1979
Australian University consultant television series. Shows young and older
children in this culture, and how they are educated and cared for in a
communal setting. Traditional schooling.
The Self-Image Film: If Mirrors Could Speak (11 min.) Sandler
Institutional Films 1974
A child narrates as we watch a classroom of children interact. There are
three different "clowns." Sad clown will never answer the teacher and has
no friends. Show-off clown teases everyone and makes fun of others. "Bad
girl" is bratty and bosses people around. Shows them all on the
playground. After school they each see a mirror (which is on the school
grounds after the others are leaving for the day) in which they have clown
make-up on, and the mirror image of themselves tells them that they really
should improve their attitude.
Sense Perception (20 min.)
The Moody Institute of Science explores our senses. Cool intertitles.
"Upside-down glasses" worn by experimenter prove that our brain can
compensate for this! Shows Ames distorted room and other optical
illusions. Emphasis is on wonders of nature and the limitations of our
senses. Religious/scientific overtones and moralistic speech at end.
The Shark: Splendid Savages of the Sea (20 min.) Macmillan
1975
Lorne Greene narrates, points out that this ancient creature, the shark,
survived through the mass extinction which killed the dinosaurs. "The
ultimate undersea killer!" Rays, hammerheads, sawfish, wabegong
(camouflaged on ocean bottom). Aerial shots of summer at the beach.
Shark school spotted from a boat, rogue shark heading toward beach,
warning horn. Attack survivors. Underwater shots of nets around beaches
full of drowned sharks. Shark bounty hunters. Tiger and gray nurse
sharks. Hunters with shotgun charged spear guns. Intense shark killings
with these spears. Footage of early shark scientists going down in cage
(B/W). Are humans descendants of sharks? A diver swims with a whale
shark! Narrator mentions decreasing numbers of sharks as if it's no big
deal. Attitude of this film (paraphrased by V.): "Oh, well. They might
go extinct, they might not. We aren't doing anything about it, and only
time will tell if they will out-live MAN." (Ambivalent tone of voice.)
The Silent World of Jim (12 min.) International
Materials 1974
With Nanette Fabray. School principal signs about
safety concerns at school. CU "foods" being washed and prepared by mom
for school lunch. Some great music. They go in a convertable VW to a
picnic at a playground. Jim wanders away without his hearing aid and
almost gets hit by a train! His memory montage sequence includes
superimpositions of school buses, DON'T WALK signs, siren lights, Jim's
confused face. "Look out for dangers; look out for trauma." Stupid girls
are playing with a big stick and almost hit him accidentally. Cop waving
from a car. CU traffic lights.
The Simple Lens: An Introduction
Skipping (10 min.) Churchill
A kid is skipping along in a park past some people eating lunch. A girl
sees and follows. Lots of kids join. Slow motion skipping. Two girls do
not know how to skip. One joins and lets the others teach her (detailed
lessons!). The other kid does not admit that he does not know how and
hides behind a tree. Then adults follow kids: meter maid, firemen, and
hip bikers. They all skip around in the park. In some shots people look
like they are tired of skipping.
The Smile of the Walrus (18 min.) Churchill Films
Rod Serling narrates, Jaques Cousteau and company.
Many good shots of walruses. Discussing walrus hunting with modern
Eskimo. A mother is slain, the pup is "raised" by the Calypso crew.
Environmental in tone with questionable ethics.
Sounds of the Silent Deep (25 min.) Moody Institute of
Science
Statue of Liberty (10 min.) 1974
Plymouth rock, close up of lots of different patriotic statues with quotes
such as "give me liberty or give me death." Canons, grave yards, flag,
liberty bell, Lincoln statue, capitol, military march, Mount rushmore, Iwo
Jima. Old map view of New York Harbor, cross section of Miss Liberty's
head.
Lots of shots of the statue being built and erected.
Storm of Strangers (23 min.)
Still B/W photos, narrated. The hardships of Jewish, Black, and Latino
immigrants in turn-of-the-century New York are examined.
Studying the Behavior of Light
Things to Do When You Go to the Zoo (15 min.) Journal
Films 1970?
Patronizing, pseudo-educational. A school group goes to the zoo. Insipid
narration -- tells us how great the zoo is and describes all the junk food
you can buy there to eat and feed to the animals. Elephants. The "Lion
house" and the tiny glass-walled nursery where a baby lion has been taken
from her mother and is being bottle-fed infant lion formula. Kids throw
marshmallows to bears as narrator condones this behavior. Reptile house,
rhesus monkey, children's zoo for petting "tame" animals. Kids handle a
baby chimpanzee. Kids eat hot dogs then throw their trash into trash cans
which are called "special containers" by the narrator. Sailors at the
zoo.
The Thunderstorm
Tom Whitington and his Cat
Tragedy of the Commons
Incomprehensible and dull.
Tragedy of the Red Salmon
Truman and the Atomic Bomb (18 min.)
President Harry S. Truman narrates and explains his decision to
drop the bomb. Incredible film.
TV Ads: Our Mini-Myths (17 min.) Stanford Summers
McLuhan-esque intertitles describing each persuasive technique introduce a
series of 1970s commercials. 1. Thomas Edison tells about his life: GE.
2. Ford truck drops out of a plane. (La Mas Fuerte de Argentina!) 3.
Family leaves an old man alone after a weekend visit -- but he has
Polaroid snapshots. 4. Neighborhood basketball mentor -- Coke, the real
thing! 5. "How's your love life?": Closeup toothpaste. 6. People
representing many sectors of America sit at a table eating pie. The
military guy gets the biggest piece. 7. Trucker eats at a truckstop as a
country jingle makes jokes and tries to sell Old Home Bread. 8. Horrible
dorky blonde is making a commercial for Cadbury "Whole Nuts." 9. Old lady
barely escapes several calamities then breaks a window by kicking a soccer
ball: insurance. 10. Model agency in action: glamour, perfume. 11.
Beautiful animated story; it seems like a show, but it's for vodka! 12.
Levi's psychedelic pants.
TV News: Behind the Scenes (20 min.)
The story of a TV newsroom. Good flood and protest footage. Geraldo
Rivera as an ABC reporter.
Under Arrest
People get arrested and go to court. Super boring.
Understanding Fire (15 min.)
Parents teach son about fire using the backyard barbecue. Not scientific.
Female teacher demonstrates semi-dumb experiments. Great shots, terrible
narration.
Universe
William Shatner narrates.
The Violin-Maker: In Praise of Hands
Visit to a Dairy Farm (12 min.) Journal Films 1983
Little girl Claire goes to visit while narrator describes what we see.
Merry-go-round milking machine, boy on tractor on risers at AG show.
The Weird Number (14 min.)
Animated. In a society populated by numbers with personalities, the
citizens must solve burglary crimes. In doing so they discover "the weird
number." Very weird film.
What Should I Do?: The New Girl (8 min.)
Disney educational animated film about why thinking about things is better
than not thinking at all, even if you're not thinking correctly. Everyone
is mean to the new girl, but nothing is resolved. Strange.
Words (15 min.)
A teacher and her young students play, make poems and learn about words.
Fabulous animation.
Word World, Adventure in Language Land (10 min.) Barr Films
1978
Puppet animation, rip-off of Jim Henson's style. Looking at a comic
story without words, they must add words to it. A girl and boy are
collecting words, and they must tell if they are nouns or verbs. Cook
with word soup. Different animals work at "machines" that manufacture
words. Game show with silly animal contestants. Absurd.
A World is Born: Part 1 (18 min.)
Disney animated sequences, including some from Fantasia, of the Earth's
geologic beginning, the evolution of early plant and animal life through
the death of the dinosaurs. Narrated. Refers to Earth as "Our Earth."
And many more!!
karen_ciccone@ncsu.edu
(3/18/00)
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~kacollin