Master Hands is a 1936 sponsored documentary film short which shows what work is like in a Chevrolet automobile factory. It was produced by the Jam Handy Organization, a pioneer in industrial film production. [1]
Notables for this film include original music by Samuel Benavie, cinematography by Gordon Avil, and film editing by Vincent Herman. [2]
In 1999, Master Hands was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". [3] [4] [5]
Jam Session is a 1942 short film, directed by Josef Berne, which shows Duke Ellington and his orchestra performing "C Jam Blues".
The River is a 1938 short documentary film which shows the importance of the Mississippi River to the United States, and how farming and timber practices had caused topsoil to be swept down the river and into the Gulf of Mexico, leading to catastrophic floods and impoverishing farmers. It ends by briefly describing how the Tennessee Valley Authority project was beginning to reverse these problems.
Tulips Shall Grow is a 1942 American animated short film in the Puppetoons series, directed by George Pal and starring Rex Ingram and Victor Jory. It was released by Paramount Pictures and originally photographed in 3-strip Technicolor. It later became the black-and-white edition by National Telefilm Associates.
From Stump to Ship is an amateur industrial film by Alfred K. Ames, former State Senator and owner of the Machias Lumber Company, in Machias, Maine as well as by Dr. Howard Kane of Washington, DC. The half-hour 16mm film was shot over the winter of 1930 in the logging woods and shows logging in the forest with hand tools and horses, then moves to the spring log drive, with loggers using peaveys to break up log jams on icy rivers as the logs are moved from the forest to the mill. Detailed views of mill work, changing the bandsaw, and making shingles. Lumber is loaded onto schooners in Machias for transport to New York. The film was originally silent, with a typed script which Ames read aloud when he showed the film. In 1985, with funds from the Maine Humanities Council, the narration was recorded with the film. The film is distributed by Northeast Historic Film, in Bucksport, Maine. Footage was included in the compilation documentary Woodsmen and River Drivers, Another Day, Another Era which also interviewed the surviving woodsmen of the Machias Lumber Company.
Precious Images is a 1986 short film directed by Chuck Workman. It features approximately 470 half-second-long splices of movie moments through the history of American film. Some of the clips are organized by genre and set to appropriate music; musicals, for example, are accompanied by the title song from Singin' in the Rain. Films featured range chronologically from The Great Train Robbery (1903) to Rocky IV (1985), and range in subject from light comedies to dramas and horror films.
The City is a pioneering short documentary film from 1939 that contrasts the problems of the contemporary urban environment with the superior social and physical conditions that can be provided in a planned community. It was directed and photographed by Ralph Steiner and Willard Van Dyke based on a treatment by Lewis Mumford, which was in turn based on an outline by Pare Lorentz. Aaron Copland wrote the musical score, and Morris Carnovsky provided the narration.
Princess Nicotine; or, The Smoke Fairy is a 1909 five-minute silent film directed by J. Stuart Blackton.
The Prelinger Archives is a collection of films relating to U.S. cultural history, the evolution of the American landscape, everyday life, and social history. It was in New York City from 1982 to 2002 and is now in San Francisco.
Rick Prelinger is an American archivist, writer, and filmmaker. A professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Prelinger is best known as the founder of the Prelinger Archives, a collection of 60,000 advertising, educational, industrial, and amateur films acquired by the Library of Congress in 2002 after 20 years' operation.
Henry Jamison "Jam" Handy was an American Olympic breaststroke swimmer, water polo player, and founder of the Jam Handy Organization (JHO), a producer of commercially sponsored motion pictures, slidefilms, trade shows, industrial theater and multimedia training aids. Credited as the first person to imagine distance learning, Handy made his first film in 1910 and presided over a company that produced an estimated 7,000 motion pictures and perhaps as many as 100,000 slidefilms before it was dissolved in 1983.
Nostalgia, styled (nostalgia), is a 1971 American experimental film by artist Hollis Frampton. It is part of his Hapax Legomena series.
Rose Hobart is a 1936 experimental collage film created by the artist Joseph Cornell, who cut and re-edited the Universal film East of Borneo (1931) into one of America's most famous surrealist short films. Cornell was fascinated by the star of East of Borneo, an actress named Rose Hobart, and named his short film after her. The piece consists of snippets from East of Borneo combined with shots from a documentary film of an eclipse.
A Time for Burning is a 1966 American documentary film that explores the attempts of the minister of Augustana Lutheran Church in Omaha, Nebraska, to persuade his all-white congregation to reach out to "Negro" Lutherans in the city's north side. The film was directed by San Francisco filmmaker William C. Jersey and was nominated for Best Documentary Feature in the 1967 Academy Awards. The film was commissioned by the Lutheran Church in America.
Castro Street (1966) is a visual nonstory documentary film directed by Bruce Baillie.
The Blue Bird is a 1918 American silent fantasy film based upon the 1908 play by Maurice Maeterlinck and directed by Maurice Tourneur in the United States, under the auspices of producer Adolph Zukor. In 2004, this film was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in its National Film Registry.
An orphan film is a motion picture work that has been abandoned by its owner or copyright holder. The term can also sometimes refer to any film that has suffered neglect.
St. Louis Blues is a 1929 American two-reel short film starring Bessie Smith. The early sound film features Smith in an African-American speakeasy of the prohibition era singing the W. C. Handy standard, "St. Louis Blues". Directed by Dudley Murphy, it is the only known film of Bessie Smith, and the soundtrack is her only recording not controlled by Columbia Records.
The Lead Shoes is a 1949 experimental film directed by Sidney Peterson at Workshop 20 at the San Francisco Art Institute. The film was made using distorting lenses. The film is a 17-minute black and white short.
Study of a River is a 1997 experimental film directed by Peter Hutton.
Uncle Tom's Cabin is a 1914 American silent historical drama film directed by William Robert Daly using Vitagraph and starring Sam Lucas, Walter Hitchcock, and Hattie Delaro. It was based upon playwright George L. Aiken's theatrical adaptation of Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1852 novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. It was produced at Fort Lee, New Jersey by the newly founded World Film studio.