Newsreel footage of the 6 May 1937 Hindenburg disaster, where the zeppelin LZ 129 Hindenburg crashed and burned down, was filmed by several companies.
Republic Steel Strike Riot Newsreel Footage is a 1937 newsreel of the strike at Republic Steel on Memorial Day, May 30, 1937, which escalated into a massacre when Chicago police fired on protestors. Ten protesters were killed by the police and thirty others suffered gunshot wounds. The police also used clubs and tear gas on the protesters. The film was produced by Paramount Pictures for their Paramount News series. In 1997, the film was deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. The footage contained in the newsreel was illegally banned from being shown in Chicago by the Chicago Police Department for fear of causing unrest, and later the Paramount News company agreed to refrain from screening it elsewhere. The editor of Paramount News described the footage as "not fit to be seen," and that allowing the public to view it in its entirety could "incite local riot." However, clips from the footage were edited and released as a newsreel that framed the strikers as a violent mob.
A newsreel is a form of short documentary film, containing news stories and items of topical interest, that was prevalent between the 1910s and the mid 1970s. Typically presented in a cinema, newsreels were a source of current affairs, information, and entertainment for millions of moviegoers. Newsreels were typically exhibited preceding a feature film, but there were also dedicated newsreel theaters in many major cities in the 1930s and ’40s, and some large city cinemas also included a smaller theaterette where newsreels were screened continuously throughout the day.
Stanley Cortez, A.S.C. was an American cinematographer. The younger brother of actor and director Ricardo Cortez, Stanley worked on over 70 films, including Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), Charles Laughton's The Night of the Hunter (1955), Nunnally Johnson's The Three Faces of Eve (1957), and Samuel Fuller's Shock Corridor (1963) and The Naked Kiss (1964).
Pathé or Pathé Frères is the name of various French businesses that were founded and originally run by the Pathé Brothers of France starting in 1896. In the early 1900s, Pathé became the world's largest film equipment and production company, as well as a major producer of phonograph records. In 1908, Pathé invented the newsreel that was shown in cinemas before a feature film.
Actuality film is a non-fiction film genre that, like documentary film, uses footage of real events, places, and things. Unlike documentaries, actuality films are not structured into a larger narrative or coherent whole. In practice, actuality films preceded the emergence of the documentary. During the era of early cinema, actualities—usually lasting no more than a minute or two and usually assembled together into a program by an exhibitor—were just as popular and prominent as their fictional counterparts. The line between "fact" and "fiction" was not as sharply drawn in early cinema as it would be after documentaries came to serve as the predominant non-fiction filmmaking form. Actuality is a film genre that remains strongly related to still photography.
Castle Films was a film company founded in California by former newsreel cameraman Eugene W. Castle (1897–1960) in 1924. Originally, Castle Films produced industrial and advertising films. Then in 1937, the company pioneered the production and distribution of 8mm and 16mm films for home projection. It became a subsidiary of Universal Pictures and was eventually renamed Universal 8 from 1977 before folding in the early 1980s due to competition from home video.
Pathé News was a producer of newsreels and documentaries from 1910 to 1970 in the United Kingdom. Its founder, Charles Pathé, was a pioneer of moving pictures in the silent era. The Pathé News archive is known today as British Pathé. Its collection of news film and movies is fully digitised and available online.
Robert Youngson was a film producer, director, and screenwriter, specializing in reviving antique silent films.
Universal Newsreel was a series of 7- to 10-minute newsreels that were released twice a week between 1929 and 1967 by Universal Studios. A Universal publicity official, Sam B. Jacobson, was involved in originating and producing the newsreels. Nearly all of them were filmed in black-and-white, and many were narrated by Ed Herlihy. From January 1919 to July 1929, Universal released International Newsreel, produced by Hearst's International News Service—this series later became Hearst Metrotone News released first by Fox Film Corporation 1929–1934 and then by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer beginning in 1934.
Look at Life was a regular British series of short documentary films of which over 500 were produced between 1959 and 1969 by the Special Features Division of the Rank Organisation for screening in their Odeon and Gaumont cinemas. The films always preceded the main feature film that was being shown in the cinema that week. It replaced the circuit's newsreel, Universal News, which had become increasingly irrelevant in the face of more immediate news media, particularly on television with the launch of ITN on the Independent Television service, which began broadcasting in parts of the United Kingdom in 1955.
Hindenburg: The Untold Story known in Germany as Das Geheimnis der Hindenburg and Die Hindenburg: die ungeklärte Katastrophe, is a two-hour docudrama about the disaster of the Hindenburg, and the investigation that followed. It aired on May 6, 2007, to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the disaster. It was commissioned by Channel 4, ZDF, and the Smithsonian Networks to be produced by Pioneer Productions and has also aired on Discovery Channel Canada. Its original working title was Hindenburg and is also known as Hindenburg: Titanic of the skies. The British version is narrated by Malcolm Tierney who plays the role of Hugo Eckener, while John Shrapnel narrates an alternative version which features interviews with survivors.
Hearst Metrotone News was a newsreel series (1914–1967) produced by the Hearst Corporation, founded by William Randolph Hearst.
Charles E. Ford was a newsreel and film producer and the director of Frank Buck's jungle movie Jacaré (1942).
Ira Harry Morgan was an American cinematographer. He successfully transitioned from silent movies to sound films. He filmed famed animal-trainer Frank Buck’s film Tiger Fangs (1943).
The Sports Parade was a short film series of Warner Bros. that was regularly shown before the main studio feature, along with another Warner-Vitaphone short, Joe McDoakes comedy and/or Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons. The average running time of each film was between nine and eleven minutes.
The Golden Twenties is a 1950 American documentary film, which used footage from the March of Time newsreels. It is the only film credited to Time Inc., although their newsreel division, the March of Time, produced four films, and this film was produced by the March of Time producer, Richard de Rochemont. While composed of existing footage, the film was narrated by five different people: Frederick Lewis Allen, Robert Q. Lewis, Allen Prescott, Red Barber, and Elmer Davis.
Andrew Noren was an American avant-garde filmmaker.
