Documentary News Letter (1944-1945)

42 DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER PRODUCERS OF DOCUMENTARY EDUCATIONAL AND INSTRUCTIONAL FILMS REALIST FILM UNIT LIMITED 9 GREAT CHAPEL STREET, W.I Telephone: GERrard 1958-9 KAY'S KAY'S Laboratories Film Studios Technical Managers Studio Manager Erie Van Baars FINSRURY PARK, N.4 72a CARLTON HILL A. E. Newton ST. JOHN'S WOOD 22 SOHO SQUARE, W.l N.W.8 E. W. Stimson Tel. Maida I 'ale 1141 R.C.A. (PM 45) Record INDIA STREET, GLASGOW ing Equipment, Commen Tel. Glasgow Central 9377 taries, Dubbing, Band A. |. Furness Sessions, etc., on both 35 55 nun cS: Sub-standard mm. and 16 mm. Processing Film Strips Produced THE CINEASTES (Continued from page 40) Germaine Dulac, Man Ray, Marc Allegret — all working for Studio-Film which released my pictures in Europe. The most remarkable StudioFilm I saw in Paris was Claude Autant-Lara's Construire Un Feu. This was taken with a distorting lens, the Hypergonar. By means of this lens images were stretched and many packed side by side on normal stock. The film was shown with the same distorting lens, which had been used to photograph the picture, in front of the projector, and this restored the images to their original shape. The whole wall of the theatre was needed to take the spread of the images which had been packed on to the stock by means of the Hypergonar. In the centre of the wall one saw a man, at one side his thoughts, at the other some approaching danger, etc. Now one picture dominated, now another; at one time the wall was full of many little images, at another it was taken up by one titanic close up. It was two years after the picture was made before a cinema manager was found bold enough to show it. And Paris, of course, meant the cinema surrealists. In Paris I met Louis Bunuel who made a film which shattered even the cineastes. One has often thought how foolish many directors are to open their films with such a bang. Nine times out of nine and a half, the film can't live up to the punch opening. The Bunuel film opened with a close up of an eye, filling the screen. This close up was taken in a slaughter house. The eye was slashed across by a razor. It would have been unbearable if the film had lived up to that. Thank God it flopped to a mere dead donkey in a grand piano and ants crawling out of a man*s mouth while he made love. But that opening close up of the slashed eye! I have only seen one thing in cinema to match it, and that was an accident. This happened in a commercial motor-racing film with Eve Grey and John Stuart. One of the cars jumped the track. Baron Ventimiglia, the chief cameraman, rushed to the scene of disaster. He carried his hand camera (so useful for following shots) and forgot to switch off the mechanism. When the rushes were projected in the studio theatre, we saw with horror a record, taken by the hand camera on its own, of the injured extras dying. Bunuel's film helped to attract artists to the cineaste movement. One of the most remarkable artists in London, who associated herself with cinema, was Mabel Lapthorn. Mabel's favourite toy was a cup with a speaking tube attached and a taut membrane stretched over the mouth. She sprinkled sand on the membrane, and sang into the tube. The sand formed vibration patterns. The patterns (which were abstractions of synthesis and not analysis) Mabel would impose on the posters she did for advanced films. So much went on in her posters, in the different folds of the pattern, it was hardly necessary to go in and see the film. Encouraged by her success, Mabel started a campaign to try to persuade cinema managers to break the white beam of the projector with soft coloured lights striking back from the stage to the auditorium. "I'm not self complacent," said Mabel Lapthorn, "I'm self contained." The last international gesture of the cineastes, before the talkies took over, was a Congress in Brussels. Everyone tried to keep up morale and pretend he was as busy as a touring