Home Movies (1947)

Professional 16mm. Section Cine GKperiinenter Meet Lewis Jacobs, Explorer In Objective Filming By ROBERT ALLEN HOME MOVIES FOR JANUARY ★ ADVANCES in the art of film making never have appeared full grown. They have developed only after years of experimentation. Many achievements are the results of work by individual experimenters in 1 6mm. who have explored the creative possibilities of film making. Lewis Jacobs is considered one of the foremost American film experimenters. He is, perhaps, more widely known as the author of The Rise of the American Film, the authoritative book on American motion picture history, and as a play and screen writer. Whatever his connections with professional Hollywood productions, he has always kept his hand in 1 6mm. movie making as a means of exploring film art. Originally an artist, Mr. Jacobs' interest in motion pictures in the early '30's led to the building of a studio in Philadelphia for experimenting in motion picture production. Professional 16mm. filming was not too well known in those days and he worked with 3 5mm., building his own dolly, sets, and equipment for special effects. One of the first films he made was based on a story he wrote and which took place in the streets of Philadelphia; it was called Mobile Composition. Then the film was remade without actors and appropriately titled The Story of Mr. Nobody; it was shown in little theatres as a striking and original short. As his interest developed, Lewis Jacobs founded and edited the magazine Experimental Cinema. Though only five issues were published over the years, it remains as the first and only magazine in America devoted to serious experimental film work. The list of contributors — famous directors, writers, artists and critics from all over the world — is endless. Each issue is now a collector's item. anything else attempted in motion pictures, A few years later, Lewis Jacobs experimented again, this time in the "educational" field. He took a typically educational subject — a sculptor carving a head out of wood — and treated it in such a style as to make it as exciting and interesting as any dramatic story film. The three-reeler, Tree Trunk to Head, was shown widely at schools and museums, and several prints were purchased by the Government. An exceptional aspect of this film is that not a single title was used. Indeed, this is characteristic of Mr. Jacobs' film work. He believes that it is the film maker's job to tell the story by means of the screen images. When titles are used, Mr. Jacobs feels that the movie maker has fallen down on his job. In the late '3 0's, he started the first film workshops in America at the Film and Foto League and the New School for Social Research. All branches of film making were studied. The students wrote, photographed, acted, edited, and directed their own films under Mr. Jacobs' supervision. This was supplemented with the screening of classic American and European films and analytical round-table discussions. Lewis Jacobs does not approach movie making with the idea of producing a film in a week or two. As in any creative work, he believes in the necessity for a thoroughly planned script, getting exactly the right "shots," and supplementing these with vary careful editing to achieve the correct tempo, rhythm, meaning, and overall sense of movement. At present, he is working on another experimental movie — Sunday Beach. It is a documentary style film, shot at California's Santa Monica Beach. In this movie he has attempted to explore a largely overlooked phase of film art — description. A writer uses words to describe a beach, a painter oils, a sculptor clay. Lewis Jacobs will film images in the same manner. Therefore he subtitles his latest experiment An Exercise ill Description. With some shooting still to be done, the finished film will run about two reels. His equipment consists of a Filmo 70DA with wide angle, 1 inch, 2 inch, and 3 inch lenses, plus an assortment of filters and an exposure meter. Jacobs, an ardent experimenter, is delighted with the great amount of amateur film work being done in 8mm. and 16mm. today. He hopes to see more serious amateurs strike out for themselves, doing original and experimental films rather than copying Hollywood. For in serious experimentation lies the future of 8mm. and 16mm. film art, as in the professional field. *■ ^ * In 193 0, Jacobs prepared a script and started shooting a motion picture depicting the state of society in the bleak depression days as he saw it. It was titled As I Walk. Unluckily, only one section was completed; this fragment, Footnote to Fact, has been shown to critical film groups and was recently exhibited at the San Francisco Museum of Art. It is a psychological study of a young girl told in the images of what she is thinking about. These images are documentary shots photographed on the streets of New York. The movie structure is based on the flashing of these images through the girl's mind. The number of shots required were enormous and the editing became a great problem; there is hardly a shot over three feet long. The cumulative effect of these flashes plus their content and the girl's actions mount up to an intense dramatic climax unlike • Lewis Jacobs of Los Angeles Is considered one of the foremost of American motion menters," devoiing ills explorations to objective and interpretive picture making with a picture "experi16mm. camera 33