In the thread on cop media from a couple of days ago, a few people in comments mentioned how cops in early films were not portrayed as heroes, but rather were often bumbling idiots. This reminded me o
Tonight’s film is a treat. Oscar Micheaux’s 1919 film Within Our Gates is the earliest surviving film by an African-American director. This version does not have sound, but honestly, if yo
I don’t really know where this is from, but this is a 2 minute clip on yellow fever prevention in Colombia, sometime in the 70s. Spray those chemicals! It’s an interesting sort of document
So….tonight’s entry is perhaps a bit disturbing. Basically, in the 1940s, General Motors made a bunch of short films concerning animals doing funny things. I’m not real sure where th
On the Criterion Channel right now, you can watch a series of films by and about women. Called “Tell Me: Women Filmmakers, Women’s Stories,” it’s around 25 films, mostly but no
As a labor historian and scholar of the timber industry, I’m fascinated with the self-documentation of work and especially logging. This is an edited version of The Incredible Forest, a document
I rewatched Anatomy of a Murder the other night. It’s such a great film. Otto Preminger directed it and managed to get into difficult topics so directly that it feels like a film from twenty yea
The first presidential speech with synchronous sound was this address by Calvin Coolidge in 1924. It is astounding how boring this is. Now, if you had told me that a Calvin Coolidge speech would be bo