Part of Spring/Summer 1997
Pleasure Dome is pleased to have Rick Prelinger return to Toronto to present two evenings of ephemeral films from the renowned Prelinger Archives (New York).
Busy Bodies
Friday, June 20, 7 & 10 pm
‘Two wildly different strands of opinion characterize twentieth-century
attitudes towards sexual expression. The first and prohibitionist strand
has little tolerance for ambiguity of any kind: sexuality is about
procreation, not pleasure; sexual activity outside of conventional
heterosexual marriage is forbidden; punishments await the deviant. The
second, more libertarian thread supports freer inquiry on the part of
children; pleasure with responsibility; and foregrounds self-respect rather
than a rigid set of rules.
The films in this program recall the different polarities of thinking about
sexuality in the middle of the 20th century. Perversion For Profit (’64-65), a classic of the anti-pornography genre, was funded by rogue savings and loan executive Charles Keating. Boys Beware (’61) is an anti-homosexual film for boys; Girls Beware (’61) heaps punishments on sexually aggressive girls. How Much Affection (’58), filmed in Ontario, discusses how far to pet. Finally, As Boys Grow (’57) and Molly Grows Up (’54) demonstrate the difference between sex education films for boys (which emphasize pleasure) and for girls (which teach adjustment and endurance).’
Notes:
Busy Bodies:
Perversion For Profit (Citizens for Decent Literature, 31 min., ca. 1964-65)
Boys Beware (Sid Davis Productions, 10 min., 1961)
Girls Beware (Sid Davis Productions, 10 min., 1961)
How Much Affection (Crawley Films Ltd., 16 min., 1958)
As Boys Grow (Medical Arts Productions, 16 min., 1957)
Molly Grows Up (Medical Arts Productions, 16 min., 1954)
“Two wildly different strands of opinion characterize twentieth-century attitudes towards sexual expression. The first and prohibitionist strand has little tolerance for ambiguity of any kind: sexuality is about procreation, not pleasure; sexual activity outside of conventional heterosexual marriage is forbidden; punishments await the deviant. The second, more libertarian thread supports freer inquiry on the part of children; pleasure with responsibility; and foregrounds self-respect rather than a rigid set of rules.
The films in this program recall the different polarities of thinking about sexuality in the middle of the 20th century. Perversion For Profit, a classic of the anti-pornography genre, was funded by rogue savings and loan executive Charles Keating. Boys Beware is an anti-homosexual film for boys; Girls Beware heaps punishments on sexually aggressive girls. How Much Affection, filmed in Ontario, discusses how far to pet. Molly Grows Up demonstrate the difference between sex education films for boys (which emphasize pleasure) and for girls (which teach adjustment and endurance).” Rick Prelinger
Home Movies: The Most Ephemeral Films of All
Saturday, June 21
‘Although home movies are the most prevalent form of cinema, they’re also the least understood and most endangered films. Exploring landscape, tourism, leisure, abnormal psychologies of the family, and anthropologies of daily life, amateur films are banal and poetic, pedestrian and visionary, slick and naive at the same time.
This program collects amateur films of special interest (1920s Ñ1960s), most of which have not been projected outside of the families in which they were produced. The main focuses of the program will be to use home movies as pointers to unexpressed, unconscious social and cultural issues, and to focus on the value of ephemeral culture in understanding untold stories.’ (Rick Prelinger)
Notes:
Home Movies: The Most Ephemeral Films of All
16mm Films:
INTRODUCING THE LEVYS (ca. 1937, 3 min., Kodachrome)
At their Florida home, the Levys and friends express mutual, undying affection.
POLAR RITUALS (dated 1931, 11 min., B&W)
Six years earlier, the Levys travel to Iceland and Norway. Ancient
initiation rites are reenacted as their ship sails past the Arctic Circle, and indigenous Lapp people become involuntary hosts of pleasure-seekers from the South.
AT HOME WITH BILL (ca. 1928, 9 min., B&W)
A beautifully shot record of the life and activities of a comfortable
pre-Depression family, centering on their son Bill.
FARM FUN (ca. 1937-41, 8 min., Kodachrome)
An unusual visit to a rural family, probably located in Kansas.
PEG’S EASTER PARTY FOR KIDS (ca. 1956, 6 min., Kodachrome)
Peg throws a party for the children, but must observe the fun and games from a distance.
(3/4″ videotape transfers from film)
MINNESOTA, LOUISIANA AND FLORIDA, 1941 (1941, 10 min., Kodachrome)
From the dismal winter streets of Rochester, Minnesota, the Levys travel to New Orleans, where a pipe-smoking African American woman dances for their camera. They inspect public works constructed during the governorship of Huey P. Long. Finally, the Levys (manufacturers of the well-known Levy’s Jewish Rye Bread) feed seagulls on the beach, and flying birds and crusts fill the screen.
“DONNOLA” HOME MOVIES (ca. 1930s, 5 min. excerpt, B&W)
A white family and their African American domestic workers play different roles at a family gathering, at home in Little Rock, Arkansas.
IVAN BESSE FILMS (ca. 1938-39, 30 min, excerpt, B&W)
Ivan Besse managed, and later owned, the Strand Theater in Britton, South Dakota, a market town of some 2,000 people in the northeastern corner of the state. Finding that business was slow on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, he took his camera outside to Main Street and shot films of his neighbors promenading down the street, participating in local ceremonies, and pursuing the details of their daily lives. After the films came back from the lab in Chicago, he showed them intact on slow nights, before the feature started. The150 min. of Ivan’s films form a remarkable record of daily life in Britton and also document a complex relationship between the shooter and those that he shot. In 1991, I brought these films back to Britton for a screening at the Strand, which Ivan narrated.
and, as a bonus:
ST. PAUL POLICE DETECTIVES AND THEIR WORK (ca. 1941, 9 min., Kodachrome)
Little has been written about the nebulous region where amateur filmmaking and sponsorship intersect. This film, obviously the work of an amateur stop-motion animator, combines delightfully naive representational styles with little anticrime morality tales. Nothing is known about the person or persons who made it.
Rick Prelinger