Documentary Footage From the National Film Registry Available at the Knox Co. Public Library

In Movies & TV, Shelf Life by Chris Barrettleave a COMMENT

The National Film Registry was created in 1989 as a tool for the Library of Congress to preserve and increase awareness of America’s rich legacy of moving images. Currently, prints of more than 650 films are being conserved—from Citizen Kane and Night of the Hunter to a silent home movie of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge buckling before it collapsed. Next time you’re in Washington, D.C., you can make an appointment to screen any film from the registry. Or, if you have a Knox County Public Library card, you can view most of them in the comfort of your own home. Here are a few titles newly available on DVD.

From Stump to Ship
Lumberman Alfred Ames shot this footage in 1930. He would present it to customers and interested others while he held forth first-hand insights of these scenes from Maine logging camps. (Originally silent, the DVD version features Maine humorist Tim Samples reading from Ames’ script.) Ames’ photography is surprisingly good—well-composed and steady—as he captures this bygone way of life. These men swung steadily back and forth between daredevilry, running over pell-mell logs that are both spinning and speeding toward rapids, and the comfort of one of the four quite impressive home-cooked meals served daily.

They Call It Pro Football
Speaking of a bygone way of life, this brilliant time capsule—the first production from NFL Films—presents pro football as innocent competition, the players as human instead of superhuman, and fans as invested participants instead of passive consumers. Steve Sabol wrote and produced the film in 1966, and it took him two years to persuade a network to give him a time slot. It was the first time many football fans had seen close-ups of their idols on the field or their peers in the stands, and it was the first time they could hear and understand what coaches, referees, and players were saying to each other. It defined the aesthetic for all video sports coverage that followed it. Curiously, it’s surprising how the 4-by-3 aspect ratio favors this action. Your brain doesn’t want to see the entire HD panorama. It wants to see the play, and only the two or three people executing it.

D-Day to Berlin
George Stevens directed Shane, Giant, and dozens of other Hollywood blockbusters. During World War II he served in the U.S. Army’s Signal Corps, under Eisenhower, and directed a film unit. That unit returned to the States with the only color footage of the war shot by the Allies. His scenes from the Duben and Dachau camps were presented as evidence during the Nuremberg trials. The pained, posed smiles of the liberated French are heartbreaking. It’s clear to them that a world has been lost. Even the daily tedium of the Allied soldiers is gripping, and exhausting to watch. Taking off from or landing on a pasture airstrip, improvised in the gorgeous French countryside, was apparently as likely to end a pilot’s life as the dogfighting in between.

Chris Barrett's Shelf Life alerts readers to new arrivals at the Lawson McGhee Library's stellar Sights and Sounds collection, along with recommendations and reminders of staples worthy of revisiting. He is a former Metro Pulse staff writer who’s now a senior assistant at the Knox County Public Library.

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