Must-see film: Powers of Ten now viewable online

This is a really cool film that illustrates the size of the universe in powers of ten – starting with a couple having a picnic in Chicago zooming out to 100 million lightyears away – and then all the way back in to the man’s hand and on down to a single proton, .000001 angstroms. […]

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Cold War Classic – Duck and Cover (1951) on Google Video

This 9 minute film was made by the U.S. Federal Civil Defense Administration to instruct children on how to react when an atomic bomb was detonated nearby. The film was used extensively in Kevin Rafferty’s Atomic Cafe (1982, DVD 536), a documentary surveying the U.S. government’s propaganda promoting the atomic bomb. link

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Max Schreck is just a click away

Yes, given that F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922) is now in the public domain, Google video is hosting a digital copy. For those who may not know about this film, it is the first popular telling of the Dracula story on film. Though a silent film, its haunting gothic imagery and the other-worldly creepiness of […]

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2006 Sundance Shorts – 47 titles available online

The online collection though extensive represents just a sample of the entries and includes just a couple of the prize-winners. The Jury Prize in Short Filmmaking ended in a tie between BUGCRUSH, directed by Carter Smith and THE WRAITH OF COBBLE HILL (video unavailable online), directed by Adam Parrish King. The Jury Prize in International […]

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CIA Films at the National Archives

The CIA, like many other government agencies, declassifies documents (including films) occassionally and relocates them to the National Archives. Freedom-of-Information-Act sleuth Michael Ravnitsky was able to obtain the list of CIA films currently in the Archives. It contains many, many titles with historical import such as Brainwashing, How Free Should the Press be?, Psychology of […]

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The J Marimba Ponies

I couldn’t resist noting this guilty pleasure – my favorite piece of streaming video from the last couple of weeks. The Ponies perform the Sabre Dance. For those old enough to remember, this piece of music, composed by Aram Khachaturian, was used on the Ed Sullivan show to accompany spinning plate acts and more recently […]

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