CAVALCANTI / CROCKWELL
Alberto Cavalcanti RIEN QUE LES HEURES / NOTHING BUT THE HOURS 1926, 52 min, 35mm One of the very first "city symphonies," this film interweaves documentary, experimental, and narrative elements that together provide vivid images of Paris in the mid-1920s. The Brazilian-born Cavalcanti was at the time a central figure of the French avant-garde, but his fascinating career would later find him making pioneering documentaries for John Grierson's GPO Film Unit in the UK in the 1930s, dramas, noirs, and musicals for Ealing Studios throughout the 1940s, and finally a wide array of films in Brazil, East Germany, France, and Israel in the years before his death in 1982. Douglass Crockwell GLENS FALLS SEQUENCE (1946, 8 min, 16mm) THE LONG BODIES (1947, 6 min, 16mm) Both films preserved by Anthology Film Archives. "The basic idea was to paint continuing pictures on various layers with plastic paint, adding at times and removing at times, and to a certain extent these early attempts were successful." –Douglass Crockwell