Where Would You Film a Spokane Tilt-Shift Video?

You know those tilt-shift, time-lapse videos your friends are always sharing on Facebook? Neat, aren't they? I particularly like this one, filmed in Chicago:



What I love about it, beyond the technique, is how many iconic Chicago landmarks make an appearance. We see Navy Pier, Lakeshore Drive, the L, amd lots of Chicago architecture.

If you were going to make a film like this in Spokane, where would you film it? What places have both iconic imagery that says Spokane, but also some sort of interesting activity and movement that lends itself to this sort of film technique? Off the top of my head, a tilt-shift, time-lapse video of Spokane could include:

• people walking on the footbridge over the upper falls
• the gondolas over the lower falls
• the parking lot at SFCC filling up and emptying out
• kids sledding at Manito Park
• cars skidding on the snow on the South Hill
• trains passing through town, and over Latah Creek
• kayakers at People's Park
• folks crossing the bridge at Bowl and Pitcher
• downtown pedestrian and automobile traffic
• the rides at Riverfront Park
• sunset over Spokane from Palisades Park
• cars going around the curves on the Mount Spokane Road
• cars passing through an espresso stand

What else? And who is to make this film? It sounds like a good class project for some film class at one of the colleges. Get busy, someone!

Nature Girl and the Slaver

I was, I swear, doing academic research about Indians and British survey parties in the 1850s--when I Googled up this arresting image:

Courtesy Mondo 70

Of course, I dropped my academic research like a hot potato to find out more about Nature Girl and the Slaver the Y Drive In, and "untouched nymphet beauty." 

I found the image at a delightful blog: Mondo 70: A Wild World of Cinema. Apparently the advertisement is from 1962, and the film itself is "a 1957 West German jungle picture, a sequel to Liane, Jungle Goddess." Of course. A search for the film title turned up an image of the original color poster:

Avaxhome, the site where I found this poster describes Nature Girl and the Slaver thus:

Nature Girl and the Slaver (1957)
=

This fun and exciting West German-produced sequel to "Liane, Jungle Goddess" has the sexy vine-swinging babe encountering her rich relatives after they come looking for her. But when she is kidnapped by ruthless slave traders, their reunion is short-lived. Can Liane escape? Will she do an erotic dance first? Find out in this thrilling adventure! Marion Michael, Adrian Hoven, Friedrich Joloff star.

Also Known As (AKA):
Jungle Girl and the Slaver - USA
Liana la schiava bianca - Italy
Liane, die weiße Sklavin - Germany

You can even download the film.

What about the Y Drive In? I didn't find out much, except the the drive in theater was on the north side of Spokane near "the Y"--the place where US Routes 2 and 395 diverge. The theater closed in the early 80s and was torn down in 1983. A search through the Spokesman Review shows that the Y Drive In specialized in films like Nature Girl and the Slaver, Games Schoolgirls Play, and Ma and Pa Kettle at Waikiki.

Who says Spokane never had any culture?

Northwest History Films from North of the Border

Voyageurs ,The, National Film Board of Canada

The National Film Board of Canada has hundreds of movies online. You can stream them for free or pay for a download or DVD. The films are both historic and contemporary and cover an array of topics, including history (here is the history page). Above is a 1964 film, The Voyageurs.

There is a lot of northwest content here, with additional films on the fur trade, Red River, and native peoples of the Canadia northwest. Enjoy.

Burton Holmes Archive of 20th Century Travel Films

Check out this charming silent travel film of a 1920-something visit to Glacier National Park:



The film is part of the Burton Holmes Archive:


The Burton Holmes Archive is the world’s largest repository of films, photographs, programs, scrapbooks, and other ephemera related to the life and career of Burton Holmes, the “Father of the Travelogue”, and that of his cameraman and associate, Andre de la Varre.  If you’d like to see more of this collection, take a look at our Photostream, our Photo Sets, or watch a slideshow of the entire collection. In addition, you can watch films made by Holmes at: Burton Holmes Films, as well as those by de la Varre at Andre de la Varre Films.

The above film appears to be the only one from the Northwest, however there is also a film of a 1920s visit to the Grand Canyon (check out the clothes on the tourists!) and such exotic destinations as Bits of Life In Japan 1920s or Nine Glories of Paris - 1920s. The casual racism of some of the captions are striking to the modern eye (the Japanese entertainers are "charmingly childlike") but overall the films are striking and intimate glimpses into the world of 90 years ago.

Briefly Noted

These items seem worthy of further investigation. So get to it and report back here:

• WhatWasThere (see below) is a website (and iPhone app) that allows users to put historical photos on a Google map. It is not all that different than HistoryPin or similar services, but has a superior interface that integrates Google Street View to give you instant "before and after" views. Play with the slider on the image below!

• The Smithsonian lists the "Top Ten Works Lost to Time."

• My local newspaper the Spokesman Review now has a good local history tag. Local history is a staple of many newspapers and the reporting is often quite good, but finding the articles can be a chore. Glad to see this.

• This color promotional film of Berlin in 1936, produced for the Olympics of that year, is haunting. Combine it with this wartime newsreel, Bombing Berlin by Daylight and this post-war film of Berlin in ruins and you have a lesson plan. Or a lesson anyway!

• A single piece of recently-discovered paper in Peru is all that remains of a lost language.

• Big shot academic historian Felipe Fernández-Armesto says historians need to "start biting back" against bad pop history.

So, what are you reading?

A Treasure-Trove of Ephemeral Indian Films

The American Indian Film Gallery is an interesting project. The online collection includes hundreds of films about American Indians, the bulk of them "educational shorts used in American schools from the 1930s to the 1970s." The films are organized by tribe and you can view them online or download them.

These films are archival treasures long buried in obscure vaults, unused and forgotten. But, they are not in perfect. Some were educational shorts used in American schools from the 1930s to the 1970s. Several have abbreviated titles or missing endings. Some are spliced or scratched; others have faded color. But through the mistakes made long ago by schoolroom projectionists, and film stock programmed to lose its coloration, the historical importance of the movies remains compelling. These films are windows into the human past, stunning documents with much to tell us about our New World story.

The native peoples of the Pacific Northwest are well represented in these curious period pieces. Examples:

COEUR D’ALENE

m Coeur D’Alene 1: Cataldo Mission, Indian play drawn from tribal legend

m Coeur D’Alene 2: more of Indian play based on legend

m Coeur D’Alene 3: dancing, more scenes from Indian play

NEZ PERCE

● The Lord’s Prayer: Chief Shatka Bear-Step offers the sacred Christian prayer in Indian sign language

SKOKOMISH   (TWANA)

m Skokomish Fish Processing: inside a tribal industry in Washington state

TLINGIT

w Nathan Jackson: interview in 1976 with world’s most famous totem carver

TSIMSHIAN

● People of the Potlatch: Haida and Tsimshian Indians of the Pacific coast of Canada (1936)

The films range from some fairly racist and exploitive "educational" films from the '30s and '40s to films made by the tribes themselves in the '70s. All are the sort of rare ephemera that can be so historically valuable and yet so hard to find. The site was created and is maintained by a retired history professor, J. Fred MacDonald. Thanks Fred!

A Roundup of Very Early Films of Cities

Check this out--London, 1904:



This is a fragment of a film made by an American, Charles Urban, and was just recently discovered in an Australian archive. I learned about the film from this post on Metafilter. And the great thing about Metafilter is how when someone posts something cool, other members add their own related links in the comments. So courtesy of Metafilter let's take a tour of turn-of-the-last-century cities around the world, through film:


Here is another Charles Urban film, of the Indian holy city of Varanasi. The quality is much lower than that of the London footage:



These reminded me of this 1906 film of San Francisco, taken soon after the earthquake:

(You can also see a film of San Francisco made just months before the earthquake at the Library of Congress.)

If you like these old films the British Film Institute has a generous collection of British films posted at YouTube. The Library of Congress has several excellent collections of very early American films online.

I had hoped to finish off this post with a very early film from the Pacific Northwest, but I have come up blank. If you know of any email me.

Recreating D-Day

How many men do you need to recreate the 60,000 man amphibious landing at Omaha Beach? Why three, of course:



The rapid proliferation of Photoshop and similar programs has led to wealth (or a plague?) of altered historic photographs. How far are we from an equally widespread ability to alter moving images? Somebody is surely working on the Zapruder film right now, putting Hillary on the grassy knoll...

(I also posted this at Metafilter where a good discussion ensued.)