Where Horror Film Began: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

in Film | December 9th, 2010

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In ear­ly 1920, Robert Wiene pre­miered in Berlin his silent film The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari. Ever since, crit­ics have lav­ished praise upon Cali­gari, call­ing it a mod­el of Ger­man expres­sion­ist film, the great­est hor­ror film of ear­ly cin­e­ma, and an impor­tant influ­ence on direc­tors lat­er work­ing in the film noir tra­di­tion. And, what’s more (spoil­er alert), Wiene’s film intro­duced the ‘twist end­ing’ to cin­e­ma. Today, you can watch this ground­break­ing film in its entire­ty above, down­load it from the Inter­net Archive, or find it per­ma­nent­ly list­ed in our ever-grow­ing col­lec­tion of Free Movies. Thanks to Melis­sa for the good find…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Franken­stein Hits the Sil­ver Screen (1910)

How The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari Invent­ed Psy­cho­log­i­cal Hor­ror Film & Brought Expres­sion­ism to the Screen (1920)

From Cali­gari to Hitler: A Look at How Cin­e­ma Laid the Foun­da­tion for Tyran­ny in Weimar Ger­many

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Thought of You: The Film & Behind the Scenes

in Art, Film | December 7th, 2010

Ryan Wood­ward has worked on the art direc­tion of many big name Hol­ly­wood films – Iron­man 2, Spi­der­man 2 & 3, The Iron Giant, the list goes on. But he had an idea for a short ani­mat­ed film, a love sto­ry expressed through dance, and it led to a fruit­ful col­lab­o­ra­tion with dance chore­o­g­ra­ph­er Kori Waka­mat­su. This short, behind-the-scenes film doc­u­ments their artis­tic col­lab­o­ra­tion, reveal­ing every­thing that went into mak­ing Thought of You, the 2D ani­mat­ed film fea­tured above.

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Early Experiments in Color Film (1895–1935)

in Art, Film | November 30th, 2010

Hol­ly­wood did­n’t start pro­duc­ing col­or fea­ture films until the mid 1930s. (Becky Sharp, the first Tech­ni­col­or film from 1935, appears in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.) But exper­i­ments with col­or film­mak­ing start­ed long before that. Ear­li­er this year, Kodak unearthed a test of Kodachrome col­or film from 1922 (above). But then you can trav­el back to 1912, when a film­mak­er test­ed out a Chronochrome process on the beach­es of Nor­mandy. Or how about mov­ing all the way back to 1895? Here we have footage from Thomas Edis­on’s hand-paint­ed film Anabelle’s Dance, which was made for his Kine­to­scope view­ers. For more on the his­to­ry of col­or film, vis­it here.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Tech­ni­col­or Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Cin­e­ma with Sur­re­al, Elec­tric Col­ors & Changed How We See Our World

Col­or Film Was Designed to Take Pic­tures of White Peo­ple, Not Peo­ple of Col­or: The Unfor­tu­nate His­to­ry of Racial Bias in Pho­tog­ra­phy (1940–1990)

Tsarist Rus­sia Comes to Life in Vivid Col­or Pho­tographs Tak­en Cir­ca 1905–1915

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Donald Duck Wants You to Pay Your Taxes (1943)

in Film, History | November 25th, 2010

Dur­ing World War II, some of the great­est liv­ing film­mak­ers put aside their com­mer­cial aspi­ra­tions and direct­ed pro­pa­gan­da films for the Allies. Frank Capra, Alfred Hitch­cock, Howard Hawks, John Ford, John Hus­ton – they all made a cin­e­mat­ic con­tri­bu­tion to the war effort. (More on that here.) And so did Walt Dis­ney, big time. 90% of Dis­ney employ­ees pro­duced pro­pa­gan­da films for the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment, cre­at­ing 68 hours of con­tin­u­ous film, includ­ing this short film for the Trea­sury Depart­ment. The Spir­it of ’43 puts Don­ald Duck in the always unen­vi­able posi­tion of ask­ing Amer­i­cans to pay high tax­es to fund their wars. (Imag­ine doing that today!) Some 26 mil­lion Amer­i­cans viewed the short film, and appar­ent­ly 37% of those inter­viewed in a Gallup poll lat­er admit­ted that the film affect­ed their will­ing­ness to pay Uncle Sam. You can find this Dis­ney film and oth­er wartime pro­pa­gan­da films (among oth­er good­ies) in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Don­ald Duck Dis­cov­ers Glenn Beck: A Remix

Mick­ey Mouse Dis­cov­ers Con­spir­a­cy Against Glenn Beck

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Frankenstein Hits the Silver Screen (1910)

in Film, Literature | November 17th, 2010

100 years ago, J. Sear­le Daw­ley wrote and direct­ed Franken­stein. It took him three days to shoot the short, 12-minute film (when most films were actu­al­ly shot in just one day). It marked the first time that Mary Shel­ley’s lit­er­ary cre­ation was adapt­ed to film. And, some­what notably, Thomas Edi­son had a hand (albeit it an indi­rect one) in mak­ing the film. The first Franken­stein was shot at Edi­son Stu­dios, the pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny owned by the famous inven­tor.

You can down­load the movie at the Inter­net Archive, or find it per­ma­nent­ly list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online. (Also, you can find Mary Shel­ley’s nov­el  in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books.) To get more infor­ma­tion on Daw­ley’s short film, please vis­it The Franken­stein blog.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

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The Physics Behind “Unstoppable”

in Film, Physics | November 16th, 2010

Can they stop the train loaded with haz­ardous chem­i­cals before this “mis­sile the size of the Chrysler Build­ing” hits a pop­u­lat­ed area and “vapor­izes every­thing in front of it?” That’s the big ques­tion that dri­ves along the plot of the new Den­zel Wash­ing­ton thriller, Unstop­pable. If you don’t believe me, just watch the trail­er above. Now we get all aca­d­e­m­ic on you and ask: Is that train real­ly as pow­er­ful as a sky­scraper-sized mis­sile? And then we turn to Emory physics pro­fes­sor Sid­ney Perkowitz for the answer:

Perkowitz is a good per­son to size things up. He’s not just any physics pro­fes­sor. This physics prof wrote the book Hol­ly­wood Sci­ence: Movies, Sci­ence and the End of the World and he sits on the advi­so­ry board of the Sci­ence and Enter­tain­ment Exchange, a Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences pro­gram that tries to bring more sci­en­tif­ic accu­ra­cy to mass mar­ket enter­tain­ment. Thanks Stephen for the good tip here …

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Evidence, Godfrey Reggio’s Short Film on What TV Does to Kids’ Brains

in Film, Television | November 16th, 2010

Between 1982 and 2002, direc­tor God­frey Reg­gio shot his well known Qat­si tril­o­gy — Koy­aanisqat­si, Powaqqat­si, and Naqoyqat­si. Some­where between the 2nd and 3rd install­ment, Reg­gio took a lit­tle detour and direct­ed a short eight minute film called Evi­dence. The main char­ac­ters? Kids watch­ing car­toons (Dum­bo, actu­al­ly) and look­ing “drugged,” “like the patients of a men­tal hos­pi­tal,” he writes on his web site.

The vil­lain? “Tele­vi­sion tech­nol­o­gy,” which “is eat­ing the sub­jects who sit before its gaze.” The weapon? Tele­vi­sion again. That “radi­a­tion gun aimed at the view­er” “holds its sub­jects in total con­trol.” A lit­tle house of hor­rors, to be sure. We have added Koy­aanisqat­si (fea­tur­ing the music of Philip Glass) and Evi­dence to our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

via @katciz, the direc­tor of the new inter­ac­tive film Out My Win­dow.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

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Out My Window: An Interactive Documentary

in Film, Life, Web/Tech | November 11th, 2010

Out My Win­dow — it’s a new inter­ac­tive doc­u­men­tary, a film unlike any you have seen before. Kate­ri­na Cizek, the direc­tor, put it togeth­er over the course of years, and the award-win­ning film uses its nov­el approach to explore life, as it goes on, with­in high­ris­es — the most com­mon­ly built struc­tures dur­ing the past cen­tu­ry. Cre­at­ed with 360º video and high end web tech­nol­o­gy, Out My Win­dow brings you to 13 dif­fer­ent loca­tions across the globe, mov­ing from Chica­go to São Paulo, to Ban­ga­lore and Johan­nes­burg. And the sto­ry does­n’t unfold lin­ear­ly. You choose where and when you want the sto­ries (49 in total) to begin and end. The film is bet­ter expe­ri­enced than described. So my rec­om­men­da­tion: Watch the trail­er, or just jump into the inter­ac­tive doc­u­men­tary and see for your­self.

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