Watch 85,000 Historic Newsreel Films from British Pathé Free Online (1910–2008)

in Film, History | March 11th, 2020

The “piv­ot-to-video” moment of a few years back dev­as­tat­ed writ­ers every­where with mass lay­offs as com­pa­nies scram­bled to attract pro­ject­ed mil­lions of nonex­is­tent view­ers. It’s a sto­ry about preda­to­ry media monop­o­lies and the pro­lif­er­a­tion of news, doc­u­men­tary, and opin­ion video con­tent online. While the sheer amount of video can feel over­whelm­ing, we might remem­ber that peo­ple have been get­ting their news from screens for well over a hun­dred years.

First came the news­reels. Thou­sands were pro­duced from the end of the 19th cen­tu­ry into the 1960s, when TV became the dom­i­nant screen of choice. These were ephemer­al, often frag­men­tary films, not usu­al­ly pre­served in the way of great cin­e­ma.

But while “the news­reel may be his­to­ry,” notes the Nation­al Endow­ment for the Human­i­ties, “vast col­lec­tions of it remain, much of it unseen.” One such col­lec­tion resides at the archives of British Pathé, “a trea­sure trove of 85,000 films unri­valed in their his­tor­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance.”

British Pathé has dig­i­tized their col­lec­tion and made all of it—including more than 136,000 items from the Reuters his­tor­i­cal collection—freely avail­able online at their web­site and on YouTube. You’ll find there exact­ly the kind of vari­ety Richard Eder described in The New York Times in 1977, a year when peo­ple also felt “flood­ed” by news:

Most of the time [news­reels] were patchy views of a rather scat­ter­brained real­i­ty. Sneez­ing con­tests would alter­nate with politi­cians cut­ting rib­bons and South Amer­i­cans rioting.But once in a while there was some­thing unfor­get­table: the Hin­den­burg float­ed lofti­ly into sight and sud­den­ly set­tled on the ground like burn­ing tin­sel; a mid­dle-aged French­man wept at Toulon when the fleet was scut­tled. The news­reel cam­eras and the big screen pro­vid­ed an author­i­ty to these things that tele­vi­sion equip­ment could­n’t man­age. Also there was the effect of wait­ing a day or two to see a dis­as­ter you had read of. World events were dis­crete, indi­vid­ual, weighty. They did not flood us.

British Pathé pro­duced short doc­u­men­tary films on every pos­si­ble sub­ject around the world from 1910 to 2008 and might lay claim to cap­tur­ing more unfor­get­table his­tor­i­cal moments than most any oth­er news­reel ser­vice of the era. A tiny sam­pling of news­reels in their mas­sive dig­i­tal archive includes the Beat­nik makeover from 1963 at the top; a very brief film on Tol­stoy; a longer fea­turette on the Titan­ic, with inter­views from sur­vivors; and a short on the psy­che­del­ic Mel­lotron.

Among the many “British Pathé Unis­sued” videos, we find the filmed inter­view clip below with H.G. Wells in the 1930s, in which he pro­pos­es dis­ar­ma­ment, inter­na­tion­al coop­er­a­tion, full pub­lic employ­ment, and the nation­al­iza­tion of indus­try as anti­dotes to the ris­ing tides of World War and dev­as­tat­ing social inequal­i­ty. The inter­view was “unused by Pathé edi­tors and not screened in cin­e­mas,” explains a title added at the begin­ning. One sig­nif­i­cant shift from the news­reel to the dig­i­tal age is the unprece­dent­ed abil­i­ty to bypass the cen­sors.

“Before tele­vi­sion” and the inter­net, as the archive descrip­tion points out, “peo­ple came to movie the­atres to watch the news. British Pathé was at the fore­front of cin­e­mat­ic jour­nal­ism, blend­ing infor­ma­tion with enter­tain­ment to pop­u­lar effect.” If this blend sounds some­what akin to the mass media world we inhab­it today—one filled with pro­lif­er­at­ing video explain­ers, short doc­u­men­taries, talk­ing head con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists and every oth­er pos­si­ble use of the form—perhaps it’s use­ful to remem­ber that we’ve been liv­ing in that world a very long time. It has pro­duced many thou­sands of arti­facts that can tell us where we’ve been over the past 120 years or so, if not quite how we got to where we are now.

Enter the British Pathé col­lec­tion on YouTube or their web­site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,000,000 Min­utes of News­reel Footage by AP & British Movi­etone Released on YouTube

Down­load 6600 Free Films from The Prelinger Archives and Use Them How­ev­er You Like

A Trip Through New York City in 1911: Vin­tage Video of NYC Gets Col­orized & Revived with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Watch Scenes from Czarist Moscow Vividly Restored with Artificial Intelligence (May 1896)

in Film, History | March 10th, 2020

In May of 1896, Charles Mois­son and Fran­cis Dou­bli­er trav­eled to Moscow on behalf of the Lumière Broth­ers com­pa­ny, bear­ing with them the new­ly devel­oped Lumière Ciné­mato­gaphe cam­era. Their pur­pose: to doc­u­ment the coro­na­tion of Tsar Nicholas II—the last Emper­or of Rus­sia, though no one would have known that at the time. The coro­na­tion was an extra­or­di­nary event, soon to be over­shad­owed by even more extra­or­di­nary events in the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary years to come. An enor­mous cel­e­bra­tion fol­lowed, with gifts, bread, sausage, pret­zels, beer, and a com­mem­o­ra­tive cup to rev­el­ers. The promise of these gifts led to what was lat­er called the Kho­dyn­ka Tragedy.

Hun­dreds of thou­sands descend­ed on the city. Rumors that food was run­ning short—and that the cups con­tained a gold coin—sent crowds rush­ing for the Kho­dyn­ka Field. Over­com­ing 1,800 police offi­cers, they caused a stam­pede that killed 1,389. That evening, Nicholas and the Empress Alexan­dra attend­ed a ball, then vis­it­ed wound­ed in the hos­pi­tal the fol­low­ing day. One of the Tsar’s valets, Alex­ei Volkov, who sur­vived the Rev­o­lu­tion and lived to write his mem­oirs, described walk­ing “along the Khondin­ka” and meet­ing “many groups of peo­ple com­ing back from that site and car­ry­ing the Tsar’s gifts. The strange thing, though, was that not one per­son men­tioned the cat­a­stro­phe, and I did not hear about it until the next morn­ing.”

The stam­pede seems a tes­ta­ment to the pover­ty and des­per­a­tion among ordi­nary Rus­sians at the end of the 19th cen­tu­ry. That his­to­ry does not enter the frame in the minute of footage shot by Mois­son and Dou­bli­er, which you can see recre­at­ed above in stun­ning detail—with both col­or added and in orig­i­nal black and white—by Denis Shiryaev. The footage is sim­ply dat­ed May 1896 and might have been shot either before or after the coro­na­tion. As Peter Jack­son has done with footage from WWI in the fea­ture-length doc­u­men­tary They Shall Not Grow Old, Shiryaev makes the grainy, blur­ry past come alive with the help of an “ensem­ble of neur­al net­works,” as he writes on the video’s YouTube page.

The enhance­ments to the video trans­fer of the orig­i­nal film include:

1) FPS boost­ing – to 60 frames per sec­ond

2) Image res­o­lu­tion boost­ed up a bit with ESRGAN (gen­er­al dataset)

3) Resort­ed video sharp­ness, removed blur, removed com­pres­sion “arte­facts”

4) Col­orized (option­al) – due to high request I have decid­ed to include both ver­sions of the processed video: col­orized and black and white.

Boost­ing the frame rate to 60 fps espe­cial­ly gives these bustling and/or saun­ter­ing Moscow denizens of Tver­skaya Street a life­like appear­ance. (See here for a com­par­i­son of var­i­ous frame rates). Whether you pre­fer col­or or black and white, it may be easy to imag­ine strolling down this cob­ble­stone avenue your­self, dodg­ing the dozens of horse drawn car­riages pass­ing by.

It may be hard­er to imag­ine that per­haps days or hours before or after this slice of Moscow city life, the last tsar of Rus­sia was crowned, and a crowd of some­where around half a mil­lion peo­ple rushed through the streets for a glass of beer and a free bite to eat. See more of Shiryaev’s AI-assist­ed film restora­tions at the links below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Scenes from Belle Époque Paris Vivid­ly Restored with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (Cir­ca 1890)

Icon­ic Film from 1896 Restored with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: Watch an AI-Upscaled Ver­sion of the Lumière Broth­ers’ The Arrival of a Train at La Cio­tat Sta­tion

A Trip Through New York City in 1911: Vin­tage Video of NYC Gets Col­orized & Revived with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

How Peter Jack­son Made His State-of-the-Art World War I Doc­u­men­tary, They Shall Not Grow Old: An Inside Look

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 4 ) |

Paris Had a Moving Sidewalk in 1900, and a Thomas Edison Film Captured It in Action

in History, Technology | March 9th, 2020

It’s fair to say that few of us now mar­vel at mov­ing walk­ways, those stan­dard infra­struc­tur­al ele­ments of such util­i­tar­i­an spaces as air­port ter­mi­nals, sub­way sta­tions, and big-box stores. But there was a time when they astound­ed even res­i­dents of one of the most cos­mopoli­tan cities in the world. The inno­va­tion of the mov­ing side­walk demon­strat­ed at the Paris Expo­si­tion of 1900 (pre­vi­ous­ly seen here on Open Cul­ture when we fea­tured Lumière Broth­ers footage of that peri­od) com­mand­ed even Thomas Edis­on’s atten­tion. As Pale­o­fu­ture’s Matt Novak tells it at Smith­son­ian mag­a­zine, “Thomas Edi­son sent one of his pro­duc­ers, James Hen­ry White, to the Expo­si­tion and Mr. White shot at least 16 movies,” a clip of which footage you can see above.

White “had brought along a new pan­ning-head tri­pod that gave his films a new­found sense of free­dom and flow. Watch­ing the film, you can see chil­dren jump­ing into frame and even a man doff­ing his cap to the cam­era, pos­si­bly aware that he was being cap­tured by an excit­ing new tech­nol­o­gy while a fun nov­el­ty of the future chugs along under his feet.”

Novak also includes hand-col­ored pho­tographs from the Paris Exhi­bi­tion and quotes a New York Observ­er cor­re­spon­dent describ­ing the mov­ing side­walk as a “nov­el­ty” con­sist­ing of “three ele­vat­ed plat­forms, the first being sta­tion­ary, the sec­ond mov­ing at a mod­er­ate rate of speed, and the third at the rate of about six miles an hour.” Thus “the cir­cuit of the Expo­si­tion can be made with rapid­i­ty and ease by this con­trivance. It also affords a good deal of fun, for most of the vis­i­tors are unfa­mil­iar with this mode of tran­sit, and are awk­ward in its use.”

Novak fea­tures con­tem­po­rary images of the Paris Exhi­bi­tion’s mov­ing side­walk at Pale­o­fu­ture, found in the book Paris Expo­si­tion Repro­duced From the Offi­cial Pho­tographs. Its authors describe the trot­toir roulant as “a detached struc­ture like a rail­way train, arriv­ing at and pass­ing cer­tain points at stat­ed times” with­out a break. “In engi­neers’ lan­guage, it is an ‘end­less floor’ raised thir­ty feet above the lev­el of the ground, ever and ever glid­ing along the four sides of the square — a wood­en ser­pent with its tail in its mouth.” But the his­to­ry of the mov­ing walk­way did­n’t start in Paris: “In 1871 inven­tor Alfred Speer patent­ed a sys­tem of mov­ing side­walks that he thought would rev­o­lu­tion­ize pedes­tri­an trav­el in New York City,” as Novak notes, and the first one actu­al­ly built was built for Chicago’s 1893 Columbian Expo­si­tion — but it cost a nick­el to ride and “was unde­pend­able and prone to break­ing down,” mak­ing Paris’ ver­sion the more impres­sive spec­ta­cle.

Still, the Columbian Expo­si­tion’s vis­i­tors must have got a kick out of glid­ing down the pier with­out hav­ing to do the walk­ing them­selves. You can learn more about this first mov­ing walk­way and its suc­ces­sors, the one at the Paris Exhi­bi­tion includ­ed, from the Lit­tle Car video above. How­ev­er much these ear­ly mod­els may look like quaint turn-of-the cen­tu­ry nov­el­ties, some still see in the tech­nol­o­gy gen­uine promise for the future of pub­lic tran­sit. Mov­ing walk­ways work well, writes Tree­hug­ger’s Lloyd Alter, “when the walk­ing dis­tance and time is just a bit too long.” And they remind us that “trans­porta­tion should be about more than just get­ting from A to B; it should be a plea­sure as well.” Parisians “kept the Eif­fel Tow­er from the exhi­bi­tion” — it had been built for the 1889 World’s Fair — but “it is too bad they did­n’t keep this, a sort of mov­ing High Line that is both trans­porta­tion and enter­tain­ment.”

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:

Pris­tine Footage Lets You Revis­it Life in Paris in the 1890s: Watch Footage Shot by the Lumière Broth­ers

Watch Scenes from Belle Époque Paris Vivid­ly Restored with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (Cir­ca 1890)

Beau­ti­ful, Col­or Pho­tographs of Paris Tak­en 100 Years Ago—at the Begin­ning of World War I & the End of La Belle Époque

Paris in Beau­ti­ful Col­or Images from 1890: The Eif­fel Tow­er, Notre Dame, The Pan­théon, and More (1890)

How French Artists in 1899 Envi­sioned Life in the Year 2000: Draw­ing the Future

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Hear the Sound of the Hagia Sophia Recreated in Authentic Byzantine Chant

in Architecture, History, Music | March 9th, 2020

Audio tech­nol­o­gy has made many excit­ing advances in the past few years, one of which enables record­ing engi­neers to cap­ture the sound of a spe­cif­ic space and recre­ate it else­where. Through a process called “con­vo­lu­tion reverb,” the sound of a con­cert hall or club can be portable, so to speak, and a band or group of singers in a stu­dio can be made to sound as if they were per­form­ing in Carnegie Hall, or inside a cave or grain silo.

Also being recre­at­ed are the sounds of goth­ic cathe­drals and Byzan­tine churches—acoustic envi­ron­ments being pre­served for pos­ter­i­ty in dig­i­tal record­ings as their phys­i­cal forms decay. This tech­nol­o­gy has giv­en schol­ars the means to rep­re­sent the music of the past as it sound­ed hun­dreds of years ago and as it was orig­i­nal­ly meant to be heard by its devout lis­ten­ers.

Music took shape in par­tic­u­lar land­scapes and archi­tec­tur­al envi­ron­ments, just as those envi­ron­ments evolved to enhance cer­tain kinds of sound. Medieval Chris­t­ian church­es were espe­cial­ly suit­ed to the hyp­not­ic chants that char­ac­ter­ize the sacred music of the time. As David Byrne puts it in his TED Talk on music and archi­tec­ture:

In a goth­ic cathe­dral, this kind of music is per­fect. It doesn’t change key, the notes are long, there’s almost no rhythm what­so­ev­er, and the room flat­ters the music. It actu­al­ly improves it.

There’s no doubt about that, espe­cial­ly in the case of the Greek Ortho­dox cathe­dral Hagia Sophia. Built in 537 AD in what was then Con­stan­tino­ple, it was once the largest build­ing in the world. Though it lost the title ear­ly on, it remains on incred­i­bly impres­sive feat of engi­neer­ing. While the struc­ture is still very much intact, no one has been able to hear its music since 1453, when the Ottoman Empire seized the city and the mas­sive church became a mosque. “Choral music was banned,” notes Scott Simon on NPR’s Week­end Edi­tion, “and the sound of the Hagia Sophia was for­got­ten until now.”

Now (that is, in the past ten years or so), well over five cen­turies lat­er, we can hear what ear­ly medieval audi­ences heard in the mas­sive Byzan­tine cathe­dral, thanks to the work of two Stan­ford pro­fes­sors, art his­to­ri­an Bis­sera Pentche­va and Jonathan Abel, who teach­es in the com­put­er music depart­ment and stud­ies, he says, “the analy­sis, syn­the­sis and pro­cess­ing of sound.”

Now a muse­um, the Hagia Sophia allowed Pentche­va and Abel to record the sound of bal­loons pop­ping in the space after-hours. “Abel used the acoustic infor­ma­tion in the bal­loon pops to cre­ate a dig­i­tal fil­ter that can make any­thing sound like it’s inside the Hagia Sophia,” as Week­end Edi­tion guest host Sam Hart­nett explains.

Pentche­va, who focus­es her work “on rean­i­mat­ing medieval art and archi­tec­ture,” was then able to “rean­i­mate” the sound of high Greek Ortho­dox chant as it would have been heard in the heart of the Byzan­tine Empire. “It’s actu­al­ly some­thing that is beyond human­i­ty that the sound is try­ing to com­mu­ni­cate,” she says.” That mes­sage needs a larg­er-than-life space for its full effect.

Hear more about how the effect was cre­at­ed in the Week­end Edi­tion episode above. And in the videos fur­ther up, see the choral group Capel­la Romana per­form Byzan­tine chants with the Hagia Sophia effect applied. Just last year, the ensem­ble released the album of chants above, Lost Voic­es of Hagia Sophia, using the fil­ter. It is a col­lec­tion of music as valu­able to our under­stand­ing and appre­ci­a­tion of the art of the Byzan­tine Empire as a restored mosa­ic or recon­struct­ed cathe­dral.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Map­ping the Sounds of Greek Byzan­tine Church­es: How Researchers Are Cre­at­ing “Muse­ums of Lost Sound”

The Same Song Sung in 15 Places: A Won­der­ful Case Study of How Land­scape & Archi­tec­ture Shape the Sounds of Music

David Byrne: How Archi­tec­ture Helped Music Evolve

A YouTube Chan­nel Com­plete­ly Devot­ed to Medieval Sacred Music: Hear Gre­go­ri­an Chant, Byzan­tine Chant & More

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Watch Scenes from Belle Époque Paris Vividly Restored with Artificial Intelligence (Circa 1890)

in History | March 6th, 2020

In his lat­est act of dig­i­tal restora­tion, Denis Shiryaev has used AI to revive and col­orize footage doc­u­ment­ing dai­ly life in Paris dur­ing the 1890s. The remark­ably clear footage lets you see hors­es and bug­gies move past Notre Dame; young­sters float­ing their boats at Lux­em­bourg Gar­dens; the Eif­fel Tour dur­ing its first decade of exis­tence; fire­men dash­ing down the city’s grands boule­vards; and peo­ple hop­ping onto futur­is­tic mov­ing side­walks. Quite a delight to see.

Find oth­er recent video restora­tions in the Relat­eds below.

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:

Immac­u­late­ly Restored Film Lets You Revis­it Life in New York City in 1911

Icon­ic Film from 1896 Restored with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: Watch an AI-Upscaled Ver­sion of the Lumière Broth­ers’ The Arrival of a Train at La Cio­tat Sta­tion

A Trip Through New York City in 1911: Vin­tage Video of NYC Gets Col­orized & Revived with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

Pris­tine Footage Lets You Revis­it Life in Paris in the 1890s: Watch Footage Shot by the Lumière Broth­ers

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

How African-American Explorer Matthew Henson Became the First Person to Reach the North Pole, Then Was Forgotten for Almost 30 Years

in History | March 5th, 2020

The his­to­ry of explo­ration is replete with famous names every­one knows, like Robert Peary, the man most often cred­it­ed with first reach­ing the North Pole. Those who work along­side the legends—doing the heavy lift­ing, sav­ing lives, mak­ing essen­tial calculations—tend to be for­got­ten or mar­gin­al­ized almost imme­di­ate­ly in the telling of the sto­ry, espe­cial­ly when they don’t fit the pro­file for the kinds of peo­ple allowed to make his­to­ry.

In Peary’s case, it seems that the most impor­tant mem­ber of his team—his assis­tant, African Amer­i­can explor­er Matthew Hen­son—may have actu­al­ly reached the North Pole first, along with four of the team’s Inu­it crew mem­bers.

Hen­son and Per­ry first met in a Wash­ing­ton, DC cloth­ing store where Hen­son worked. When they struck up a con­ver­sa­tion, Peary learned that Hen­son had fled Mary­land “after his par­ents were tar­get­ed by the Ku Klux Klan,” as Messy Nessy writes. He had then signed on as a cab­in boy at 12 and sailed around the world, includ­ing the Russ­ian Arc­tic seas, learn­ing to read and write while aboard ship.

Peary was impressed and “hired him on the spot,” and “from that point for­ward, Hen­son went on every expe­di­tion Peary embarked on; trekking through the jun­gles of Nicaragua and, lat­er, cov­er­ing thou­sands of miles of ice in dog sleds to the North Pole.” Also on their last expe­di­tion were 39 Inu­it men, women, and chil­dren, includ­ing the four Inu­it men— Ootah, Egig­ing­wah, See­gloo, and Oogueah—who accom­pa­nied Hen­son and Peary on the final leg of the 1909 jour­ney, Peary and Henson’s eighth attempt.

As the six men neared the pole, Peary “grew more and more weary, suf­fer­ing from exhaus­tion and frozen toes, unable to leave their camp, set up five miles” away. Hen­son and the oth­ers “scout­ed ahead,” and, accord­ing to Hen­son’s account, actu­al­ly over­shot the pole before dou­bling back. “I could see that my foot­prints were the first at the spot,” he lat­er wrote.

Peary even­tu­al­ly caught up and “the sled-bound Admi­ral alleged­ly trudged up to plant the Amer­i­can flag in the ice—and yet, the only pho­to­graph of the his­toric moment shows a crew of faces that are dis­tinct­ly not white.” Either Peary took the pho­to­graph as a “way of hon­or­ing the crew” or he wasn’t there at all when it was tak­en. The for­mer does­n’t seem like­ly giv­en Peary’s eager­ness to claim full cred­it for the feat.

Peary accept­ed the sole hon­or from the Nation­al Geo­graph­ic Soci­ety and an award from Con­gress in 1911, while Henson’s “con­tri­bu­tions were large­ly ignored” at the time and “he returned to a very nor­mal life” in rel­a­tive obscu­ri­ty, work­ing as a U.S. Cus­toms clerk for 23 years, unable to mar­shal the resources for fur­ther expe­di­tions once Peary retired.

In his writ­ings, Peary char­ac­ter­ized Hen­son accord­ing to his use­ful­ness: “This posi­tion I have giv­en him pri­mar­i­ly because of his adapt­abil­i­ty and fit­ness for the work and sec­ond­ly on account of his loy­al­ty. He is a bet­ter dog dri­ver and can han­dle a sledge bet­ter than any man liv­ing, except some of the best Eski­mo hunters them­selves.” The pas­sage is rem­i­nis­cent of Lewis and Clark’s descrip­tions of Saca­gawea, who nev­er emerges as a full per­son with her own moti­va­tions.

Sad­ly, in his 1912 account, A Negro Explor­er at the North Pole, it seems that Hen­son inter­nal­ized the racism that con­fined him to sec­ond-class sta­tus. “Anoth­er world’s accom­plish­ment was done and fin­ished,” he writes, pas­sive­ly elid­ing the doer of the deed. He then invokes a trope that appears over and over, from Shakespeare’s Tem­pest to Defoe’s Robin­son Cru­soe: “From the begin­ning of his­to­ry, wher­ev­er the world’s work was done by a white man, he had been accom­pa­nied by a col­ored man. From the build­ing of the pyra­mids and the jour­ney to the cross, to the dis­cov­ery of the new world and the dis­cov­ery of the North Pole.”

The kind of his­to­ry Hen­son had learned is obvious—a white­wash­ing on a world-his­tor­i­cal scale. It would take almost 30 years for him to final­ly receive recog­ni­tion, though he lived to become the first black mem­ber of The Explor­ers Club in 1937 and “with some irony,” Messy Nessy writes, he “was award­ed the Peary Polar Expe­di­tion Medal” in 1944. Since then, his name has usu­al­ly been men­tioned with Peary’s in his­to­ries of the expe­di­tion, but rarely as the first per­son to reach the pole. Watch two short pro­files of Hen­son’s accom­plish­ments above, and see many more pho­tos from the expe­di­tion at Messy Nessy.

via Messy Nessy

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Explor­er David Livingstone’s Diary (Writ­ten in Berry Juice) Now Dig­i­tized with New Imag­ing Tech­nol­o­gy

Watch the Very First Fea­ture Doc­u­men­tary: Nanook of the North by Robert J. Fla­her­ty (1922)

African Amer­i­can His­to­ry-Eman­ci­pa­tion to the Present: A Free Course from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty 

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

Meet ‘The Afronauts’: An Introduction to Zambia’s Forgotten 1960s Space Program

in History, Science | March 4th, 2020

Broad­ly speak­ing, the “Space Race” of the 1950s and 60s involved two major play­ers, the Unit­ed States and the Sovi­et Union. But there were also minor play­ers: take, for instance, the Zam­bian Space Pro­gram, found­ed and admin­is­tered by just one man. A Time mag­a­zine arti­cle pub­lished in Novem­ber 1964 — when the Repub­lic of Zam­bia was one week old — described Edward Muku­ka Nkoloso as a “grade-school sci­ence teacher and the direc­tor of Zambia’s Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ence, Space Research and Phi­los­o­phy.” Nkoloso had a plan “to beat the U.S. and the Sovi­et Union to the moon. Already Nkoloso is train­ing twelve Zam­bian astro­nauts, includ­ing a 16-year-old girl, by spin­ning them around a tree in an oil drum and teach­ing them to walk on their hands, ‘the only way humans can walk on the moon.’ ”

Nkoloso and his Quixot­ic space pro­gram seem to have drawn as much atten­tion as the sub­ject of the arti­cle, Zam­bi­a’s first pres­i­dent Ken­neth David Kaun­da. Namwali Ser­pell tells Nkoloso’s sto­ry in a piece for The New York­er: not just the con­cep­tion and fail­ure of his entry into the Space Race (“the pro­gram suf­fered from a lack of funds,” Ser­pell writes, “for which Nkoloso blamed ‘those impe­ri­al­ist neo­colo­nial­ists’ who were, he insist­ed, ‘scared of Zambia’s space knowl­edge‘”), but also his back­ground as “a free­dom fight­er in Kaunda’s Unit­ed Nation­al Inde­pen­dence Par­ty.”

Born in 1919 in then-North­ern Rhode­sia, Nkoloso received a mis­sion­ary edu­ca­tion, got draft­ed into World War II by the British, took an inter­est in sci­ence dur­ing his ser­vice, and came home to ille­gal­ly found his own school. There fol­lowed peri­ods as a sales­man, a “polit­i­cal agi­ta­tor,” and a mes­sian­ic lib­er­a­tor fig­ure, end­ing with his cap­ture and impris­on­ment by colo­nial author­i­ties.

How on Earth could this all have con­vinced Nkoloso to aim for Mars? Some assume he expe­ri­enced a psy­cho­log­i­cal break due to tor­ture endured at the hands of North­ern Rhode­sian police. Some see his osten­si­ble inter­plan­e­tary ambi­tions as a cov­er for the train­ing he was giv­ing his “Afro­nauts” for guer­ril­la-style direct polit­i­cal action. Some describe him as a kind of nation­al court jester: Ser­pell quotes from the mem­oir of San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle colum­nist Arthur Hoppe, author of a series of con­tem­po­rary pieces on the Zam­bian Space Pro­gram, who “believed it was the Africans who were sat­i­riz­ing our mul­ti-bil­lion-dol­lar space race against the Rus­sians.” As Ser­pell points out, “Zam­bian irony is very sub­tle,” and as a satirist Nkoloso had “the iron­ic dédou­ble­ment — the abil­i­ty to split one­self — that Charles Baude­laire saw in the man who trips in the street and is already laugh­ing at him­self as he falls.”

What­ev­er Nkoloso’s pur­pos­es, the Zam­bian Space Pro­gram has attract­ed new atten­tion in the years since doc­u­men­tary footage of its facil­i­ties and train­ing pro­ce­dures found its way to Youtube. This fas­ci­nat­ing­ly eccen­tric chap­ter in the his­to­ry of man’s heav­en­ward aspi­ra­tions has become the sub­ject of short doc­u­men­taries like the one from Side­Note at the top of the post, as well as the sub­ject of art­works like the short film Afro­nauts above. Nkoloso died more than 30 years ago, but he now lives on as an icon of Afro­fu­tur­ism, a move­ment (pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture) at what Ser­pell calls “the nexus of black art and tech­no­cul­ture.” No fig­ure embod­ies Afro­fu­tur­ism quite so thor­ough­ly as Sun Ra, who trans­formed him­self from the Alaba­ma-born Her­man Poole Blount into a peace-preach­ing alien from Sat­urn. Though Nkoloso nev­er seems to have met his Amer­i­can con­tem­po­rary, such an encounter would sure­ly, as a sub­ject for Afro­fu­tur­is­tic art, be tru­ly out of this world.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch a 5‑Part Ani­mat­ed Primer on Afro­fu­tur­ism, the Black Sci-Fi Phe­nom­e­non Inspired by Sun Ra

Sun Ra’s Full Lec­ture & Read­ing List From His 1971 UC Berke­ley Course, “The Black Man in the Cos­mos”

Sun Ra Applies to NASA’s Art Pro­gram: When the Inven­tor of Space Jazz Applied to Make Space Art

Won­der­ful­ly Kitschy Pro­pa­gan­da Posters Cham­pi­on the Chi­nese Space Pro­gram (1962–2003)

Sovi­et Artists Envi­sion a Com­mu­nist Utopia in Out­er Space

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

What Happened Hazel Scott? Meet the Brilliant Jazz Musician & Activist Who Disappeared into Obscurity When She Was Blacklisted During the McCarthy Era

in History, Jazz, Music | March 3rd, 2020

Women in the enter­tain­ment busi­ness who have tak­en a stand against racism and state vio­lence and oppres­sion have often found their careers ruined as a result, their albums and per­for­mances boy­cotted, oppor­tu­ni­ties rescind­ed. This, accord­ing to Nina Simone, is what hap­pened to her after she began her fight for Civ­il Rights with the fero­cious “Mis­sis­sip­pi God­dam.” She con­tin­ued per­form­ing in Europe until the 1990s, but her cul­tur­al stock in her own coun­try declined after the 60s. She was large­ly unknown to younger gen­er­a­tions until Lau­ryn Hill and lat­er hip hop artists turned her music into a “secret weapon.”

Maybe the music of Hazel Scott will enjoy a sim­i­lar revival now that her name has been returned to pop­u­lar con­scious­ness by Ali­cia Keys, who paid trib­ute to Scott at last year’s Gram­mys. Once the biggest star in jazz, Scott’s career was destroyed by the House Un-Amer­i­can Activ­i­ties Com­mit­tee (HUAC) in the 1950s when a pub­li­ca­tion called Red Chan­nels accused her of Com­mu­nist sym­pa­thies. Black­list­ed, she moved to Paris and per­formed exclu­sive­ly in Europe until the mid-six­ties. As with many an artist who suf­fered this fate dur­ing the Cold War, Scott stood accused of anti-Amer­i­can­ism not for any actu­al sup­port of the Sovi­ets but because she chal­lenged racial seg­re­ga­tion and dis­crim­i­na­tion at home.

Born in Trinidad and raised by her moth­er in New York City, like Simone, Scott was a clas­si­cal­ly trained child prodi­gy (see her play jazz-infused Liszt for World War II sol­diers in the video below), whose ear­ly, some­times vio­lent, expe­ri­ences with racism left last­ing scars. She audi­tioned for Jul­liard at age 8. “When she fin­ished,” writes Loris­sa Rine­heart at Nar­ra­tive­ly, “the audi­tions direc­tor whis­pered, ‘I am in the pres­ence of a genius.” Jul­liard founder Frank Dam­rosch agreed, and she was admit­ted.

Scott’s moth­er Alma, her­self a jazz musi­cian, “befriend­ed some of the Harlem Renaissance’s bright­est stars,” and the young Scott grew up sur­round­ed by the lead­ing lights of jazz. When she got her big break at 19, tak­ing over a three-week engage­ment for Bil­lie Hol­i­day, she imme­di­ate­ly joined the ranks of Harlem’s finest.

As it turned out, not only was Scott a bril­liant pianist, she also had a hell of a voice: deep and sonorous, com­fort­ing yet provoca­tive — the sort of singing style that makes you want to embrace the sub­lime melan­choly that is love and life and whiskey on a midwinter’s night.

She was flown to Hol­ly­wood in the ear­ly 40s to appear in musi­cals, but refused to coun­te­nance the usu­al racist stereo­types in film. Rel­e­gat­ed to bit parts, she returned to New York. “I had antag­o­nized the head of Colum­bia Pic­tures,” she wrote in her jour­nal. “In short, com­mit­ted sui­cide.” But she con­tin­ued her activism, and her career con­tin­ued to thrive. Final­ly, “she came to break the col­or bar­ri­er on the small screen” becom­ing the first black woman to host her own show in 1950. “Three nights a week, Scott played her sig­na­ture mix of boo­gie-woo­gie, clas­sics, and jazz stan­dards to liv­ing rooms across Amer­i­ca. It was a land­mark moment.”

And it was not to last. That same year, Scott vol­un­tary appeared before HUAC to answer the sup­posed charges against her, remain­ing calm in the face of hours of ques­tion­ing and read­ing an elo­quent pre­pared state­ment. “It has nev­er been my prac­tice to choose the pop­u­lar course,” she said. “When oth­ers lie as nat­u­ral­ly as they breathe, I become frus­trat­ed and angry.” She con­clud­ed “with one request—and that is that your com­mit­tee pro­tect those Amer­i­cans who have hon­est­ly, whole­some­ly, and unselfish­ly tried to per­fect this coun­try and make the guar­an­tees in our Con­sti­tu­tion live. The actors, musi­cians, artists, com­posers, and all of the men and women of the arts are eager and anx­ious to help, to serve. Our coun­try needs us more today than ever before. We should not be writ­ten off by the vicious slan­ders of lit­tle and pet­ty men.”

Weeks lat­er, her show was can­celed “and con­cert book­ings became few and far between,” writes her biog­ra­ph­er Karen Chilton at Smith­son­ian. “The government’s sus­pi­cions were enough to cause irrepara­ble dam­age to her career,” and damn her to obscu­ri­ty when she deserves a place next to con­tem­po­rary greats like Hol­i­day, Ella Fitzger­ald, Duke Elling­ton, and oth­ers. “After a decade of liv­ing abroad, she would return to an Amer­i­can music scene that no longer val­ued what she had to offer.” Learn much more about Hazel Scott in the short doc­u­men­tary video, “What Ever Hap­pened to Hazel Scott,” at the top, and in Chilton’s book Hazel Scott: The Pio­neer­ing Jour­ney of a Jazz Pianist, from Café Soci­ety to Hol­ly­wood to HUAC.

via Nar­ra­tive­ly

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bertolt Brecht Tes­ti­fies Before the House Un-Amer­i­can Activ­i­ties Com­mit­tee (1947)

Ayn Rand Helped the FBI Iden­ti­fy It’s A Won­der­ful Life as Com­mu­nist Pro­pa­gan­da

Watch a New Nina Simone Ani­ma­tion Based on an Inter­view Nev­er Aired in the U.S. Before

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast