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Posted by: Karen Fishman
As Mike Mashon mentioned in his recent blog post, Tales of the Unexpected, you never know what you’ll find in the Library’s collections. While the Library has great interviews of musicians, as found in the Joe Smith Collection, the Studs Terkel Collection contains interviews of musicians and performers that are particularly fascinating and revealing. Since …
Posted in: Recorded Sound
Posted by: Mike Mashon
A program of animated shorts selected to demonstrate the concept and basic elements of sound design, as well as four acclaimed animated features, will be screened this week as part of the Film Foundation’s “Story of the Movies: The Animation Universe” development workshop for classroom teachers. Held at the Packard Campus from July 31—Aug. 2, …
Posted in: National Film Registry, Packard Campus Theater
Posted by: Mike Mashon
The following is a guest post from Carla Arton, a Processing Technician in the Recorded Sound Section. Here at the Packard Campus of the Library’s National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, we not only pride ourselves on providing excellent reference and preservation services for our collections, our staff also actively participates in ongoing professional development. In addition …
Posted in: Motion Pictures, National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, Recorded Sound
Posted by: Bryan Cornell
This week we will explore the wealth of ethnic recordings that are available in the Library’s National Jukebox and other online collections. The Jukebox includes some 10,000 recordings of 78-rpm discs made before 1926. To browse these recordings, visit the site’s browse all recordings page and click the headings “language” and “target audience.” Pictured at the right are Alfredo and Flora de Gobbi, a husband …
Posted in: Early Recording Industry, Jukebox, Uncategorized
Posted by: Mike Mashon
Thursday, July 24 (7:30 p.m.) Applause (Paramount, 1929) This early sound-era masterpiece was the first film for both stage director Rouben Mamoulian and cabaret star Helen Morgan. Many have compared Mamoulian’s debut to that of Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane because of his flamboyant use of cinematic innovation to test technical boundaries. The tear-jerking plot boasts …
Posted in: Motion Pictures, National Film Registry, Packard Campus Theater
Posted by: Mike Mashon
In a collection of 1.4 million film and video items, there are bound to be a more than a few oddities, those moments when your head tilts and eyebrows arch into that universal gesture of puzzlement and wonder. It happens a lot around here; rare is the week I don’t hear somebody talking about an …
Posted in: Film/Video, Motion Pictures
Posted by: Karen Fishman
I recently returned from visiting Nashville, Tennessee, and while there visited the Ryman Auditorium. Being a fan of country music, I knew the Ryman was called “the Mother Church of Country Music,” and was the home for many years of the radio program The Grand Ole Opry, but I was very surprised to learn about …
Posted in: Jukebox, Radio, Recorded Sound
Posted by: Mike Mashon
Once upon a time, there was a period in American cinema—roughly 1930 to 1934—that with dewy-eyed nostalgia is celebrated as a last great flowering of bold, envelope-pushing, taboo-busting, sex-and-mayhem laden movies before the whip hand of censorship came down and put a stop to all the nonsense. These few years are shorthanded as the “pre-Code” …
Posted in: Motion Pictures
Posted by: Mike Mashon
Our focus this week is on the third edition of the film identification workshop Mostly Lost, including a special, additional Saturday program at the State Theatre. Thursday, July 17 (7:30 p.m.) Linda (First Division, 1929) Mrs. Wallace Reid (Dorothy Davenport) directed this silent drama starring Helen Foster as Linda Stillwater, a bright young girl from …
Posted in: Packard Campus Theater