"Cameras began duplicating the world at that moment when the human landscape started to undergo a vertiginous rate of change; while an untold number of forms of biological and social life are being destroyed in a brief span of time, a device is available to record what is disappearing...." --Susan Sontag.
Many a Vanished Scene, compiled and annotated by David Shepard, is composed of excerpts from the forerunners of the film documentary, the classroom or "teaching" films of the Twenties and Thirties. "Rediscovering this genre is a revelation.... (V)igorous people, eloquently recorded, wander through these frames.... (W)e see...mountain peasants in the Tennessee highlands, weathered cowboys.... But the romantic timelessness of rural life soon gives way to scenes of seal 'harvesting' in Alaska...ore blasting in Michigan...Los Angeles in 1916.... Finally, we see the export of our manufactured culture as cars vie with camels in the streets of Damascus...." (Filmex '80).
Music for the film was compiled by Kimberly Shepard, who provides live piano accompaniment for tonight's screening.