Page 25 - Microsoft Word - RDcover11_03.doc

Many of the films then still were silent; surprisingly many were in 35mm (oh, please
send me ‘The River’ in 3 reels). Not yet visible was the immense outpouring for
16mm distribution on technical, social and patriotic topics from war-financed
documentarists. The peak of that movement came with the seven films contributed
by a constellation of Hollywood talent in the ‘Why We Fight’ series; you can see them
now in cheapie dvd, complete with scratches, splice-blips and cue-marks – from
veteran 16mm prints, obviously.

That film side of WW2 gave a take-off blast to 16mm. Manufacture of film stock,
cameras and projection gear, even film transit boxes, reached economic levels.
Sponsored film libraries like Modern (above) covered America with celluloid.

In Australia, projectors like the Sydney-made Cinevox and Harmour & Heath came to
the public as disposals goods; post-war productions filled the early documentary loan
libraries. The “sub-standard” gauge had come of age. In January 1952, the film
society movement held a national convention at Olinda. The Film Users Association
catalogs of the 1960s listed thousands of films from many dozens of film libraries.
Every school and church in the country had a projector, some several. By 1980, the
National Film Lending Collection alone held 16,194 titles, from ‘1,2,3...’ to
‘Zvenigora’, in 16mm.

We can honor Herman DeVry, pioneer of the portable film projector, designer of the
fault-free JAN, helpful publisher of that early Free Films Directory, for his part in
developing the field of A-V in which celluloid film in 16mm was so central. A-V now?
Well...

Acknowledgments to Wikipedia for the DeVry story.