Page 32 - pg_1955_08

History of the

Film th1·ough

• 9.5mm.

• by
Kevin Brownlow
• A t y pical scen e f?·om

• one of the 9.5mm .
WaT f ilms.

After five years of hostilities, peace was proclaimed, and
on July 14th, 1919, Bastile Day, France held her victory
celebrations. Cameramen from all over the world streamed
into Paris to film this spectacular parade. Shots of almost
every incident in the parade are shown in the 5 x 30 ft. film
Victory Celebrations, 1919.
The following year, 1920, the cinema entered its finest
decade, and in 1921 the first really important documentary
was made. Sponsored as an advertising film by the Hudson
Bay Company of Reveillon Freres, it covered the daily
routine of the Eskimo. Robert Flaherty, its director, (who
had been experimenting with Eskimo films since 1918), used
one particular Eskimo as the central figure for his film,
Nanook of the North, which, on completion, was rejected by
almost every cinema hall in the U.S.A. Their feeling was
that whereas an audience could enjoy a short factual film-
a long one such as this would bore them to distraction. They
also objected to it on the grounds that it was "advertising
material" for Reveillon Freres. At last one hall tentatively
tried it on an audience, and it was an instant success. On
9.5mm. we can see it, greatly reduced, in The Esquimaux
(1 x 300 ft. still available, or 3 x 30 ft. notched).
In England, wild animal life and nature films were in vogue,
the most popular being The Secrets of Nature. This series
originated from a hut in the middle of a field from which
H. Bruce-Woolf, founder of British Instructional Films (later
to be renamed Gaumont-British Instructional), set out on
t hi,rty- two