From the Film Inspection Table

Okay….. I’ve been away for awhile… but, hey, we’re busy here at Newsfilm. At the end of January (08) we were surprised by a phone call from a gentleman in the area who said that he had a bunch of equipment from the old Southeastern Film Lab and Educational Supply in a warehouse. He was going to throw it all out but wanted to know if we thought there might be anything of use to us before it all hit the dumpster.

How quickly can one rent a truck? pretty quickly…

Among the many items in the warehouse of note were an old 16m step contact printer (Bell & Howell) a small collection of local advertising films (still being researched) and a whole lot of mint condition, never used educational A/V equipment from the late 1960s though to the early 80s.

My favorite item in this whole lot (a portion of which is displayed here)

is the American Optical Company, Model 3689 Delineascope “GK” [serial number 111988]. Two of these lantern slide projectors were in the warehouse, both were in the original packaging…..

In addition to the Delineascopes the first picture shows an 8mm film editor, an 8mm “technicolor instant movie projector” (based on a film cartridge system), a Pyrotechnics Reading trainer (looks like a film strip projector) and a 3M Film Sound slide projector.

Finding this vintage of educational A/V equipment in mint condition is a real treat. We take for granted that images can be projected for students to see, but just looking at the heft of the delineascope is a reminder that audio visual aids in education was a specialized niche.

I’m sitting in an airport on my way to the annual convention of Moving Image Archivists (being held in Rochester, NY this year) and feel compelled to share the delightful randomness of the nitrate film from the Feltner collection that I brought back from the vaults last week.

Like the safety film components of the Feltner donation, most of the film is unlabeled trims and outtakes, typically not on a plastic core or reel. My last random pull of Feltner delivered: a duplicate negative of a 1930/early 40s Soviet Newsreel story (identification pending); a positive print of a 5 minute short created for theater audiences in Vichy France (okay, so we invaded your country… let’s put that aside and be friends!) and the outtakes from a newsreel story shot in Europe after WWII but prior to the discontinuation of nitrate [ca. 1946 to 1953′ish]. This last element is particularly exciting as it sheds light on the early history of an important sporting event…..

This ‘lavendar’ element (aka. duplicate negative) is on Eastman Kodak nitrate stock but has the printhrough on its edge of ‘Agfa’ negative stock. The original AGFA stock in addition to the few German language signs on the walls of this venue point us in the direction of a European, probably West German locale.

Converting the negative image of a different frame to positive clearly reveals the nature of the event:

Ah….. mud wrestling. Who knew it was such an old sport? The audience for the event is relatively mixed (men and women); the venue is well lit and clean. The crowd is well behaved and seated very close to the ring.

A little Internet research tells us that wrestling promoter Paul Boesch is credited with ‘inventing’ mud wrestling at an event in Seattle in 1937. Did the Germans independently come up with the same idea? Perhaps, but it may be possible the Boesch himself brought the sport to Europe. The Wikipedia entry for Boesch (accessed on 9/24/2007) outlines a very distinguished service record for Boesch in the European Theater [121st Infantry Division]. IF Boesch was held over in Germany after VE-Day as part of the occupying forces, then it is at least possible that he introduced the event–after all, he was a wrestling promoter before the war, so staging wrestling events in Germany would be natural for him.

This last frame is taken from the end of the bout. The women standing (left) is rejoicing in the expert removal of her opponent’s wrestling shorts, leaving her opponent to bury herself deeply into the mud out of modesty. If this film is from Germany after WWII and if Paul Boesch or another American GI brought wrestling to the continent then I can safely say that this bit of film clearly reveals to us the Americanize ‘Wiemer’ of post-war Germany.

Worn out by images of Billing’s Redcliffe plantation so I’ve decided to take a break from working on it.

When I’m feeling a little blue or need a little excitement–like this morning–I love to reach down in the great unknown that is the C. E. Feltner Collection. Feltner’s generous donation has been a great challenge and a great pleasure. It has already yielded the library’s earliest extant nitrate element (ca. 1899!!) and continues to cough up everything from stock shop footage of chateau interiors to newreel outtakes from the 20s and 30s.

Pulling a box of safety film cuts at random I managed to find one of the hazards of ingesting large safety film libraries that date back to the 1950s. Stealth nitrate.

Two things stick out immediately about this roll. First, the plastic core has been badly damaged by deterioration, so much so that it is no longer a circle but an octagon (the plastic is shrinking and has also suffered dye loss–it used to be dark green). Second, the film at the tail (or end) of the reel is solid white. Pulling the shrunken core out of the roll reveals the extent of the damage:

Although the majority of the roll is comprised of acetate “safety” stock, the final few feet spliced onto it by Feltner (or someone before him) was nitrate stock. At the center of the roll above one can see the gypsum-like flakes of stage 4 nitrate decay. No image (or gelatin) remain.

All is not lost, however. The safety film is easily unwound and salvaged. What was it? Trims from an unknown production. Can anyone help identify the movie from which this slate was taken? In case you have trouble making out the slate it reads:

“HAYUTIN PROD

THE NEWCOMER

RAMATI GARMES

134A | 1

nite | ext ”

I presume Harvey Hayutin and Lee Garmes