SCAD Visual Resources Center

The Library of Congress has recently posted a collection of Vaudeville-era (c.1897-1920) silent films on YouTube:

Variety Stage: Vaudeville and Popular Entertainment

The motion pictures in the Variety Stage collection include animal acts, burlesque, dance, comic sketches, dramatic excerpts, dramatic sketches, physical culture acts, and tableaus. The films represented date from copyrights of 1897 to 1920; the majority are drawn from the Library’s extensive Paper Print Collection. The remaining films were produced by Hans A. Spanuth in Chicago from 1919 to 1920 for the series “Spanuth’s Original Vod-A-Vil Movies.” These motion pictures present a rare animated record of vaudeville acts from the turn of the century. Although not actually filmed on a theatrical stage, they sought to recreate the atmosphere of a theater performance by showing the types of vaudeville acts and performers that were popular at the time.

Edward S. Curtis, Totem found in the Nimikish village Yilis, on Cormorant Island, 1914, Library of Congress, Washington, DC. (SCAD Digital Image Database, http://did.scad.edu)

Curtis’s Landmark 1914 Silent Film of Pacific Northwest First Nations Culture—Restored, Re-evaluated, and Framed with a Live Orchestral Arrangement of the Original Score and a Performance by the Gwa’wina Dancers, Descendants of the Indigenous Cast.

This collaborative project approaches the film from two distinct but overlapping perspectives: As a scholarly recovery and restoration of the original melodramatic contexts and content of the film and musical score; and as an indigenous re-framing of this material given unique Kwakwaka’wakw perspectives on the original film, its specific cultural content, and its historical context of production.

Please visit: http://www.curtisfilm.rutgers.edu

The website functions as the gateway to partner institutions that are hosting public screening/performance events and related programming in June 2008 (in Los Angeles, Seattle, and Vancouver) and in November 2008 (in Chicago, Washington DC, and New York City). In addition, the site provides a thorough scholarly introduction to Curtis’s film, to the central role of the Kwakwaka’wakw (Kwakiutl) in its production, and to the new archival discoveries that have led to its current restoration. It also includes extensive media relating to the film’s production as well as contemporary Kwakwaka’wakw culture.