Unseen cinema. 7, Viva la dance. Hands / by Willard van Dyke and Ralph Steiner for Works Progress Administration ; produced by the Commercial Department of Pathe News for Works Progress Administration.

Format:

Video

Contributor:

Steiner, Ralph, 1899-1986, director.

Van Dyke, Willard, director.

Pathe News, production company.

Series:

Academic Video Online

Language:

No linguistic content

Genre:

Experimental films.

Silent films.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (5 minutes)

Other Title:

Unseen cinema : early American avant-garde film 1893-1941

Viva la dance : the beginnings of ciné-dance

Place of Publication:

United States : Filmmakers Showcase, 1934.

System Details:

video file

Summary:

Viva La Dance is part of the film retrospective Unseen Cinema that explores long-forgotten American experimental cinema. "Hands" is an ingenious piece of propaganda that communicates not only through the thrust of its content, but through the very unconventionality of its "experimental" structure. The film suggests that the government that produced it is imaginative and inventive, open to new possibilities, and supportive of forms of free expression. --Scott MacDonald. Ralph Steiner, educated at Dartmouth, became a successful commercial and much honored fine art photographer. He made perhaps the first American abstract film, "H2O" (1929), following it with other experiments, some political in nature, some in Hollywood. Steiner also photographed with Paul Strand "The Plow That Broke the Plains" (1936) and co-directed and photographed "The City" (1939) with Willard Van Dyke and Henwar Rodakiewicz. --Robert A. Haller. Willard Van Dyke, a photographer by age 12, formed in 1932 with Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, and Imogen Cunningham the pivotal West Coast photography group f/64. Moving East, he became a noted documentary film-maker working closely with Pare Lorentz and Ralph Steiner among others. "Hands" may be his first completed film. --Robert A. Haller. 16mm from 35mm 1.33:1 black and white silent with music 3:53 minutes. Production Works Progress Administration.

Notes:

Title from resource description page (viewed July 24, 2020).

"Early American avant-garde film 1893-1941".

OCLC:

1191033379

Publisher Number:

ASP5053393/marc