All Films

Si Melati

1952 • 40 min

Melati lives with her stepmother and half-sister, Kecubung. Even though she always received bad treatment, Melati never stopped praying. One time, the clothes she was washing floated away. Melati searched by going with the flow. Not long after, she arrived at a old woman's house in the middle of the forest. It turns out the cloth was found by the old woman. When she asked for fruit in the old woman yard as she was very hungry, she instead got diamonds in the fruit she picked.

The Sound of Bells

1952 • 25 min • United States of America

1952 Robert Altman short film

Picturesque New Zealand

1952 • 8 min • United States of America

This Traveltalk series short visit to New Zealand starts in Auckland, a bustling, modern city. Next is Christchurch, home of Canterbury University, where rowing teams participate in a regatta. Nearby is Lake Wakatipu, which inspires artists to put their impressions on canvas. We then visit Rotorua, a city famous for its geysers, hot springs, bubbling mud pools, and other geothermal activity. At Ferry Springs there is lots of trout for fishing. Later, a group of natives performs a canoe dance.

Rabbit Stew

1952 • 6 min • Australia

Wombat attempts to hunt a crafty rabbit.

A képzett beteg

1952 • 24 min

Posture Pals

1952 • 10 min • United States of America

A teacher gives her third-grade class a "posture test". Four students--two boys and two girls--fail it. The teacher then suggests that the four become each other's "posture pals" and point out to each other when they're slouching, slumping or engaged in other such deviant non-good-posture activities.

Muntz TV Ad

1952 • 1 min

Fifties advertisement from Fischinger.

Alchemy

1952 • 7 min • France

The film is a short documentary about alchemical engravings.

Abraham Lincoln

1952 • 60 min

The story of court-martialed Union soldier William Scott, who is slated for execution for sleeping on duty after he was sent for by Abraham Lincoln.

Quetzalcoatl, le serpent emplumé

1952 • 9 min

Benjamin Peret narrates Aztec myth

Jane Eyre

1952 • 50 min

Adaptation of the classic novel.

Eva Perón inmortal

1952 • 22 min • Argentina

Short documentary about Eva Perón produced by the Secretary of Press and Diffusion of the Presidency of the Nation.

Ocean Terminal

1952 • 30 min • United Kingdom

Southampton, a deep-water port with four tides a day, is an ocean terminal for the world's largest liners. Their coming and going, and the people who work with them are the subject of this film as they reflect in their personal lives some of the drama and romance of its situation. Among them are a tug skipper and his crew, a stewardess on a Cape ship, an assistant wharfinger in charge of handling baggage and freight, a taxi driver, and a pilot taking a great liner down Southampton water at night.

Chain of Weakness

1952 • 8 min • Romania

Rover Makes Good

1952 • 16 min • United Kingdom

How a sheep dog is responsible for the rescue of two children trapped in an old mine.

Between Two Worlds

1952 • 19 min

A short film from Guy L. Coté

Frankenstein

1952 • 30 min

Dr. Victor Frankenstein, working in a castle on a remote Swiss island, attempts to create a perfect man but his resultant creation turns out to be a murderous beast who must be destroyed.

The Peter Pan Story

1952 • 12 min • United States of America

Made in the early days of television, this promotional film takes audiences behind the scenes on the making of Walt Disney's then-upcoming animated feature, Peter Pan.

Farmer Moving South

1952 • 17 min • United Kingdom

A record of a winter journey, when a farmer decides to move his whole stock by rail from Yorkshire to Sussex.

Interim

1952 • 26 min • United States of America

A young man meets a young woman under a bridge by a railroad. They shelter from the rain and exchange a kiss. The man grows sullen and leaves. The film starts with him and ends with her. It’s a straightforward anecdote told in traditional ways, the likes of which he’d forsake forever; that is, it uses actors, a soundtrack with music and post-dubbed sound effects, a photographer who frames everything professionally and a coherent edited narrative.

The Boy Kumasenu

1952 • 60 min • Ghana

It tells the story of a boy Kumasenu who moves to the city of Accra from a small fishing village, encouraged by his cousin Agboh's exaggerated tales of the wonders of city life. Hungry, he steals bread and is caught by police, but is rescued by a doctor and his wife who find him work. Agboh attempts to get Kumasenu to rob the doctor, but Kumasenu foils his cousin's plans.

Abstronic

1952 • 6 min • United States of America

A pioneer of visual music and electronic art, Mary Ellen Bute produced over a dozen short abstract animations between the 1930s and the 1950s. Set to classical music by the likes of Bach, Saint-Saëns, and Shoshtakovich, and replete with rapidly mutating geometries, Bute’s filmmaking is at once formally rigorous and energetically high-spirited, like a marriage of high modernism and Merrie Melodies. In the late 1940s, Lewis Jacobs observed that Bute’s films were “composed upon mathematical formulae depicting in ever-changing lights and shadows, growing lines and forms, deepening colors and tones, the tumbling, racing impressions evoked by the musical accompaniment.” Bute herself wrote that she sought to “bring to the eyes a combination of visual forms unfolding along with the thematic development and rhythmic cadences of music.”

Sink or Swim

1952 • 6 min • United States of America

A Terrytoons cartoon about Dinky Duck, the duck that can't swim.

Zai and Chik

1952 • 11 min • Soviet Union

Two cotton bunnies - brothers Zai and Chik - receive an invitation to perform at a puppet concert. On the way to the theater, a mischievous and naughty Chick violates the rules of the road many times.