All Films

Nazaré, Praia de Pescadores

1929 • 16 min • Portugal

The first Portuguese documentary. A remarkable look at the lives of the working people of Nazaré, a fishing town in Western Portugal.

Night Coachman

1929 • 55 min • Soviet Union

Set in Odesa at the end of the Civil War when the town is occupied by the Whites. The night coachman, fifty-year-old Hordii Yaroshchuk, lives with his daughter Katia who gets involved with a Bolshevik and revolutionary.

Harmonies of Paris

1929 • 29 min • France

Harmonies de Paris, restored by the Cinémathèque Française in the 1990s, was shot entirely on panchromatic film and was meant to be a documentary tour of Paris in thirteen thematic chapters. The subject is a tourist group arriving in the French capital by airplane, which explains the many shots of monuments and other canonical places.

Harry Fox and His Six American Beauties

1929 • 8 min • United States of America

Harry Fox performs his vaudeville act.

Tusalava

1929 • 9 min • United Kingdom

With the screen split asymmetrically, one part in positive, the other negative, the film documents the evolution of simple celled organic forms into chains of cells then more complex images from tribal cultures and contemporary modernist concepts. The images react, interpenetrate, perhaps attack, absorb and separate, until a final symbiosis (or redemption?) is achieved.

The Sky Skidder

1929 • 57 min • United States of America

Inventor Al Simpkins develops a new airplane fuel, "Economo," which he claims gets a thousand miles to the pint.

Wiggle Your Ears

1929 • 20 min • United States of America

This is a really strange, but thought provoking film. Here, beloved Mary literally lets Harry Spear kick her behind, spend her money on him, and forces her to push his kiddie car, all so that she could get the occasional joy of watching Harry "Wiggle His Ears." Armchair Freudians and double-entendre fans will quickly get the "joke" here. He quickly dumps Mary for pintsized blonde bombshell Jean Darling. What happens? You'll see.

Scarlet Runner & Co

1929 • 10 min • United Kingdom

Time lapse photography of the broad bean flower unfurling. Released in a silent (1929) and sound (1930) version.

The Winged Horseman

1929 • 60 min • United States of America

Skyball Smith is a Texas Ranger, assigned to investigate a series of ranch bombings.

The Opry House

1929 • 7 min • United States of America

Mickey runs a small theatre. The orchestra plays, rather badly, excerpts from Carmen. Mickey appears as a snake charmer, but the snake is revealed to be a cat with a snake's head painted on its tail. Mickey does a belly dance, to the audience's delight. Mickey then plays the piano, but the piano and stool, apparently annoyed at the violence and complexity of the piece, kick him off stage.

So This Is Marriage

1929 • 20 min

A husband believes that love will fade and all marriages go downhill over the years. His wife and two other couples plot to make him think that she is about to run off with another man. Faced with the possible loss of his wife, he realizes that he still loves her.

The Woman from Hell

1929 • 58 min • United States of America

Dee Renaud is a girl playing the "Devil" in an amusement concession at a beach resort. Slick Glicks, the barker, promises the yokels that if they're able to catch the "Lady From Hell," she will reward them with a kiss. But when Glicks tries to go beyond kissing, Dee is rescued by Jim Coakley, son of a New England lighthouse keeper...

Thundering Thompson

1929 • 56 min • United States of America

Using a false accusation of unlawful land-squatting, Bill Edwards (Al Ferguson) goes to the County Seat and has Sheriff Brown to swear out a warrant against sheep-herders Marie Valerian (Neva Gerber) and her father (Silver Tip Baker. The Sheriff sends a Deputy, "Thundering" Thompson (Cheyenne Bill_, back to serve the warrant. Thompson learns that Edwards is only trying to force the Valerians to sell their sheep to him at a cheap price, and comes back without serving the warrant. This enrages Edwards who enlists the aid of a local cattleman and his hands to drive off the sheep. Thompson sets out to keep this from happening.

Hyas and Stenorhynchus

1929 • 10 min • France

In close-ups and extreme close-ups, we watch two small species of marine crustaceans, the slender long-legged stenorhynchus and the clumsy, short-legged hyas. To blend in, both cover themselves with found objects, such as algae and sponges. We watch them move, eat, greet each other, and fight. They have small mandibles and large claws. Near them are spirograph worms, 6 inches long, with a plume of branchiae that fan out like exploding fireworks. We see vibrating cilia, 0.001 mm long, on the branchiae, sending food toward the mouth at the plume's center. Chopin's music and an off-screen narrator suggest we're watching a ballet.

The Holy Terror

1929 • 20 min • United States of America

Mary Ann is becoming a serious problem to the other gang members and Joe was given the job of training and controlling her behavior.

China Slaver

1929 • 60 min • United States of America

The Chinese Secret Service sends an undercover agent to investigate reports of an island ruled by a Chinese criminal named The Cobra who holds the residents in virtual slavery while running his illegal narcotics and white-slavery empire.

Hermit crab

1929 • 13 min • France

Painlevé’s first film on animal behavior, focusing on the Hermit Crab. On this film we see the Hermit Crab trying to find shelter.

Hunger in Waldenburg

1929 • 47 min • Germany

Powerful semi-documentarian depiction of the miserable working and living conditions in the Silesian city of Waldenburg.

You Don't Know the Half of It

1929 • 8 min • United States of America

A comedic team. The Ann seems to try and come across as a Mae West type. Jay plays the role of the straight partner.

Tanka the Bar Girl

1929 • 42 min • Soviet Union

A little girl denounce her evil step-father who plotted against the communist movement. The film, under the influence of Russian formalism, has some interesting experimental compositions.

The Karnival Kid

1929 • 8 min • United States of America

Mickey Mouse is working as a hot dog vendor at a carnival when he meets and quickly falls for Minnie the "Shimmy Dancer". That night, Mickey and a pair of alley cats serenade her by performing the song "Sweet Adeline", much to the dismay of Kat Nipp, who is trying to sleep. The short marks Mickey's first speaking appearance.

The Desert Rider

1929 • 45 min • United States of America

Jack Hoxie pledges to take care of a prospector's son before the man dies from shooting wounds. Jack Hoxie must find the killer before he disappears with the prospector's gold. A young woman also searches the killer for motives of her own.

Chelsea Nights

1929 • 13 min • United Kingdom

A young artist in a Chelsea studio laments the absence of his beloved Fifi.

Sea Urchins

1929 • 10 min • France

A close-up look at sand urchins and rock urchins. At the seashore, a man digs up a sand urchin. We look closely. He sets it back in the sand, and it burrows out of sight. Its intestines take nutrients out of sand. Using magnification 200,000 times normal size, we see a rock urchin's spines with suckers on the end; a drawing illustrates how they work. A sea urchin walks toward a rock. We see three-fingered jaws—pedicellaria at the end of flexible stems—take in algae and other bits. We also see cilia less than 0.001 ml in length; their motion constant, creating whirlpools. On the shore again, we watch the setting sun. Occasional titles in French tell us what to watch for.