Adapted from an Appalachian Jack Tale set in the late 1940s, this tale follows a World War II veteran named Jack who, in return for an act of kindness, receives two magical gifts: a sack that can catch anything and a jar that can show whether a sick person will recover or die. Jack becomes a national hero when he rescues the president’s daughter from a serious illness by capturing Death in his magic sack. However, after many years without Death in the world, Jack realizes that he has upset the natural order and releases Death to save humankind from perpetual old age and misery.
Tag: USA
A young boy and girl, dressed in costumes based on Dutch traditional clothes, find their idyllic, windmill-laden countryside is being over-run by unfeeling, unthinking mechanical men that lay waste to everything in their path. The cartoon (note the title) was a very thinly veiled propaganda film in support of the Netherlands resistance fighters during Nazi occupation in World War 2 (The film was completed when Nazi Germany had completely occupied the Netherlands).
This movie tells the story of the early life and rise to fame and fortune of French fashion designer Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel, beginning with her upbringing in an orphanage and training as a milliner, but concentrating on her relationship with Etienne de Balsan and her tempestuous love affair with his friend Boy Capel, and the role the two men played in setting her up as an independent business woman.
Bette Gordon explores the cinematic representation of women in this feminist experimental work, which, in the words of the filmmaker, centers on “women’s inability to place and define themselves in language and politics, the location of radical struggle.”
CBS TV news special hosted by Harry Reasoner explores the way-out world of the Hippies and the Haight-Ashbury psychedelic 1960s LSD scene. Footage of LSDs users experiencing bummer trips. The Diggers, the Oracle and cool street and Golden Gate Park scenes with hippies tripping out. The Grateful Dead are interviewed and are shown performing “Dancin’ in the Streets” on a flatbed truck in Golden Gate Park.
A low-budget tale about young lovers on the run from an uncaring adult world – they just want to get married but are thwarted at every turn – remains something of landmark in English-Canadian feature production. Sidney J. Furie’s directorial debut.
Tells the story of Ben Helwig and his important contribution to the American war effort. Ben’s story starts in the Great Depression when he, a young teen, is separated from his parents leaving him for a better life at an institution as they search for work. A freak baseball accident at the home leads to Benny losing sight permanently in one eye, followed by losing sight permanently in the other eye. As Ben is despondent over his new life situation, his mother realizes that she has to do something to make him feel productive again, she turning to one of his old favorite pastimes of building model planes, with his hands, sensitive to his new situation, taking over as his eyes in they being able to “see” things through touch.