Wonderful Water (2023 Haghefilm Selznick Fellowship restoration: Alma Macbride)

Photomontage from the GCM 2023 Catalog.

Borsa di studio Haghefilm Digitaal – Selznick School 2023

The Haghefilm Digitaal – Selznick School Fellowship 2023

GCM 2023: " The Haghefilm Fellowship was established in 1997 to provide additional professional training to outstanding graduates of The L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation at the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, New York. The Fellowship recipient is invited to Amsterdam for one month to work alongside Haghefilm Digitaal lab professionals to preserve short films from the George Eastman Museum collection, completing each stage of the preservation project. The recipient of the 2023 Haghefilm Digitaal – Selznick School Fellowship is Alma Macbride, from West Hartford, Connecticut. Alma graduated in June 2023 from the certificate program of The L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation, focusing on a digital reconstruction of Vitagraph’s 1911 biblical short The Deluge. After receiving a B.A. in film production from Harvard University in 2017, Alma worked for several cinemas, including the Brattle Theatre (Boston), the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and The Museum of Modern Art (NY). "

WONDERFUL WATER (Water in zijn natuurlijke pracht) (US 1922) supv: George H. Sherwood. prod, dist: Prizma Natural Colour Films. uscita/rel: 27.09.1922 (Cameo Theatre, NY). copia/copy: DCP, 8'42", col. (da/from 35 mm, orig. l: c.550 ft, ?? fps, Prizmacolor); did./titles: NLD. fonte/source: George Eastman Museum, Rochester, NY. Restauro digitale/Digital restoration 2023.

    Grand piano: Stephen Horne.

    Teatro Verdi, Pordenone, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM): Rediscoveries: Haghefilm Selznick Fellowship, 12 Oct 2023

Alma Macbride (GCM 2023): " In late 1922, the American film industry was on the precipice of a major revolution in color film technology with the release of The Toll of the Sea, widely recognized as the earliest feature to utilize Technicolor’s first subtractive process. Just prior to its debut, however, William Van Doren Kelley’s company Prizma released Wonderful Water, one of a series of “scenic” shorts produced during this period to showcase the merits of Prizma Color. “In its attention to sheer beauty of the scenes photographed, it has all the characteristics of the best scenics,” wrote a reviewer in The Educational Screen in December 1922. “And yet the subject has been so organized that it recommends itself to a more serious use than mere entertainment.” "

" Prizma Color, which was first established as a two-color additive system in 1913, redefined itself as a two-color subtractive system in 1919 to eliminate the need for specially outfitted projectors for exhibition. Spinning filters in-camera captured sequential color records, which alternated blue-green and red-orange. The records’ uneven temporal offset causes the color fringing visible around moving subjects and frame lines, a limitation of the system that led to a thematic focus on largely static landscapes and environmental studies. Notably, Wonderful Water originated in a lecture by George H. Sherwood, who served as the director of the American Museum of Natural History from 1927 to 1934. Both the lecture and film highlight the natural power and cyclicality of water in all its forms – liquid, solid, and vapor. Featuring exceptional location shooting at sites that include Yosemite, Niagara Falls, Borneo, Yellowstone, and the Grand Canyon, the short subject’s educational content harnesses Prizma Color’s unique two-color palette to capture astonishing vistas that prove the element’s astounding ability to sculpt and nurture life on this planet. "

" This preservation is derived from a Dutch-release print given to the George Eastman Museum by the Netherlands Audiovisual Archive. The print features both original Prizma Color footage and tinted intertitles in Dutch. " – Alma Macbride

AA: A fascinating showcase of Prizma Color on the subject of water and three of its states of matter.