Unseen cinema. 5, Picturing a metropolis. Autumn fire / Cineric, Inc. presents ; by Herman G. Weinberg.

[United States] : Filmmakers Showcase, 1931.

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PICTURING A METROPOLIS is part of the film retrospective UNSEEN CINEMA that explores long-forgotten American experimental cinema. Weinberg's second personal film is a poetic evocation of an absent lover as imagined by the central female character, whom Weinberg loved and sought to marry. Very sophisticated editing adds to the misty cinematography. Happily, actress Erna Bergman accepted Weinberg's proposal soon after she saw the film. -- ROBERT A. HALLER. Weinberg was an ardent cineaste whose infectious enthusiasms bled over into everything he did. In relationship to the early American avant-garde film, Weinberg coined a most perfect phrase, "a lover of cinema," to describe the professional and amateur film experimentalists during the 1920s and 1930s. Later in 1968 Jonas Mekas would express his admiration for Weinberg, who "writes with so much love for the movies that...you go crazy thinking about where you are going to see those movies, and when." --BRUCE POSNER Born in East Harlem, trained as a violinist, Herman G. Weinberg led a silent film orchestra, then prepared subtitles for foreign films. In the 1930s he made films, and later reconstructed with stills, in book form, Von Stroheim's "Greed "and "The Wedding March". For decades, he wrote a column "Coffee, Brandy and Cigars." --ROBERT A. HALLER 16mm from 1.33:1 black and white silent with music 18fps 19:40 minutes.

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November 02, 2020

New music: Rodney Sauer.