Thursday, August 18, 2011

GONE WITH THE WIND and its premiere: 1939, downtown Atlanta.

See it...LIVE it. This is amateur filmmaker Russell Bellman's recently discovered Kodachrome 16mm footage of the premiere of what is still, adjusted for inflation, the biggest-grossing movie of all time. This footage (minus the Erik Satie soundtrack) needs to be in admitted in the National Film Registry's archives. I don't think it has been yet. This monumental event occurred within a 3-minute train ride of where I live now, and was a seminal note in the life of a city I call home. It is also such a note in the life of this country and this medium I love. Looking at it now, it somehow seems it could have happened yesterday. But this is the effect of film. Or is it merely a truism of time? In the larger scheme of things, I suppose 80 years ago IS yesterday...



1 comment:

Lisa said...

I wish there were hours more of this footage -- fascinating!