For Orphans 2020 Online, NYU PhD candidate Tanya Goldman has created a video introduction to Movies at War (1944) — an episode of the U.S. Army Signal Corps “Film Bulletin” series. She discusses how the film’s depiction of the global transport of film reels allows viewers to make sense of a complex media infrastructure and how the use of portable 16mm projectors gave life to a multi-sited nontheatrical circuit. As the Movies at War narrator proclaims, army effort propelled “entertainment unreeling to span the universe!”
Play her introduction (13 min.), with a 9 min. excerpt from Movies at War: https://vimeo.com/418490057
…And there’s more to tell!
Dan Streible combed the Fox Movietone News Collection held at the University of South Carolina and turned up “Portable movie theater for Armed Forces–outtakes” which features coverage filmed on February 2, 1944.
Watch the Movietone News outtake and then Movies at War (full link below) — see if you can spot where the government film borrowed from Movietone!
Watch the complete film (20 min.) on the Orphan Film Symposium site hosted by NYU Cinema Studies or via the U.S. National Archives catalog.