THE MICHIGAN DAILY PAGE' THE MICHIGAN DAILY PAGE Charter Set For Union The University Non-Academic Employees Union will receive a charter from the American Fed- eration of State, County and Municipal Employees at 8 p.m. to- night in Room 3 RS of the Un- ion, Herb McCreedy, director of In- ternational AFL-CIO Region XI, will officially present the char- ter, which designates the Univer- sity union as Local 1583, for non- teaching employees. John P. Caldwell, special assistant to AFSCME International president Arnold Zander, will be the prin- cipal speaker. Caldwell recently returned from a successful campaign in Puerto Rico. He will tell the mass meeting about the union's success in organizing public em- ployees in Puerto Rica and in sponsoring a program of building for them 50,000 low rent houses. All members of the local union, other unionists in this area, Uni- versity officials and members of the board of Regents are invited. Preceding the meeting, there will be dinner for the unionand University officials at 6 p.m. in the Union. Master of ceremonies at the dinner will be Robert Gros- venor, director of the Michigan State Employees Union. TO ATTRACT INDUSTRY: Research Park Land Annexation Suggested The City Planning Commission recommended to the City Council Tuesday that it approve the an- nexation of 386 acres of Pittsfield township land, of which 209 acres will be used as a research park. The action was an important step in the project, which in- cludes four years of study by the Chamber of Commerce, to attract new industrial research organiza- tions in to the city. The City Council Monday night tacitly approved this particular action and indicated that final approval would depend to a great extent on the recommendations of the Planning Commission. The Council may consider the annex- ation proposal for final action at its meeting next Monday. If the Council approves the annexation, the Pittsfield Town- ship Board must agree to release the land before the city can take it over. Samuel A. Morgan of the township board said last Saturday that it is likely the board will re- lease the land. In a meeting of the board last Friday the annex- atiori petition was tabled for fur- ther study. To Present Marionettes A professional marionette show will appear at 9 a.m. Sunday on the University television series, "Understanding Our World," on WXYZ-TV. Mr. and Mrs. Meredith Bixby, veterans of 25 years in profes- sional puppetry, will be inter- view by Prof. Edward Stasheff of the speech department. The Bixbys will conduct one of. the clinics at the 25th anniver- sary convention of the Puppet- eers of America Aug. 1-6, at the Park Shelton Hotel in Detroit. Ending Tonight " "A production that is approximately perfect! -TIME MAGAZINE Shows at 1:00-3:30 6':10-8:45 -WA-- - '"Mmow *~jWALTID I NEYS - MKAR ~~NEAN N- EMAMEN twicy r ALD I ~ tSONMENdOV'tCRISP 41 OREVMEAD*6OR6ORAN* It[ -r M }} M 6 ' own " . p i I - - - - - m "we byt uW u VISTA 01st ioo Cmts.. lNy. *waft "'i I'aieth.' FRIDAY JUDY HOLLIDAY DEAN MARTIN in "BELLS ARE RINGING" Fl PAID ADVERTISEMENT 2ND ANNUAL DETROIT I I 0 0 S '" S 0 0 0 0 0 F ESTI'AL FRIDAY, AUG. 19-8 P.M. Fred Kaz Trio Cannonball Adderley Quintet Dinah Washington Chico Hamilton Quintet Dave Brubeck Quartet Duke Ellington & Orch. SAT., AUG. 20-8 P.M. Oscar Peterson Trio Nina Simone Gene Krupa Quartet Kai Winding Septet Jackie Cain & Roy Kral Louis Armstrong & All Stars SUNDAY, AUG. 21-8 P.M. Jack Teagarden Sextet Horace Silver Quintet Four Freshmen Dizzy Gillespie Quintet Dakota Staton In his long struggle to achieve the rights of American citizen- ship, the Negro cannot have been very happy with the role played by the American film. As a popular art, as a very much mass culture phenomenon, the film reflected only too sharply the values of a dominant group that always paid lip service to democracy but never tried to assess its own position and which took for granted the ster- eotypes that even a slender ac- quaintance with Negro life would have dispelled. The Ne- gro, confined to an economip as well as a social ghetto, had no means to challenge the as- sumptions of white "democra- cy": the happy child, complete with watermelon and banjo, the only too loyal servant, the per- son wise through religion (an idiot-savant role quite com- pletely), the genial menial, the razor-wielding beast, and (sel- dom stated, the lurking goblin in this gallery), the sexual ath- lete. -Cinemla qild Ipeeeft4 I I I I Count Basie & Orch. I Executive Producer Ed. LEONARD FEATHEF STATE FAIR GR( BAND SHEL Tickets on salec Music Center-300 S.? Box Seats $6.00.. . . Section $4.75, $3.75 Please enclose self-ad stamped envelope for m - - ----- - - - - ------ - SHIRT Penny B 10.95 14.95 Sizes 7-1 Average 8 Tall 10-1 FULL SKIR or SLIM fhe DRESS- 5 8 fashion . ., the tterng shirtdress soft touch. rfuf selection of ry Cottons You'll 'e, ON FOR EST off corner of S. Univ. - pp. Campus Theatre 3fl1Parking at rear of store The first great American film, and still one of the great- Sarkesian est, The Birth of a Nation, per- R, M.C. petuated most of these stereo- types. It now has infrequent ex- SU N DShibitions. in the North, where the NAACP resists any public LL showings (although not those of film societies), but In the at South it remains a staple of a Thayer St. vanishing way of life; shortly Reserved after the Faubus resuscitation $275. Rof the Nullification Act, the film , $2.75. was shown in Little Rock as an dressed, example of what could be ex- ail orders. pected if Negroes were admit- ted to Central High School. It is certainly worth pausing to examine some of the definitions of the Southern Creed. Gus is a "renegade," because after freedom came he left the plan- tation. Eventually his sexual aggressiveness, to put the thing in its mildest terms, causes love- ly Mae Marsh to leap off a rock to her death. Simon Lynch is a politically-minded mulatto; his final demand for Senator Cameron's Daughter (Cameron is a barely disguised and libel- ous depiction of Thaddeus Ste- vens) makes the senator think again about giving civil rights to Negroes (that is what should have happened to Stevens, Grif- fith is saying) but Stevens him- f j self, as we know from history, was never presented with these hysterical difficulties and is j buried in an integrated ceme- tery, the monument to a ca- reer that was unaltering in its dedication to real democracy. He is, in this film, represented as being swayed by his mulatto housekeeper mistress, a savage voodoo figure, who wants to ap- ply the lash to the back of the s'white south. This, however, is not presented as a reasonable reaction to the lashes that were applied freely to negroes, but as wickedness. And some brawny negroes in the Reconstruction period are shown shoving white people off the sidewalks. The hero of the film is the Ku Klux Klan, which makes the South safe for its peculiar definition of democracy. Robeson appeared in a com- pletely servile role in Sanders of the River; how he has re- conciled this with his con- science, no one has ever ex- plained, he least of all. There were occasional breakthroughs., Among them, can be mentioned The Emperor Jones (also with Robeson), which was, despite its picture of the negro as a tragic hero, the kind of film which would enforce stereo- types on an unthinking audi- ence. Rather like this, though in a different category, was the original Imitation of Life of 1935, which had the merit of considering "passing" as well as the most harrowing funeral scene on cinema. But even these were small successes compared to the implications of so good a film as The Prisoner of Shark Island, one of the earliest civil liberties films, but one which, nevertheless, could be said to have anti-Negro suggestions. Warner Brothers' They Won't Forget, a, powerful anti-lynch- ing film, made some amends, Fritz Lang's Fury was better still; yet both of these films had "white" victims as the kind of symbol with which the audi- ence would sympathize. A hope might be in the present era, that something like the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill could be passed, if enough white people saw themselves as potential lynch victims. However, the big money mak- er of the late 1930's and as a moneymaker, it overshadows any of the films we have men- tioned, was Gone With The Wind, Millions gloried in the appealing story and absorbed completely and emotionally, the mythic elements of the Old South. No social protest film could have made a comparable impact in a contrary sense on .the American consciousness. The second World War to save democracy that we do not practice blotted out, as wars do, anything except affirmative statements, about our society. And after victory was finally won, the movie-makers felt that a war-weary nation craved light entertainment. Problem films were thought to be box- office poison. It was not merely the critical acclaim but a sur- prising popular response to Gentlemen's Agreement and Crossfire, serious treatments of anti-Semitism, that encouraged the producers to think of turn- ing to the theme of An Ameri- can Dilemma. In 1949 three films dealing with the hardships and degradations imposed on our negro citizens were released almost simultaneously: Home of the Brave, Pinky, and Lost Boundaries. The first of these and the boldest in its treatment is Cinema Guild's final offering of the summer season. Home of the Brave is the third film of Stanley Kramer, who was just then coming to attention as a producer who stressed mature themes, and who was called the "genius on a low budget" because his ex- pertly-made and directly ap- pealing films cost less than half as much as the usual Hollywood opus. From little-known actors he was able to elicit perform- ances that convinced by their sincerity and fitted perfectly into the framework of the low- keyed, unassuming photogra- phy. This, the public felt, was refreshingly real, and whether they also felt flattered by ap- peals to intelligence, Kramer's success was unmistakable; and undergoes a range of reactions from utter rejection to untrust- ing friendship and whose con- flicts are heightened by the en- forced intimacy of his group,' is portrayed by James Edwards in an outstandingly sensitive performance. We must warn the audience that crude words are used crudely; dealing with this subject, Kramer's is a brutal honesty. For our shor subject we have chosen a film that will strike its viewers as one of the strang- est films they have ever been exposed to. Some members of the audience will be incred- ulous, others angry, some amused; but almost all will be puzzled. This was surely the re- action to modern art in the first decades of this century; and instructive parallels can be drawn between the feeling of personal outrage suffered by the patrons of the Armory Show in 1913 and the indignation voiced by the homme moyen sensuel who blunders into the showing of an experimental film in 1960. There is the added difficulty that even the most advanced art, like modern poetry, exists merely in space and can be isolated and studied in time (and finally accepted), while the experimental film, like modern music, exists in time and can be judged or discussed only by a retroactive effort of the im- agination. We can see very de- cided differences in the current public acceptance of modern art and poetry, its (less than) in- tolerance for modern music, and its downright hostility to ex- perimental films. Though modern music is con- sidered painful by the average concert subscriber, he does no more than grumble about it. He listens to it in a cultural setting that admits its impor- tance (like modern art, modern music won its academic battles long ago). The experimental film, on the other hand, is something he is not constantly exposed to; indeed, the experi- mental film is an aesthetic pro- test against the limitations of the commercial theatre, just as the documentary is a social protest; and the two are banned from movie houses for pre- cisely the discordant notes that they strike. The experimental film is by no means a recent arrival on the scene, a handy accompani- ment to the Beat Generation, though the articles which now appear in Playboy and Esquire may stress these identifications. Like most movements in the modern arts, it had its genesis in France and Germany. In fact, one of the most seminal films of the century, listed in the 12 all-time best in the Brus- sels International Film Poll, The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari, of 1919, may be considered as the first important experimental film and still its best exemplar. The French, however, stimulat- ed by the criticism of Louis Delluc, embarked on several voyages to aesthetic Cythereas that were of prime importance in the development of this gen- re. Since the camera mind, they argued, is completely visual, why should there not be a pure art of the cinema that would reject such extraneous devices as narration, a holdover from the theatre? Such triumphs as Rene Clair's Entracte (1924) gave substance to these views. Germaine Dulac, Jean Epstein, Marcel L'Herbier, Henri Cho- mette, and May Ray not only did pioneer work but at have seen it to have been bet- ter. It was banned in Paris, an unusual distinction. EVe to- day, 'Bunuel, who ranks vwith Bergmann as a master film art- ist, introduces into every film makes some, surrealistic, some he makes some surrealistic, some dream element. Jean Coc- teau, in his career of jack-of- all-arts, was bound to turn to the film; in his initial effort, The Blood of a Poet, was a com- pletely original work that re- quires repeated iewings to ap- preciate its content. When Coc- teau's varied career is finally as- sessed, his films may prove to be the most significant part. Like Bunuel, he found his me- tier in the experimental film; and all his subsequent output bears something of this stamp. In America, the experimental film, like the documentary, had slow beginnings; and since we are basically socially oriented, the documentary has had better success here. (One wishes that Tennessee Williams would dis- cover an experimental film ori- entation, for which his Camino Real, in the. theatre, holds out a promise). The first American experimental films were quite independent efforts, owing little to the work in Germany and France. Manhatta (Sheeler and Strand, 1921) was an expres- sionistic vew of New York; and Fiaherty's 24 Dollar Island fol- lowed in this vein (1925). It is interesting to consider that these pioneer film experiments were both concerned with the feeling of unreality that comes from living in a big city. At this point, 'the documentary and the experimental film shake hands, Amateurs dominated the scene of the American experimental film from that decade to the present. Among the wealthy and cultivated devotees, who could afford to buck the com- mercial market, were Mr. and Mrs. James Sibley Watson, in the near-feudal community of Rochester, N.Y. With. the col- laboration of Melville Weber, they made The Fall of the House of Usher (shown by Cinema Guild two seasons ago) and Lot in Sodom (shown by Gothic, Film Society last year. Both of these owe more to German than to French sources. They will be revived with pleasure for people who have seen all too much of the current product. Among the rather slender au- dience that the experimental film commands are those who are willing to bek amused at The New Yorker-type drawings that have made UPA lose the essenti'al humor of the cartoon and draw out eight minutes in- to a situation that would cap- ture Mickie Mouse for the cor- responding number of seconds, are only too much with us. In the experimental film, the works of Norman MacLaren and his epigones are the final kind of surrender. Yes, they are dif- ferent, they are clever. (though the kind of cleverness that evaporates like cocktail con- versation); but what is their content? The very fact that they °are distributed by the National Board of Canada and shown in elementary schools here testifies to their raison d'etre: trivial innocuousness. The experimental film has a more important function than amusement: it should chal- lenge. Markopoulos, Anger, Prakhage, and Peterson, among the American contingent, do exactly this kind of thing. Their films oppose many commonly I I A dearly loved comfortable, fla ... with anew See our wonde new Drip 'n Dr Live In and Lov d If the first great American film has such striking faults, there have been few lesser films disposed to correct them. (Grif- fith himself felt hurt by the criticisms against The Birth of a Nation. Most of the money he made in his first long film he sank into Intolerance, which carried a pacifistic and human relations approach and flopped dismally. In Hearts of the World, he showed a dying white soldier kissing his e rorn-m Closed Saturday at 1 P.M. I I i ,I