An Alternative Guide to the History of Cinema by Fandor

1894-2013

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For those who’d like a one-stop beginner’s overview (or a refresher), we’ve drawn on archives stretching back to the very beginning of movies to provide our own alternative guide to the history of cinema. Generally we avoided more obvious choices in favor of movies that encapsulate certain moments and trends in cinematic history. We hope you find this idiosyncratic trip through motion picture history to be fun, informative, and surprising. More so, we hope it inspires you to chart many more such voyages yourself, with Fandor’s deep cinematic library as one guiding resource. All of the films included in this guide are available to watch on fandor.com.

Fandor is the home for thousands of handpicked, award-winning films from around the world, representing over 500 genres from more than 110 countries, ranging from 19th century classics to the latest festival hits. Each film, short, or feature comes with context from top film journalists and academics to provide viewers with greater depth and relevance. Fandor is available on set-top, desktop and mobile devices.

Part 1: The Birth of a Medium Boxing Cats - 1894 - William K.L. Dickson and William Heise The Kingdom of the Fairies - 1903 - George Méliès Rescued by Rover - 1905 - Lewin Fitzhamon and Cecil Hepworth Cabiria - 1914 - Giovanni Pastrone The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari - 1920 - Robert Wiene

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Part 2: Silents Become Golden One Week - 1921 - Eddie Cline and Buster Keaton Nanook of The North - 1922 - Robert Flaherty The Thief of Bagdad - 1924 - Raoul Walsh Strike - 1925 - Sergei Eisenstein Part 3: Talkies, from Silliness to Cynicism to Supersizing A Night in a Dormitory - 1930 - Harry Delmar Bimbo’s Initiation - 1931 - Dave Fleischer Wings of Youth - 1940 - Raymond Spottiswoode Scarlet Street - 1945 - Fritz Lang This is Cinerama - 1952 - Merian C.Cooper

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Part 4: Turbulent Decades Bellissima - 1952 - Luchino Visconti As Others See Us - 1953 - Marie Harrington

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The Cry of Jazz - 1959 - Edward Bland

Sins of the Fleshapoids - 1965 - Mike Kuchar

Terminal Island - 1973 - Stephanie Rothman

Part 5: Independents, Global Currents, and the Eternal Fountain of Youth Desperate Teenage Lovedolls - 1984 - David Markey Days of Being Wild - 1990 - Wong Kar-wai The Mill and The Cross - 2011 - Lech Majewski

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We are Mari Pepa - 2013 - Samuel Kishi

Kirikou and the Sourceress - 1998 - Michel Ocelot

PART ONE

The Birth of a Medium

Boxing Cats 1894 - William K.L. Dickson and William Heise Viral cat videos, it seems, have roots going back as far as motion pictures themselves. There is some debate as to which country should be credited with birthing movies, since in the 19th century several inventors experimented with “animating” series of rapidly-displayed still images by various means. Frenchman Louis Le Prince built a single-lens “motion picture” camera while working in 1887 England. The following year he used it to photograph a handful of outdoor scenes that many consider the first true films. But Le Prince’s unsolved disappearance from a Paris-bound train in 1890 made it easy for competitors to steal his thunder. Chief among them was the fabled American inventor Thomas Edison, who began exhibiting films via the peephole “Kinetoscope” viewing device at public arcades in 1891. Technological limitations meant that all the early motion pictures were mere seconds in length. But their content quickly diversified to encompass glimpses of athletic displays, celebrities (like Wild West shootist Annie Oakley) and vaudeville novelties like “Professor Welton’s Trained Cat Circus,” seen here. Short, sweet, and bizarre, this film is the cat’s meow! Watch Boxing Cats on Fandor

The Kingdom of the Fairies 1903 - George Méliès Early cinema’s most remarkable imagination belonged to Frenchman Georges Méliès. Originally a stage magician and impresario, he brought extensive knowledge of theatrical illusions to the over 500 movies he created between 1896 and 1913. His most famous title is 1902’s A Trip to the Moon, a whimsically comedic sci-fi adventure. But perhaps his masterpiece was the next year’s Kingdom of the Fairies, a comparatively epic spectacle of fantastical nonsense in glorious hand-tinted color. Unable adapt to a rapidly evolving industry, Méliès found himself out of fashion and out of work a decade later. Nearly a century onward, his story would be playfully fictionalized in Martin Scorsese’s charming homage Hugo. Watch The Kingdom of the Fairies on Fandor

Rescued by Rover 1905 - Lewin Fitzhamon and Cecil Hepworth While Méliès focused on his elaborate fantasy effects, Cecil Hepworth and other filmmakers of the time were pushing the medium toward more visceral action and propulsive storytelling. One of the most popular was his 1905 British smash, Rescued by Rover, featuring the world’s first canine movie star. Blair the Collie “plays” the faithful family pet who springs into action when a vengeful beggar woman kidnaps a baby to spite a “respectable” family who’d refused her alms. It was such a global hit that he had to remake it twice, when all existing prints had worn out from excessive use. Rover was among the films that drove movies’ gradual transition to modest storefront theaters solely dedicated to motion picture programs. Watch Rescued by Rover on Fandor

Cabiria 1914 - Giovanni Pastrone The arrival of feature films helped change the perception of movies, still considered a cheap vulgar entertainment form by many. Most famously, D.W. Griffithâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 1915 epic The Birth of a Nation stirred admiration for its epic narrative ambition as well as controversial for its reactionary racial politics. But it was hardly the first feature. Italy was a particularly prolific creator of lavish full-length screen spectacles from 1911 onward. Particularly impressive was Giovanni Pastroneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 1914 Cabiria, a sprawling chronicle of ancient warfare, mythology and toga-clad muscle mania whose brawny star Bartolomeo Pagano reprised his Hercules-like character in nearly thirty subsequent adventures. Watch Cabiria on Fandor

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari 1920 - Robert Wiene Doubt persisted as to whether cinema was, or even could be, a true art form as opposed to mere entertainment for the unwashed masses. For a long time, “respectable” theater artists considered it beneath them (or adopted pseudonyms if they accepted film work), while intellectuals and tastemakers regarded the medium with great skepticism. Seemingly out of nowhere, the 1920 German feature The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari forced many to reconsider their prejudices. Advertised as “The Most Amazing Story Ever Screened,” it turned technical and budgetary limitations into a virtue by eschewing realistic sets for abstract ones constructed out of paper. Reflecting avant-garde modernist design trends of the era, this created a nightmare milieu that brilliantly externalized a story which ultimately turns out to be the delusions of an institutionalized madman. Though some initial audiences were bewildered or hostile, wildly unconventional Caligari proved such a long-term sensation that “German Expressionism” entered the mainstream of cinematic language. Its reliance on shadowy visual atmospherics had an especially lasting impact in the horror and film noir genres. Watch The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari on Fandor

PART TWO

Silents Become Golden

One Week 1921 - Eddie Cline and Buster Keaton While much pre-sound cinema now seems antiquated to modern viewers, one big chunk has retained a timeless appeal: Silent comedy. Charlie Chaplin’s prankish “Little Tramp,” “Great Stoneface” Buster Keaton, the dimwitted duo of Laurel & Hardy and others were popular around the world. Most silent comedians had backgrounds in vaudeville, circus, the English music hall or other live showcases for broad physical humor. But as the medium grew more sophisticated, so did many screen comedies. Keaton’s penchant for innovative, spectacular, often neck-risking gags were already on full display in his first short as director-star, 1920’s One Week. Given an assembleit-yourself prefab house as a wedding present, Buster and his bride set about assembling the thing on their empty lot. Little do they realize that her spiteful spurned suitor has messed around with the instructions, resulting in an architectural monstrosity that at one point spins on its axis like a carnival ride during a windstorm. Keaton’s crew built an actual full-sized house on a turntable, with no models used. Watch One Week on Fandor

Nanook of The North 1922 - Robert Flaherty Most very early movies were “documentaries” in the sense that they simply captured real-life acts and sights few spectators could have seen “live.” But as the medium’s capacity for storytelling grew, fiction dominated the industry and non-fiction cinema became its own specialized niche. A milestone amongst feature-length documentaries was Robert J. Flaherty’s Nanook of the North. Audiences thrilled at the sheer exoticism of seeing human life as it had been lived for centuries (more or less) in this hitherto little-explored, harsh natural environment. The film’s enormous success ushered in the whole notion of “travelogue” cinema, whose myriad forms remain popular today. Watch Nanook of the North on Fandor

The Thief of Bagdad 1924 - Raoul Walsh “Hollywood” was formed by escape as well as escapism. Filmmakers fled west as early as 1910 to evade early patent laws on motion picture cameras and projectors. Soon the industry’s center had shifted from New York to Southern California, where the tiny Los Angeles municipality of Hollywood found itself Ground Zero to a dynamically expanding business that by the 1920s was a major U.S. economic and cultural force. When dashing Douglas Fairbanks wed “America’s Sweetheart” Mary Pickford in 1920, the world swooned at this “fairy tale come true.” Here he is in the 1924 superproduction The Thief of Bagdad, arguably the best among his lavish adventure vehicles that decade. It was produced by United Artists, the studio he, his wife, Charlie Chaplin and D.W. Griffith founded to take control of their own artistic and commercial destinies. Watch The Thief of Bagdad on Fandor

Strike 1925 - Sergei Eisenstein Hollywood during the “Roaring Twenties” represented the ultimate harnessing of escapism to capitalism. But filmmaking took on very different emphases elsewhere around the globe. In particular, a cinematic “revolution” arose in the newly formed Soviet Union not long after the political one that had toppled a centuries-old Imperial Russian Empire. The old regime’s flourishing commercial film industry was replaced by a brilliant new generation fueled by the ideological fervor of the new Socialist state. Their goal: Remaking the language of cinema itself to reflect those ideals. Sergei Eisenstein’s 1925 first feature Strike typically dramatizes the struggle between the working masses and their exploiters in striking imagery, an episodic narrative driven less by characters than themes, and dynamic editing so distinctive the muchimitated technique became known as “Soviet montage.” While the Soviet “experiment” was viewed abroad with varying degrees of admiration and skepticism in these pre-Cold War days, its innovative movies were widely influential. Watch Strike on Fandor

PART ONE

Talkies, from Silliness to Cynicism to Supersizing

A Night in a Dormitory 1930 - Harry Delmar Experiments with synchronized sound date back to the earliest days of film. But it wasn’t until Broadway luminary Al Jolson made his feature film debut with 1927’s part-sound smash The Jazz Singer that the idea suddenly caught fire. Soon everyone wanted to jump on the “All talking! All singing! All dancing!” bandwagon. Still, many in the industry hoped the “fad” wouldn’t last because the technological changeover required was expensive and coincided with the beginning of the Great Depression. But it was soon clear silents were no longer golden, and “talkies” were here to stay, despite their initial clunkiness. That quality is well illustrated by A Night in a Dormitory, one of umpteen movies from the era that pretty much threw musical comedy stage and vaudeville talents onto the screen. This New York-shot short has a couple very chorus-line-ready “college girls” recalling a night on the town, which provides an excuse for several amusingly creaky acts including a comedy duo, a mock “Russian chorus,” and nineteen-year-old Ginger Rogers singing a couple numbers in a high-pitched Betty Boop-style voice. Three years later she’d be a Hollywood up-and-comer fatefully paired with Fred Astaire for the first time. Their classic musicals together would demonstrate how fast and how far the “talkies” had evolved in a short span. Watch A Night in a Dormitory on Fandor

Bimbo’s Initiation 1931 - Dave Fleischer Pioneered by such novelties as Windsor McKay’s 1914 Gertie the Dinosaur, cartoons gradually became a staple of movie programs. Walt Disney’s contemporaries, the Fleischer Brothers, were chief among rivals who often managed to sneak more subversive, grownup ideas into ‘toons via the sexy presence of Betty Boop or the use of full-tilt surrealism. Both are on display in this wild ride, in which Betty’s pal Bimbo resists a secret society’s nightmarish “initiation,” which puts him through a series of absurdist perils. The Fleischers also did well with Popeye and Superman’s first animated adventures. But the arrival of 1934’s censorious Production Code and the financial strain caused by their two later features (Gulliver’s Travels, Hoppity Goes to Town) ultimately thwarted their studio’s attempts to compete with the mighty Disney. Faring better was Warner Brothers, whose “Merry Melodies” brought the world Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd and others. Watch Bimbo’s Initiation on Fandor

Wings of Youth 1940 - Raymond Spottiswoode 1939 is often called “movies’ greatest year” for its extraordinary pileup of classic features from both Hollywood (most famously Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz) and abroad. But World War II would temporarily shut down several industries, while heartier ones found themselves alternating escapist fare with propaganda commissioned by their governments. Here’s an early Canadian screen war effort, outlining the history of Commonwealth air forces while encouraging able viewers to sign up for service. On and offscreen in other nations, the starriest film talents lined up to “do their bit,” whether performing live for troops or making movies emphasizing wartime courage and sacrifice. Leading Hollywood directors went to the Allied combat zones to shoot documentaries, including John Ford (The Battle of Midway, 1942), Frank Capra (The Nazis Strike, 1943) and John Huston (The Battle of San Pietro, 1945). Watch Wings of Youth on Fandor

Scarlet Street 1945 - Fritz Lang One of Hollywood’s biggest roles during WWII was simply keeping homefront morale high by providing a steady diet of escapist musicals, comedies and adventures. But when the conflict was at last over, returning soldiers and weary civilians craved more hard-hitting entertainment that reflected their somewhat disillusioned mood. Thus was born what the French eventually termed “film noir,” an influential cycle of tough, cynical crime dramas notable both for their high style and brute realism. This 1945 classic is an outstanding early example by the great German Jewish director Fritz Lang (Metropolis), who’d fled the Nazi regime for America years earlier but only really found his metier again with these “hard-boiled” postwar melodramas. Scarlet Street’s Edward G. Robinson is a nebbish amateur painter toyed with like a mouse by the meaningfully named Kitty (Joan Bennett). Bennett had been a dewyeyed ingenue in the 1930s; with this role she gleefully re-invented herself as one of noir’s nastiest, trashiest femmes fatales. She’s delightfully partnered here by Dan Duryea’s even sleazier petty-thug boyfriend. Watch Scarlet Street on Fandor

This is Cinerama 1952 - Merian C. Cooper In the mid-1940s, about two-thirds of all Americans went to the movies an average of once a week. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, Hollywood’s worst nightmare arrived in a little box. Television invaded nearly every home within just a few years, dragging down cinema attendance with it. Why pay for entertainment you could now get free in your living room? The industry frantically countered by offering whatever the “boob tube” couldn’t. That meant mostly large-scale spectacle of one sort or another, from the first 3D vogue to “cast of thousands” epics in widescreen formats. The widest of them all was semi-circular Cinerama, billed as “an entirely new medium” that gave viewers “the full wonder of reality.” The extra-large travelogue thrills of This Is Cinerama and its few successors were impressive, all right. But the process proved prohibitively expensive for both filmmakers and exhibitors, soon giving way to less extreme but more practical formats. Watch This is Cinerama on Fandor

PART FOUR

Turbulent Decades

Bellissima 1952 - Luchino Visconti Europe lead the charge toward bolder, more “frank” and “adult” moviemaking after World War II. First out the gate was Italy, which shrugged off the fascist era’s glossy escapism with a striking turnabout toward unvarnished looks at post war poverty and other social issues. The most famous of these influential “neorealists” were Roberto Rossellini (1945’s Rome: Open City) and Vittorio De Sica (Shoeshine, The Bicycle Thief). But such subsequent, more flamboyant stylists as Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni and Luchino Visconti also got their start working in the neorealist mode. Still a few years shy of entering his mature phase of operatic melodramas (The Leopard, Death In Venice), Visconti made the transitional 1952 Bellissima, an ideal vehicle for the larger-than-life (yet salt-of-the-earth) magnetism of Anna Magnani. She plays a poor woman desperately certain her little girl has a big future in the movies. That fever was contagious: Leading Italian studio Cinecitta would become Ground Zero for a dynamic industry’s prolific local and international co-productions over the next couple decades. Watch Bellissima on Fandor

As Others See Us 1953 - Marie Harrington America’s postwar prosperity didn’t just give birth to the “baby boom.” Many sectors were now using film beyond mere entertainment, spurring the rise of parallel industries requiring skills akin to Hollywood. The swelling classrooms were eager consumers of innumerable “social instruction” movies like this one, which tells you everything you need to know about being a hygienic, polite and date-able young citizen in the squeaky-clean Eisenhower Era. Educational and industrial films (the latter serving to train workers or promote companies) provided a career-launching platform for some world-famous talents, including Stanley Kubrick (2001: A Space Odyssey) and Robert Altman (M*A*S*H), as TV commercials and music videos did later on. While little is known about this St. Louis-shot short’s director, her place in the director’s chair during an era of virtually no prominent women directors demonstrates the wider employment opportunities available in these below-radar corners of cinema. Watch As Others See Us on Fandor

The Cry of Jazz 1959 - Edward Bland Though a small parallel industry making “race films” for segregated audiences survived in the 20th century’s first half, minority representation in mainstream films was minimal and mostly stereotypical until the 1960s. The same year that John Cassavetes made his landmark first feature Shadows, about an interracial romance, Chicago composer and arranger Edward Bland made this unique hybrid of documentary and drama. A mixed group of men and women debate the meaning of jazz, which their host calls “the musical expression of the triumph of the Negro spirit” over institutionalized adversity. This poetical, polemical short later makes the shocking pronouncement that “Jazz is dead,” calling for a next evolutionary step in culture and equality that anticipates the changes the Civil Rights Movement would soon demand. With music by Sun Ra, among others, The Cry Of Jazz is ahead of its time in many ways, and indeed shocked many viewers at the time with intellectual musings some considered “Black racism.” Watch The Cry of Jazz on Fandor

Sins of the Fleshapoids 1965 - Mike Kuchar Experimental film came of age in the 1960s, when a vogue for “underground cinema” became a key element among that era’s many artistic “revolutions”. While much work was variously abstract, political, psychedelic or autobiographical, there was also always a strong element of camp humor and gay identity amongst the filmic avantgarde. Two pioneers were the brothers Kuchar, George and Mike. The Bronx twins began making their own 8mm films as teenagers in the 1950s, deploying neighborhood friends in absurdist potboilers with names like The Naked And The Nude. Mike’s 1965 16mm epic Sins Of The Fleshapoids stars a bejeweled George as an evil prince amongst hunks, hussies and humanoids in a kitschy sci-fi future. The “midnight movie” circuit grew out of movies like these, which amused audiences of stoned hipsters and influenced such cult favorites as Andy Warhol and John Waters. Watch Sins of the Fleshapoids on Fandor

Terminal Island 1973 - Stephanie Rothman Worn down by daring European imports and a rapidly changing society, Hollywood’s one-size-fits-all approach to content finally died a much-belated death. In 1968 the Motion Picture Association of America instituted its still-operative ratings system, which classified movies for release in terms from G (suitable for all ages) to X (no one under 18 admitted). This presumably protected innocent eyes from offending sex and violence and made it a lot easier for filmmakers to depict sex and violence. While this allowed the creation of such hitherto unthinkably envelope-pushing classics as Midnight Cowboy and A Clockwork Orange, the “new permissiveness” was no less a boon to myriad more crassly commercial-minded projects. A variation on the “WIP” (Women in Prison) movies then popular at drive-ins and grindhouses, Terminal Island finds the battle of the sexes getting bloody indeed between inmates fending for themselves at the titular maximum-security facility, a literal island off the California coast. A protege of leading exploitation producer Roger Corman, director/co-scenarist Stephanie Rothman managed to inject ideas about radical politics, feminism and racial equality amidst the inevitable nudity and gore. So long as the latter box-office virtues were present, it was an era when “trashy” genre cinema could afford to take such creative risks. Watch Terminal Island on Fandor

PART FIVE

Independents, Global Currents, and the Eternal Fountain of Youth

Desperate Teenage Lovedolls 1984 - David Markey While the 1970s was in many respects a very fertile, adventurous period for movies, it also planted the seed of the formulaic modern blockbuster. The staggering success of Jaws and Star Wars sparked a turn toward imitative bigbudget escapism that theoretically appealed to all, but primarily reflected a foreveryoung male mindset. The 1980s Reagan era furthered that with such hits as Top Gun and the Rambo movies, not to mention uber-macho stars like Schwarzenegger and Chuck Norris. It was inevitable, perhaps, that a new “underground” would emerge in reaction to all this bombast. Amongst an explosion of U.S. “independents” also including Jim Jarmusch and Penelope Spheeris, So. Cal. punk chronicler David Markey’s hilarious mockumentary Desperate Teenage Lovedolls ridicules the movie and music industries alike as it chronicles the melodramatic rise and fall of a fictive pre-riot-grrl rock band. Its cult following demanded a sequel, 1986’s even better Lovedolls Superstar. Watch Desperate Teenage Lovedolls on Fandor

Days of Being Wild 1990 - Wong Kar-wai World cinema is oceanic, with some reliable currents, but also unexpected tidal shifts. For a while after World War II, several European nations (including France, Sweden, Czechoslovakia and Germany) led the way in “New Wave” artistic innovation. A few decades later, South Korea to Malaysia began producing bold young talents. Long the commercial filmmaking center for Chinese-dialect audiences (and international fans of martial arts movies), Hong Kong attracted fresh critical admiration with the rise of a new generation in the 1980s. Many of its emerging voices brought high style and vigor to familiar action genres, like John Woo (1986’s crime drama A Better Tomorrow). Others’ idiosyncrasies were more unclassifiable. Wong Kar-Wai announced himself as a true auteur with 1990’s Days Of Being Wild, a restless mood piece of unrequited loves set thirty years earlier. Its gorgeous aesthetic (representing the director’s first of many collaborations with cinematographer Christopher Doyle), starry cast and impressionistic narrative would remain elements in nearly all his subsequent films, from gay breakup drama Happy Together (1997) to lavish costume epic The Grandmaster (2013). Watch Days of Being Wild on Fandor

Kirikou and the Sorceress 1998 - Michel Ocelot Animation remained a staple of the medium through the decades, albeit mostly still limited to kid stuff despite occasional exceptions like Bruno Barretto’s scabrous Fantasia parody Allegro non troppo (1976) and the awards-laden output of Zagreb Film in Croatia. Though many thought the Disney studio’s inspiration slumped after founder Walt’s 1966 death, his influence on cartoons remained almost oppressively strong. But that slowly began to change as emerging talents widened the form’s reach via innovative work for TV and the big screen. U.S. computer animation house Pixar (Toy Story) and Hayao Miyazaki’s traditionally hand-drawn features (Spirited Away) for Japan’s Studio Ghibli delight grownups and children alike. Farther off the beaten track, there have been adventuresome efforts like Nina Paley’s virtually one-woman show Sita Sings the Blues (2008), a delicious spin on Indian mythology, or French animator Michel Ocelot’s multinational coproduction Kirikou and the Sorceress, drawn from West African folk tales. The latter spawned two sequels (and a stage musical), but its popularity wasn’t universal: Characters’ casual nudity, true to their tribal lifestyles, was deemed unfit for family consumption in some countries. Including, yes, our own. Watch Kirikou and the Sorceress on Fandor

The Mill and The Cross 2011 - Lech Majewski As fragile, costly 35mm film gave way to digital video as a shooting format, so too technological advances have helped shape what actually gets depicted onscreen. CGI (computer-generated imagery) made just about anything possible, bypassing the previous physical limitations of stuntmen, production designers and old-school special effects. But many have lamented in recent years that Hollywood only applies this theoretical new freedom to a dismayingly juvenile, video-game-influenced lexicon of repetitious ideas: Superheroes, fantasy monsters, sci-fi dystopias, mass destruction, etc. Fortunately, filmmakers working with tiny fractions of typical “blockbuster” movie budgets have found more truly imaginative applications for those technologies. Expatriate Polish director Lech Majewski’s The Mill and the Cross uses cutting-edge techniques to look backward at a distant era’s most sophisticated art form. Blade Runner villain Rutger Hauer plays Flemish painter Bruegel the Elder, whose 1564 epic canvas “The Procession to Calvary” here “comes to life” via an ingenious mixture of live action and computerized images. This droll, one-of-a-kind feature probes that masterwork’s subtle political and religious symbolism while revealing the everyday cruelty (as well as the simple joys) of a period marked by stark class divisions, suffering and superstition. Watch The Mill and the Cross on Fandor

We Are Mari Pepa 2013 - Samuel Kishi Exciting work continues to be made outside the mainstream marketplace, whether from improbable late-breaking cinematic hotspots like Romania or from the latest first-time director telling his or her stories with DIY enthusiasm just about anywhere. At once a “typical” such debut and an exceptional one is Samuel Kishi’s Mexican We Are Mari Pepa, which followed a now-familiar path to the screen by expanding on a well-received prior short. Its protagonists are four middle-class Guadalajara boys whose rock band (the one they barely have the patience to practice their instruments for) provides just one amplification of myriad roiling 16-year-old emotions. While the autobiographical “coming of age” saga may risk cliche as a young director’s vehicle, its cliches can also feel as fresh as the inspiration brought to it. As long as movies this joyful and (eventually) soulful are being made, the oft-proclaimed news of cinema’s demise will remain premature. Watch We Are Mari Pepa on Fandor

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“Hollywood” was formed by escape as well as escapism. Filmmakers fled west as early as 1910 to evade early patent laws on motion picture cameras and projectors. Soon the industry’s center had shifted from New York to Southern California, where the tiny Los Angeles municipality of Hollywood found itself Ground Zero to a dynamically expanding business that by the 1920s was a major U.S. economic and cultural force. When dashing Douglas Fairbanks wed “America’s Sweetheart” Mary Pickford in 1920, the world swooned at this “fairy tale come true.” Here he is in the 1924 superproduction The Thief of Bagdad, arguably the best among his lavish adventure vehicles that decade. It was produced by United Artists, the studio he, his wife, Charlie Chaplin and D.W. Griffith founded to take control of their own artistic and commercial destinies.