Brodsky Benjamin (3 results)

Hardback. Condition: New. New Book, Direct from Publisher.

Hardcover. Condition: New.

Printed handbill, 4pp (bifolium) 20 x 14cms, four black and white photographic illustrations and text within borders, original folds, small edge tears, early pencilled annotation "Milwaukee -- 1915" at the foot of the front page and a couple of interior doodles, a little dusty especially at the folds, but overall in very good condition. Exceedingly scarce unrecorded handbill advertising Benjamin Brodsky's documentary "Real Life in China.the most interesting and educational photoplay ever produced in 8 big reels" and only the first of a two part film intended to be shown with a lecture by Brodsky himself. The handbill claims "Mysteries are mysteries no longer under the searching eye of the camera and the walled in and superstition-locked glories of China are brought forth as evidence of the real wonder of the celestial empire". The four captioned photographic illustrations show: A pagoda; Pumping water on the rice fields; Grinding the Rice and a Chinese Prisoner (in stocks). The US National Film Preservation Foundation (on whose site a remarkable fragment of the film has been preserved and is viewable) notes that: "On the eve of World War I, as the political struggles in China made the news, Americans knew little about the vast and mysterious country of more than four hundred million people. But by the end of 1917 there were at least 10 documentaries available to satisfy curiosity about America?s new ally in the Far East. Virtually all were short subjects that, like the Burton Holmes travelogues from Paramount, played alongside features. Travel shorts with a more educational slant continued in circulation through schools and nonprofit groups for years afterward. Of these offerings, the hugely ambitious Trip through China was ?so vastly different from the general run of tour films that it stands in a class by itself,? wrote Motion Picture News. Five years in the making (or a less probable ten, in some tellings), the documentary was the brainchild of Benjamin Brodsky, a widely traveled Russian-born businessman who claimed to speak 11 languages. According to a 1912 Moving Picture World profile, the young entrepreneur had moved to China from San Francisco after the 1906 Earthquake and set up shop as a film exhibitor. A Trip through China was probably fashioned from the 20,000 feet of negative that Brodsky brought back to San Francisco in 1915. Versions screened locally nine months later and in Los Angeles the following year. When distribution went national in March 1917, the ten-reeler was heralded as a ?revelation.?