A/V Geeks 16mm Lunch 1-9-2026

Hello everybody. This is Skip Elmer. Welcome to the AV Geeks lunchtime streaming show where we show old 16 mm films. And yeah, I got some stuff to show today. Um, I'm going to start off with some modern dance techniques uh in a sequential form. um not the free form form but sequential form. U enjoy [music] Modern dance is the art of communicating through expressive movement. Kinesesthetic awareness, rhythmic accuracy, movement control, design and space concepts all play a part in developing the range and capacity of the body for movement. Technique is developed from natural body movements which are the basis of fundamental dance movement. Walking Running. Leaping. Step. Leap. skipping. Natural body movements are distorted or stylized to achieve an art quality in dance. Using a walk, add a turn, a change of direction, add a step hop. technique evolved from the natural movements of a walk and a step hop developed skill in the use of stylized locomotive forms. This sequence of movements increases agility, strength, flexibility, motor coordination, and body control. Each movement is related to the one that follows. Natural movements are developed into the stylized forms which become the technique of modern dance. >> [music] [music] >> a Combination of sustained and swinging movements is used to develop breath control and balance. In breath rhythm, the inhalation fills movement with a quality of suspension. The exhalation decreases the [music] dimension of the movement. Transitional movements, whether sharp or sustained, [music] require coordination in timing and balance. [music] Falls arouse feelings of excitement and suspense. Hence the calm acceptance of the body yielding to gravity. There is conflict when the body resists the pull of gravity. To fall and recover creates a continual flow of functional design. The quality of falls is transformed by changes in energy release. There is excitement when the body maintains dynamic tension. Controlled energy release dramatizes opposing forces. The [music] dynamic loss of balance and the controlled effort of recovery are emotionally stimulating. In falls, the body is continually in motion between states of deliberate unbalance and the regaining of balance. When falls evolve their own kinetic [music] rhythms, they touch upon psychological aspects which are a part of all human experience. [music] Hallelujah. >> [music] [music] [music] >> The disciplined elegance of turns [music] creates an awareness awareness of the beauty and lyrical quality of the body in motion. One responds kinesthetically through subjective awareness [music] of the physical sensation of turning movement. There is empathic response through feeling oneself into the shape, form and direction of movement. >> [music] [music] [music] >> The flowing contour of curved lines, [music] the impact of direct line, changing level, the curves and lines [music] of body movement shaping space, all are interwoven in this study in space design. Movement achieves emotional expression when the technique sequence embodies design, [music] dynamics, and rhythm. Vision and imagination transform simple skills [music] into sequential movements which serve to develop skill and craftsmanship. The concept of technique as a sequence of meaningful [music] and related movements designed for expressive purposes finds inspiration in the infinite variations and richness of human movement expression. [music] [music] >> [music] [music] [music] >> I love the music. It's so intense. Um, so, uh, I am not going to be using the scanner today because I'm going to be playing with my new, uh, VHS cleaner, VHS's life. Um, I'm doing this because uh over the weekend I'm going to Apple shop and I'll be doing uh helping them with all their flooded uh film and video and audio and coming up with some workflows for them. So, u maybe I'll show you some imagery from there um about what they're doing. Uh yeah. What else we got? What else do we got? It's this film is interesting. Um, it's a kinoscope for one, which means that it was edited on video. So, there's titles that are video and then there's obviously I don't know if the the footage itself originated on film and then they transferred it in video and edited it and then they transferred it back to film. But this film is suffering from a really interesting annoying artifact and that is what we call color breathing where basically the color is fading but only like in a strip or it's very uneven across the frame and that is super hard to correct um because it changes. It's like going like this and so you'll see it. Um, and I was like, well, I can bring down saturation and it won't be so annoying. But hey, this is a teaching opportunity. So, this is uh universe, our golden age of astronomy. Enjoy. [music] [music] [music] >> [music] [music] >> The space age has thrust us into the golden age of astronomy. As we walked on the moon, sent probes to other planets, lofted satellites and rockets with radio and X-ray equipment into space, we have begun to see the universe in ways never imagined. We have come away with a stunning new perception of it. Perhaps the most dramatic revolution in our understanding since the time of Galileo. >> And I think [music] that starting from radio astronomy and then going to X-ray astronomy which has to be done from space and gam astronomy which has to be done from space. We now have a completely different view of the universe. The universe is a place where there are gigantic explosions. Uh in very short times we see a star brighten up like a thousand sons and then go away in the time it takes you to draw a breath. Uh we look back at the origin of the universe. We see an enormous explosion. We now believe that that was the beginning of the universe. So we find a universe which is very active. Stars uh are born, star die, star explodes. Uh galaxies explodes. The universe is an explosion. As we probe space, a new and violent universe has begun to emerge. A universe of supernova, black holes, quazars, and pulsars. Our instruments attached [music] to rockets have for the first time lifted us beyond Earth's atmosphere to reveal its secrets and to confront us with perhaps even greater mysteries. For centuries, we have searched [music] the skies with every tool available to answer some of the most simple, some of the most profound questions. Were we alone in the universe? How did [music] we come to be? How had the stars been created, the universe, our solar system, the planets? [music] What were they like? Now, it was not until Galileo invented the telescope [music] in the early 1600s that people could begin to formulate the most basic hypothesis. Using his telescope, Galileo was able to see that the moon had craters. Jupiter, a massive red [music] spot, and four planetiz moons. The excitement this caused was extraordinary. [music] And during the next 350 years, man built ever larger, more sensitive telescopes in hopes of seeing more. The basic limitations, however, of being earthbound remained until the advent of the space age. The marriage between space and astronomy was a natural. The problem for earthbound astronomers, even those using the most powerful telescopes, was that the atmosphere distorts our vision. It's as though one were looking up from the bottom of a lake to try and see the stars. In addition, most of the matter in the cosmos is utterly dark. It can't be seen with an optical or light sensitive telescope. It was in this realm, the realm of the invisible universe, that a number of astonishing breakthroughs would be made. Our first attempts to probe into our invisible universe by actually rising above the atmosphere were conducted in 1946 using captured German rockets with pinhole cameras. Astronomers on the ground continued to try by tuning into radio waves that could penetrate the atmosphere, which sounded something like this. To listen to the heavens if they couldn't see it. One day in 1967, two British radio astronomers were startled by a potentially momentous sound that began to come across their receivers. They began to hear a source of radio waves that exhibited extremely regular pulsations. This object beeped on and off with the precision of a clock that loses only 1 second in a million years. They named the source of the radio waves only [music] half jokingly the little green men. The little green men in fact turned out to be a pulsar, a star beeping on and off. But it was here in radio astronomy that we started to hear the very beginning of the universe itself. The universe is filled with a faint whisper of radio waves discovered in 1965. This radiation we think was emitted when the universe was about a million years old. >> Steven Weineberg is the Nobel Prize winner who wrote the first three minutes. >> These radio waves seem to be coming with the same intensity from all directions. And that indicates to us that at that time when this radioatic was produced. Uh the universe didn't consist of stars and galaxies and clusters of galaxies. It was just a uniform pretty featureless gas of hydrogen and helium without any of the ordinary things we see in the sky, stars or galaxies. Certainly no astronomers. >> But what had happened then? What in fact existed now? It was a beginning. The astronomers tried desperately to search the skies for more relics of this unknown, eerie past. The radio astronomers were picking up the sounds of radiation of objects in the sky. This radiation was also present in the form of light, X-rays, and ultraviolet rays. All were blocked by the atmosphere. Lifted by rockets and balloons, men sent exploratory instruments into space. When space technology finally advanced to the point that we could send [music] satellites equipped with X-ray devices aloft, the revolution began. NASA sent up an orbiting astronomical observatory known as OAO1. They followed it with its successor, OAO2, which orbited the Earth 22,000 times, sending back thousands of astronomical observations. Skyab and other vehicles went aloft for more images. And for the first time ever, man began to receive back from space images of the stars, the galaxies, our own sun. Without question though, the launching of explorer satellite Uhuru was one of the major milestones. Ricardo Gioone was one of the project managers. The Huru was um a dream that um some of us had since uh was 63. We had seen the first indication that there were X-ray stars in the sky in ' 62. And it became immediately obvious that we needed more time to observe what was going on and more precision in finding out where the stars actually were in the skies. By the end of the Uh-huh mission, a new map of the heavens would be drawn. We began to find stars we had never seen, discover stars in disguise, and watch closely for the first time their dance of death and creation that in fact became the seeds of life throughout the universe. We were able to confirm our understanding that the stars shining in the sky in fact only shown for a portion of their life. They then began to deplete the energy burning in their cores. When that happened, they would start to collapse under their own gravitation. As their shell pressed upon the core, it released vast amounts of [music] energy that expanded the star until it became a red giant. The temperature would rise to an extraordinary degree, perhaps a billion degrees or more within a fraction of a second. The heat would instantly convert the simpler, lighter elements which made up the star into the heavier elements needed to form life. Its fate then depended on how massive the star was. If it were greater than our sun, [music] it might end in a spectacular explosion called a supernova, spewing forth the elements of life. >> [music] >> The discovery via X-ray astronomy that these elements for life were being formed right now elsewhere in the universe was a profound one. The Einstein X-ray Observatory was about to come back with another profound one. It was the Einstein that returned with the awesome revelation of the phenomena known as black holes. >> Apparently there are galaxies where at their very centers there is a black hole present for some reason we don't understand. And this black hole is an extremely massive dense body. so dense that the gravitational field will not allow light to escape from the black hole. But that when matter gets in the vicinity of the black hole, it's inexraably put into a very tight orbit around it and heated to a very very high temperature so that uh it gives off X-rays and we can't see those X-rays from the surface of the ground. We can see them with telescopes in space such as the Einstein X-ray Observatory. >> The phenomenon of black holes was not only an astounding phenomenon of itself for astronomers to ponder. It led them to the startling possibility that our universe might in fact be one of many universes. The whole question of black holes of course is uh very difficult to understand for u scientists let alone non-scientists because it involves space curling up on itself in a strange way. But there are models of the universe that suggests that there may be other universes that are not directly observable but are connected to us by what are called wormholes. These are regions of space and time that have curled around in such a way that they lead from one universe to the other. Now, how would we see this connection, this wormhole? To us, it might appear as a black hole, a region into which if you drop anything, it disappears from our universe, but in the other universe, it might appear as what is called a white hole. a region out of which mysteriously things emerge almost as if from nowhere. >> There may be many such wormholes connecting a multitude of different universes. As we began to understand supernova, black holes, and to identify mass in the universe, we began to draw a picture of how the very universe itself formed. The astronomers called it the big bang. We can trace the history of the universe back to a time when the temperature was about a million billion degrees when the universe was perhaps a 10 billionth of a second old. Uh at that time the expansion of the universe had barely begun and the whole universe that we can now see with the largest telescopes a sphere of about 10 billion light years across at that time was no more than about a few centimeters in radius. Uh the universe starting at that moment expanded and cooled. Nuclear reactions were going on all the time. For the universe, it was still too hot for ordinary atoms to hold together. I mean, the universe was just a smooth soup of nuclei and electrons. [music] Eventually, when it got to a few hundred thousand [music] years old, maybe a million years old, the temperature dropped to a few thousand degrees, perhaps half the temperature of the surface of the sun. At that time, for the first moment, it was possible for atoms to hold together. It became possible for gravitation to start clumping the matter into galaxies, [music] clusters of galaxies, eventually into stars. Uh so the all the structure we see in the sky, the clusters of galaxies, the galaxies, the stars could have first began to form when the universe [music] was about a million years old. Our knowledge about the galaxies and the spaces between them has advanced tremendously. But it seems for each new advance a new mystery appears. One of the things that astronomers are at a loss to explain right now is the matter between the galaxies, the quote missing matter. >> We really don't like the name missing matter anymore because the matter isn't missing. It's the light that's missing. So we we've gone to dark matter or non luminous matter. But it really looks like probably 90% of the mass in the universe is not radiating. It's just not the kind of matter that we see in normal stars. And so, in a sense, this is this is a joke. This is a joke for astronomers because we became astronomers thinking we were going to study this this glorious universe and now we find out we're only studying five or 10% of the universe. physicists are now getting into the act and they're trying to study from their um particle physics what these other non- luminous things could be. >> So the question is what is the dark matter? >> That's right. That's right. And at the present time the only answer is we really don't know. It could be any of of a number of things. It could be very faint stars. Uh, in which case our models of stellar evolution would have to be changed because we've made models based on what we could see. We didn't think there were stars that were much fainter than a tenth of the of the mass of the sun. Um, it could be it could be rocks. It could be coal rocks. It could be planets of the size of Jupiter which we just can't detect. But you would need enormous numbers of these things. It could be little black holes. It could be massive black holes. It could be a whole new zoo of particle physics. Nutrinos, axons, the the list is endless. Many of these particles have never been observed. We don't even know that they exist. But we can attribute we can attribute properties to them which would just do what we know this dark matter has to do. I think there's no longer any doubt in most people's minds, most astronomers minds, that this dark matter really exists. Uh the problem is what it is. >> As speculative as these theories are, advanced astronomical instruments may well find the clues to the answers. The great hope is [music] that in some of the things that the theoretical physicist thinks may have happened at the very near the very beginning of the universe could have left some kind of relic that [music] would be present in the universe that we see today. And you can find in the physics literature uh speculations quite intriguing, very mathematically ingenious, may even be true about periods of inflation and when the whole universe that is now visible grew out of a single infinite decimal quantum fluctuation. Or maybe even more strange when there was a phase transition like the melting of ice but in which the number of dimensions of space dropped from some large number. The most popular [music] value is nine down to what we now know as the three dimensions of ordinary [music] space. Uh, of course we can't look back at those [music] early times and our best hope is that the processes that were going on then left some sort of relic, some sort of fossil that astronomers might be [music] able to find in the universe today. [music] >> [music] >> What is clear is that space exploration is opening up the universe for us to see, to understand in ways never even dreamed of before. [music] And today, the US, the Soviets, the Japanese, and the Europeans are eagerly exploring it with ever more fascinating [music] questions. There was however another world that space exploration opened up almost by accident. Perhaps TS Elliot guessed it when he wrote, "We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. [music] >> [music] [music] [music] >> So, you can see like that I have films that show that that weird um problem. And I don't know if it's a processing problem. Um, but it's weird that it's fading in the middle and not on the edges cuz traditionally you would think that the outer exposure would I I don't know, but I've run across this with a couple of films and it's frustrating. You can't really fix it. Um, maybe AI will save us and allow us to do that, but uh I don't think so. All right, what do we got? What's the next thing? Uh yeah, let's uh learn about some horsemen of the pompus. Enjoy. [music] >> [music] >> The second largest nation in South America is the Republic of Argentina. Our country is very wealthy because of the cattle, wheat, corn, and wool raised on the level plains stretching inland from Buenocidis, our national capital. At Buenocidis, the great river La Plata is 30 mi wide. Ships come to the city's docks from all over the world. Our capital is one of the Western Hemisphere's most beautiful cities. It has handsome parks and broad avenues. Most of our buildings, like those which house our government, are more European than American in style. Our ancestors were mainly Spaniards and Italians and when they came from Europe they brought their old traditions with them. 3 million people live here now and all of us are proud that Buenosides has become one of the biggest and busiest cities in the world. Our restaurants serve the foods raised on the open plains not far away. We are great meat eaters because in our country beef is plentiful. We have a mild climate and spend much time out of doors. Many homes are built around patios. These shaded courtyards originated in Spain and are found widely throughout Latin America. The coolness of the patio is especially welcome during the warm days of December, January, and February, the months of the summer season south of the equator. But living in the crowded city is far different from life on the great plane called the PMPA which surrounds Buenosidis for hundreds of miles. The PMPA is the source of our country's wealth. As flat as the sea, the level PMPA land stretches on and on. Its black soil is deep and fertile, well suited for raising both crops and livestock. Water for animals is pumped from beneath the ground by windmills and stored in open tanks. Large areas of the PMPA are set apart for raising corn and wheat. Teams of horses are used instead of motor-driven tractors, for in Argentina, gasoline and oil are expensive. Some of the farms on the PMPA are as large as a 100 square miles. They are fenced off into sections. We call these great ranches estas. Each section is looked after by a worker called a pesterero who lives with his family in a small house belonging to the owner of the estansia. Dardo is the son of the psterero in charge of the cattle of this section. Psteros like Dardo's father are paid very little but besides their home they are provided with some food and firewood. Morning on the PMPA begins with a cup of mate, made like tea with boiling water and the dried leaves of a South American tree. Dardo's first job each day is to ride out to the pasture and round up his father's horses. Instead of a heavy saddle, he uses a lambkin. Dardo learned to ride a horse just about the same time he learned to walk. Boys of the PMPA feel as much at home on horseback as boys in other lands do on bicycles. In the field is a small herd of horses which the psterero needs for riding around the Estansia. These herds are called tropeas and the horses in them always stay together. [music] Trained to follow the sound of a bell, the horses keep close behind their leader, the bell horse. Questeros spend most of the day on horseback and travel many miles. When one of his horses gets tired, Dardo's father changes to a fresh animal. Usually, a pester rides each of his horses once before the day is over. In Argentina, as everywhere else, cowboys can always be recognized by their outfits. They are fond of silver ornaments, and their knives and broad belts are heavily decorated. >> [bell] >> With his tropia, Dardo's father sets out for the day's work. Once a year, the cattle on the Estansia are counted. The psteros round up the herds from the different grazing areas and drive them into a central corral. Large ranches often have as many as 20,000 beef cattle. We can raise big herds on the PMPA because the grass and alalfa grow so abundantly. We have enough cattle to feed ourselves and in addition we send large shipments of meat overseas. Wool is also an important product of the PMPA. >> Once a year, the flocks are counted to find out how many sheep are on hand, how many have died, and how many lambs were born during the season. Some of our countrymen have grown very rich from the wheat, corn, beef, and wool raised on their huge estates. Their homes are luxurious and surrounded by gardens and parks. The trees have been imported from other parts of the world and carefully cultivated until their roots have sunk deep enough to reach the water beneath the soil. Ordinarily, trees do not grow untended on the pompa. The owners of many estansas spend most of their time in Buenocidis or foreign countries. There are also owners who live on their estates and pay close attention to the management of their properties. Each section of the Estansia is enclosed by miles of high barbed wire fence which must be inspected every day. If a fence breaks, the cattle and sheep will move into the fields where the crops are growing. The PTO carries tools and spare wire for making repairs. Shortly before noon, the men working near a corral meet at the cook house for lunch. The mate is passed around. It tastes like tea. And everywhere in Argentina, we like to drink it, not only at meals, but at any odd moment of the day. About the time his father is finishing lunch, Dardo leaves home for school. Classes begin at noon, for it often takes 2 hours for the boys and girls who live at the far ends of the Estansia to ride the flat miles across the plane to the schoolhouse. The school, like almost everything in Dardo's world, belongs to the owner of the Estansia. Some children are driven to school in wagons. Coats and jumpers protect their clothes from the dust of the flat and windy pompa. School is in session only in the warm months. Wood is scarce on the PMPA and it would be too expensive to heat the schoolhouse in cold weather. Like most Latin Americans, we Argentines speak Spanish. Though our accent is different from that used in other countries, we write our language in the same way. After lunch, the Psteros take on one of their most difficult jobs, rounding up horses and driving them into a corral to break them for riding. In the veins of many of these pesteros runs the blood of the famed gauchos, the half Spanish, half Indian cowboys who roamed the PMPA long ago. Like a gaucho, a psterero has to know how to catch a wild horse and stay on its back until he is its master. After the horses have been trained, they will follow the bell of the lead animal. A psterero never worries about his tropia mixing with others. At least once a year, the manager orders the foremen to prepare for the cattle drive. Some of the animals will be taken to new pastures. Others will be sent to the stockyards to be sold. Before the drive starts, the animals are put through a cattle dip. This is a chemical bath to remove insects and kill germs. If the health inspectors in Buenositis find any diseased cattle, they will quarantine the whole ranch for at least a month. Stubborn animals are made to hurry through the bath by a shock from an electrically charged stick. The pisteros will drive the animals that are to be sold in the city to a rail siding on the Estansia many miles away. Dardo is going along with his father and the other horsemen. For the long trip, he will need his poncho, a blanket that slips over the head, and his saddle and saddle cover. Away from home, Dardo's father will still drink his mate with every meal. He takes his mate cup and the long silver straw that goes with it. It will take 2 days to drive the cattle to the rail siding. By the age of 12, boys like Dardo are used to long hours in the saddle and able to ride as far as the older horsemen. The horses are well trained and help the posteros keep the cattle together. Heat. Heat. As one ride straight across the open fields, the PMPA seems as big as any place can be. It is nothing but the flat land, the empty sky, and the cattle. In the late afternoon, the horsemen find a place near water where they can make camp for the night. When the poettos have decided where they will sleep, the packs of the horses are unloaded. The bundles of firewood brought from home must be used with care because there is nothing on the pompa with which to make a fire. Even on a trip, Psteros like to keep themselves busy, either by mending harnesses or making cowhide belts. For the evening meal, sides of freshly killed animals are roasted on spikes. When dinner is served, each man slices his own chunk of roast meat and helps himself to bread. Because they must start the next part of the journey long before sunrise. The men go to bed early. The saddles and lambkins are used as mattresses and the ponchos as covers. Soon the camp is asleep, except for the men who take turns watching the cattle. At daybreak, the drive moves on across the pampa to the railroad. Railroads join the outlying points on the PMPA with Buenosidis and the other big cities along the river, La Plata and Rosario. La Plata is one of our meat packing centers. The packing plants along the docks are called Friorifos, which means refrigerators because large amounts of beef and other meats are frozen there. Before meat is frozen, it is graded by inspectors who make sure it is of good quality. Besides freezing plants, we have large caneries where meat is cooked and packed in jars or tins. From the harbors of La Plata, Rosario, and Buenosidis, we send our beef and other meats to countries across the seas. We also send large amounts of wool, corn, and wheat. And in return, Argentina receives machinery, cloth, and fuel needed from other countries. Sometimes as many as 200 ships from all over the world are docked at Buenocidis, the second largest port in South America. These ships take to the world are cattle, wheat, corn, and wool. All these have come from the PMPA. This vast level plane where the climate is mild and the earth is rich has made the Republic of Argentina the wealthiest nation in South America. So is there an accent? Is he trying to uh accurately pronounce um these terms? I I don't know. I'm not sure. But one thing I'm sure of is um we have the documentation of what uh fashions upcoming fashions are for shoes in the 1940s. Enjoy. But mor or less, I still say it's zippy. [music] >> There was an old lady who lived in a shoe, but that was a long time ago. Today, both young and old ladies live in a great [music] many shoes. There's a correct type for every occasion and costume from early morning on. for the these are a suede rainbow in smart Texas Centennial colors. Three examples of what the well-dressed foot will wear during the daytime. The open toe is extremely smart for street wear. This one's perforated. The rocking toe shoe that gives the wearer plenty of room yet retaining the impression of a small foot. and the new flats with square toe and heels made of natural linen. Here are the costumes with which these go. dressy tailored suit, [music] Mexican hurachis, woven leather in vivid patterns, and a corksold sandal in woven string linen. Again, the Texas Centennial Colors, [music] who takes her golfing seriously, a shoe with a tea holder. What will they think of next? >> [music] >> brass rails, Parisian boot type dinner shoes, or the new Palisades Last with a builtup toe that means extra room. A striking contrast in white suede and black patent. A nail head model with brass trimmings and brass toe plate. A shoe that's far from sober, but just what? As the evening's dancing begins, time hangs lightly on my lady's ankle. A glamorous watch shoe, great evening sandal with open toe, heel, and thigh. Just a strap with a soul. [music] [music] >> [laughter] >> That came from uh Craig Baldwin. Uh oh, somebody's at the door. I think it's my new intern. Uh anyways, thanks for tuning in today. I appreciate your eyeballs. uh donate, like, subscribe, use the super thanks button, Patreon, etc.