AV Geeks 16mm Lunch 6-17-2025

Hello everybody. This is Skip Alzheimer. Welcome to the AV Geeks Lunchtime streaming show where we watch old 16mimeter films and think about them and talk about how great they are and how great our lives are and all that stuff. Um, so, uh, it's funny. Yesterday I showed a uh propaganda film that was made in Indonesia and it was actually having people clamoring for a hoa. So here's another HOA uh Hoja and the camel's head. Enjoy. [Music] In a way, a moving picture screen is like a magic window that can open out anywhere in the world. Here is a peaceful corner in a nearby city. The noonday sun is hot and all is quiet. [Music] All is quiet. Our eager donkey, well, our donkey is ready to carry us just a few streets away for a visit with our friend the shake, who often passes the noon hour in that coffee house, retelling the old stories of Nasaredin Hocha. We could well use the Hocha's wisdom and humor in troubled times like these to help us with some of our problems. There's another way of solving problems with education. And that picture of the new school is good to see. [Music] [Applause] Uh-oh. That troublemaker Hamid is going inside. Let's hope he'll be quiet while the shake tells of Naseredine. Hocha. Coffee. Coffee. Hamid is in a sour mood. Why not? Have you seen that new model school? We've both seen it. The shake and I liked it very much. What did you think of it, Affendi? It has the spirit of our architectural traditions and the art of our culture. in such a school. I hope our children will learn to appreciate their heritage as well as learn the skills of the modern world. It's not modern. Everything old has to go if we want progress. That's your opinion. A lot of my friends think so, too. And one school won't make us forget all the other problems. Education trains us to solve other problems with intelligence. That'll take centuries and we have to move fast. We know your methods, Hamid. Tear down everything and start your way. Nothing is right if it doesn't agree with you. You are young, Hamid. You do not understand that worthwhile things are built up slowly. Even though tearing down can be done in a hurry. Your kind of criticism is destructive. You're wrong. I'm not destructive. You're not destructive. Have you visited the school or looked at the books? We don't have to look. We have smart leaders who study these things and tell us. Maybe you'd be smarter to examine things yourself. Enough of this arguing. I know a story of Naseredin Hocha which might help you harm and other people too who believe what they hear without questioning. It is not easy to spin good yarn. As the faithful wife of Nasaredine could well have told you, first the snarled and dirty wool that is cut from the sheep must be carded and cleaned. Then it takes many hours of many days for a woman to pick the longest fibers and twist them on her spindle to make the yarn. By the time it was evening, the wife of Naseredin was always tired. [Music] [Music] Being a woman, the Hocha's wife thought of all the things she needed as she set off to sell her precious yarn. There were new clothes. There was a rug. There was a flagen of sherbet and there was the wool merchant. [Music] Two piestas. Only two piestas. In vain did the Hocha's wife argue for the true worth of her yard, but it was like arguing with a stone. In the end, the greedy merchant had his way. Only two measly piestas for those long days of work. [Music] [Music] the merchant should have known that while it is unfair to cheat a fool, it is dangerous to cheat a wise man. By the time his good wife had finished another week's work, the Hocher had made up his mind. Carefully he wound the wool about the head of a camel, so that when the camel's head was fully covered, it would appear to be a tremendous ball of yarn. [Music] I offer 20 piestas. As usual, the merchant offered much less than the yarn was worth, or rather much less than he thought it was worth. To his surprise, the hocha cried, "Agreed. Cash down." [Music] Now the merchant was suspicious. I hope there's nothing but wool inside. Only the head of a camel. H how the merchant laughed, but not for long. Angril he confronted Nazeradine, but the Hocha remained calm. See here, I told you it was the head of a camel, but you hadn't looked for yourself. Now, take this lesson to heart, and you will gain far more than by cheating others. [Music] And so we all can learn from this trick of the big lie that Naseredine used to teach the greedy merchant a lesson. Sometimes it is hard to believe that under the wool wrappings of truth there are many lies. But a wise man opens up all problems and searches for the truth himself. I wonder if we are as wise as the hocha. [Music] I mean, Hamid is always upset. I mean, he talks like this all the time. He's got some sort of sinus problem, so he's constantly has sinus headaches and he's always mad. I'm sorry that some of you think that Hojo is a punishment. Um, for me it's refreshing to see each one. I, uh, it's really this insane propaganda that just makes me happy. So, there you go. All right. Uh, so we've been, uh, working with the Preer Archives. They've been scanning a bunch of new stuff. And so, uh, here's some some choice things that we have found. Um, this is Beyond All Barriers. What do you think this film is about? Beyond all barriers. What potentially could it be about? Uh, is it about communism? Is it about puppets? Or is it about something else? Enjoy. Yes, I'm locating the call now. One moment, please. Hey. Hey. Hello. Hello, sir. Would you please have Mr. Cole call operator 230 in New York? Hello, would you ring me a number, please? Today, it is possible for people to communicate with one another almost anywhere on Earth. Worldwide communication is helping to make a better world by bringing to man increased knowledge and understanding. The air is filled with messages and images, ideas and information, transcending all the old barriers that used to separate people from one another. Heat. Heat. [Music] The fact that communication is a reality today is due in no small measure to the dream of one man, Alexander Van Bell. Bell had many dreams. Like a handful of visionaries, he thought that man might actually fly. Getting off the ground at first took the form of huge kites. The biggest of all called signant was towed to sea for a good breeze and actually carried a man a loft. Then came the bell planes which took to the air a few years after the Wright brothers. Sometimes the ideas began as models like this little hydrooil boat. The big boat that resulted clocked over 70 m an hour way back in 1919. Not bad for a dreamer. But Bell's greatest invention, dated at 1876, was the telephone. Pondering the revolution in communication that he and others had started, Belle foresaw a day when it would be worldwide, reaching beyond the geographical barriers that separated people. And he felt that when that day came, communications would help to bring about a better understanding among people everywhere. The day is here. But what of Belle's dream? What is the value of communications to the people of the world? That value has been long in the making. Long before man, the air was filled with sounds. the sounds of communicating birds and reptiles, animals and insects. There were sounds for calling and coaching the young and serenades for mating time. To these earthly inhabitants, the ability to communicate was a matter of life and death. Our remotest ancestors undoubtedly talked to one another with sounds inherited from an animal world. But gradually a wonderful new dimension was added, a dimension of thought and ideas and memory and a desire to express things, who we are and what we did. Human communication became something unique, making possible society and civilization. And what a thing that was. Look at it here at Ankor, a monument to Buddhism in the jungle of Cambodia. Anchor is dead. The people are gone. The temples deserted. But it is not mute. The stones the people of Anchor carved still speak across the centuries, communicating an idea of who they were and how they lived. Faces in the jungle. Part of a priceless human heritage. A city in the clouds. Another part of that heritage. This is Machu Picchu in the Andes of Peru, the sacred city of the ancient Incor. No more impregnable fortress was ever conceived. [Music] So carefully fitted with the stones of Machu Picchu that they stand intact today as they stood centuries ago. More than anything else, Machu Picchu was a symbol of man's ability to overcome a forbidding environment. An ability that has been communicated from age to age down through the centuries. Pyramids in the desert and in the tombs beneath them, the treasures of 4,000 years of Egyptian civilization. Egypt's greatest treasure was a collection of expressive symbols and pictures, the language of hieroglyphics. For here, writing flowered, an enduring contribution to human communication. In the tombs of the pharaohs, the images abound. It was as though by telling the whole story of life, life itself could somehow be preserved. The story they told formed an enduring chronicle of this remarkable civilization, even though centuries ago its last days ended. But even as Egypt was fading, a new day was coming to a tiny piece of land across the Mediterranean, Greece, the Acropolis at Athens, the enduring monuments of Pericles. How much there was to commemorate here where the human mind was set free from the age-old shackles of tyranny and superstition. The names that unbounded, Socrates and Aristotle, Plato and Escilis, and more. The very stones seem to echo with their thoughts. For the many of whom each individual is but an ordinary person, are still better judges than a single man. The difficulty, my friends, is not to avoid death, but to avoid unrighteousness, for that runs faster than death. Athens was and is an idea, a heritage of mind even more than marble. After Athens, man was free. free for pilgrimages of the human mind that would seek out new meanings for life and new forms to communicate those meanings. [Music] One of these meanings is expressed in the cathedral at chart. Every part a mirror of medieval life and above the parts one idea stands out. an idea of love and devotion. Inside the cathedral, the idea continues in the most beautiful stained glass the world has ever seen. The windows of shot are virtually one magnificently illustrated Bible, adding a new dimension of color and elegance to human communication. To express these things, the people of the village of Sha labored devotedly to erect the majestic spires that rise beyond a wheat field in France. Everywhere in the world, here in Guatemala, for instance, stand monuments that testify to the abiding desire of human beings to communicate. In the past, this meant incorre. [Music] Now communication is worldwide. Thus, as people probe the past, deciphering its language and its meaning, all the knowledge and wisdom of previous civilizations can become available to everyone. Now that communications envelop the earth, the vast knowledge of the present can also belong to all men. It can, but it doesn't yet. As a look around the world reveals, nearly every traditional setting today bears the imprint of modern technology. Our world is a world of contrasts, the old and the new. The symbols of a new world are everywhere from New York to Hong Kong. This is no longer a civilization of just this valley or these planes. It has a new dimension. The industrial revolution has flowered, giving the world a potential that completely overshadows the power of all the laborers of Pharaoh. Such power is something quite new in the history of civilizations. [Music] Discoveries by scientists everywhere are changing our civilization almost daily. Because of science, it is now literally possible to make the ancient desert bloom so that every human being on Earth can have a decent life. This is quite possibly the most important fact and the most important problem of our time. For now, people everywhere know this even though it may not have come to pass in their village yet. [Applause] Because of science, it is today possible to explore the sunless depths of the sea. [Music] [Applause] [Music] It is also possible to probe the far reaches of outer space. [Music] New discoveries in communication occur continually by scientists like What happened? What happened? I have to go check that file. Like something something crapped out. I don't understand. Technology, man. The history of communication. It all boils down to a corrupt Meg 4 file that craps out. Um, that's where we're at now. It's not um, uh, you know, smoke signals or whatever they were talking about regarding language and communication. It's about some bit that's flipped and it's causing issues. So, I apologize for that. Uh, hopefully this film will make up for it. Uh, I've shown this I showed this like four years ago, but man, it's so good. Uh, it is made by, uh, the woman who also made for Coke Club, um, Joan Miklin Silver, and it is yet another urban tale, uh, which is features little kids who are just barely interacting with adults. Um, this is the case of the elevator duck. Enjoy. Bless me. [Music] Some detectives going for disguises and all that, but I don't believe in it myself. In my opinion, the best thing to do is just go natural. That way, no one will be a detective. Things are a little slow right now, but that don't mean I could take it easy. I got to keep my eyes open cuz you'll never know. Three children and a possible kidnapper. That's one mean looking fat dude. You mess around with him and he'll squish you flat. Well, don't look like there's no case here. Think I'll go upstairs and get me some breakfast. [Music] What you doing here, Jack? I'm not going to take you. No way. What? You trying to get me in bad trouble or something? [Music] Quit looking at me. Listen, Jack. They don't allow no catch on this project. And I ain't getting us kicked out for no duck. No way. [Music] Okay. Okay. I'll take your case. [Music] There you go, duck. It's nice and comfortable in here for you. [Music] Move aside, son. Mom. A Gilbert. I don't have no time to play games this morning. Now come on now. Move aside. But but mom Gilbert move. I found it on the elevator. Found it on the We wait two years to get in the project and you bring home a duck. Housing police catch us. We'd be thrown out into the streets. Found it on the elevator. Now, what kind of mess is that? Who this duck belong to? That's what I'm investigating about. All right, I'll give you two days to find out who the owner of the duck is. Be quiet, boy. No quacking. Hey man, want to shoot a few? Nah, I'm on a case. Yeah, what case? Secret, man. Can't talk about it. Sure. Sure, big detective. [Music] Hey, what you doing to yourself? I bet you some crazy somebody out looking for you right now. And I got to let them know I got you without the housing police catching on. [Music] Yeah. Hello. [Music] [Applause] Hey, bang. Bang. [Music] On a big case, huh? Too busy to shoot a few baskets, huh? Big time detective, man. You're pitiful, [Music] man. [Music] Aren't you going to push a button? [Music] What floor pl you want? I guess you just dig elevators. That's okay. I dig them myself. [Music] Well, see you. Well, Mrs. Williams, uh, I've received a complaint here, uh, that you have animals in the apartment. The rules? No pets in the project? Yes, I would it be possible for me to take a look around? I got to go to the bathroom. Doc, if you ever keep your mouth shut, now is the time. [Applause] Son, can I take a look in there, please? Just a minute. Come in. How you doing, son? Be good. Yep. You sure did good in keeping quiet. Gilbert. Gilbert, I've changed my mind. It's getting too dangerous. You don't find out who that duck belongs to by tomorrow morning, I'm taking it to the animal shelter. But mom, no one's going to adopt a full grown duck, they're going to put him to sleep. Well, you heard that, Jack. By tomorrow night, you'll be in somebody pot cooking for supper. [Music] Gilbert, but don't poke your fingers through that. [Music] Don't you have anything else better to do? Uh-uh. Well, I'm going to make us some nice hot cocoa. [Music] Mama, what you want, baby? Would you say a duck is a member of the bird family? Why certainly? That's what I thought. I've been going about this whole thing all along. This duck's going to find its own way home. [Music] Is this it? [Music] Don't worry about it. We got 14 more floors to go. Is this your floor? [Music] They're going to be here all night before those two get finished. All right, young. What are you doing here? All right, listen. There's no layman in the stair hall. I'm going to let you go this time. However, the next time I'm going to take your names down and send them into the office. [Music] Let's go. I know how you feel, but most birds have to migrate hundreds of miles, and you just have to go another 13 floors. [Music] Don't worry, I'm still going to carry you. [Music] Take your time. [Music] Even we ain't come to the right floor yet or something wrong with this bird's sense of direction. [Music] Hey, hey, hey. [Music] Everything check out fine. I'll go get me some breakfast. [Laughter] I don't believe it. After all that trouble I went through, what's the matter with that kid? I expose myself to danger on account of him. And this is how he pays me back. Ooh, I'mma tell that kid a piece of my mind. [Music] Get this dog out of here. What before you bring this dog back? I was in police. They told us we don't get rid of dog. They get rid of us. So my little brother Julio, he starts to cry and cry. We hear one, one, he got one friend, this dog. So he put dog on elevator. Maybe someone will take him and love him. And now you bring this dog back. What you want to break my little brother's heart again? Salt. Ve, please, please. This not our dog no more. This is your dog. Keep it. This is pal. Why did I take this case? Why didn't I wait around for something more routine like a mugging? [Music] Man, I'mma go crazy with all these idea I keep getting. [Music] I brought this for the daycare center for the kids. It belongs to Julio. Julio. Julio, come here. [Music] Wait one moment, please. What I said before, I'm sorry. That's all right. What you did for Julio and the dock, that was nice. Thank you. Us detectives run into all kinds of stuff like that. Well, see you. Goodbye. [Music] Yeah. Heat. Heat. Such a great film. Holy cow. I forgot that it has a noir aspect to it. Solving crimes and mysteries. Um, yeah. and you know living in the project you can't have ducks so what are you gonna do uh okay uh one last film and this is from again from the prelinger archive and I believe that this one is complete but I'm going to have to mute the first part of it because it's a Beatles song uh this is the earth belongs to the people enjoy [Music] Unless we do something about overpopulation. We're headed for disaster. Overpopulation means more pollution and starvation. More people mean more goods. And cars mean more pollution. The world population is growing faster than food supplies. Our government is concerned about the poor and overpop populated countries and how they will be able to feed themselves. The problem will be great for the United States. Well, since we have the most food, we're going to have to decide who lives when the food runs out. Our humanitarian motives run deep and our conscience will demand. Let me share an urge. Come on, Mr. Big Wig. Cut it out. Everyone tells us the same thing. [Music] But that doesn't make it true. [Music] The so-called overpop populated countries are in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Most of them have less people per square mile than countries in Europe. [Music] These people are all poor and non-white. But it's whites that say overpopulation. [Music] Even in America, there are 30 million hungry people. [Music] There are four countries with few hungry people because all the people share the resources of their country and help decide what gets made and how things are used. [Music] 1/4 of the world's people live in these countries. China, North Vietnam, North Korea, and Cuba. People are hungry in countries like Brazil because the land is owned by Americans who instead of growing food. Overpopulation is a hoax. People are poor and hungry because a few rich people steal the resources of the earth which belong to everyone. There are not too many people. There is too much theft. Mr. Bigwig says there is pollution because there are too many people. But people don't pollute. [Music] [Music] [Music] industry makes most of the dangerous things in the air. In San Jose, California, one factory of Owens Corning fiberglass makes more exhaust than 1 million new cars. Cars make about 1/2 the air pollution, but we're told that since we drive the cars, we should pay to clean up the air. We've been paying all along with the gasoline tax. By law, this tax is spent on highways and not smogless free public transportation. [Music] [Music] Over 12 million cars a year are junked and we have to get rid of them. What choice do we have? The car pollutes, not the driver. It's the corporations who built the cars and used the profits they got from us to make sure we'd have no other way to get around who pollute. But President Nixon says government and industry are taking the lead in pollution control. In 1969, American corporations spent a tiny 1.5% of their profits to clean up their own mess. But we really pay since the government gives back 70% of that money in tax breaks. Taxpayers will pay $10 billion in the next 5 years for water treatment plants. Industry will pay only three billion, but they use 34 of our water. It's the same with air pollution. Whenever companies pay, they get tax breaks or raise prices and make us pay. The government sets up agencies to protect the environment. [Music] The corporations want to have their cake and eat it, too. No wonder Mr. Bigwig says people pollute. They want us to pay. The goal of these corporations is to make profits. So they have to sell the things they make. 20% of what they make is weapons. They cost a lot and we never use most of them. Some are used to destroy Indochina. Big corporations get millions of dollars in profits by making these weapons. We pay for this with 70 cents out of each tax dollar. To make these weapons from steel and chemicals, millions of tons of pollution are produced. Most of what the corporations make is for us to buy. We spend thousands of dollars on cars, refrigerators, televisions, stoves, and washing machines that shouldn't cost so much. While we're trying to keep up the payments, the things break down. Advertisements are always telling us to buy something new to make us feel younger or sexier. Corporations spend billions of dollars each year on advertising. We keep paying, but we're no better off. Inflation is ruining many of us. But the big corporations have grown by 1/3 in the last 5 years. It's not just in America that these corporations run our lives. Other countries also see their resources stolen by corporations like United Fruit, Bank of America, and Gulf, which pay slave wages to hungry workers who have no other choice. American corporations want to control the resources of these countries because they've used them up in America. Vietnam is one of these countries. Our government fights against Vietnam with a war machine built by American corporations. Polluting Vietnam is one of their tactics. Our army has sprayed a weed killer called 235T on onethird of Vietnam, 13 times more heavily than our government allows in this country. They spray it on villages. Besides killing trees, it causes many babies to be born dead and deformed. The same government that tells us about its concern for America's environment poisons the environment of Vietnam. The same corporations that pollute America while shouting pollution control make things to pollute Vietnam and call it saving Vietnam from the communists. Politicians and businessmen shout communism whenever the people of a country like Vietnam, Cuba, or the Dominican Republic want to get rid of the foreign businessmen and take control of their own resources. We really have a lot in common with the Vietnamese. The corporations that run America make profits off both of us. We are both victims of their ecological crimes. The Vietnamese are taking their country back. We could take America back, too. We could take control of our resources and technology and make sure everyone had enough food, clothing, and housing. We could make sure the earth was not ruined for the sake of profits. That wouldn't mean going back to the horse and buggy because nature can clean up reasonable amounts of dirt. That's what ecology is all about, keeping things in balance. We have too much pollution for the same reason we have bad housing, bad working conditions, discrimination, and wars of aggression. In America, the wealth is made for profit, not people. And the few people who gain wealth and power from this system will use every weapon they can to preserve it. But to survive, we have to take back that wealth and power because the earth belongs to the people. So let's all sing along with the earth. [Music] In our hands we have the whole earth in our hands. We have the earth in our hands. We have the whole earth in our hands forest and the dream in our hands. We'll have the in our hands. We'll have the sea in our hands. We'll have the earth in our hands. We'll have the ocean and the sky in our hands. We have in our hands and our hands in our hands together in our hands. [Music] In our hands, we take the earth. In our hands, we take the world. Our hands. [Applause] [Music] Ah, that explains it. All right. So, I didn't see that title thing until like just now at the end. Uh, the newsreel uh was a uh leftist um progressive uh kind of film co-op that made film pieces about things like what you just saw about uh pollution, hunger, um racial um intolerance, uh all these these factor all these things um about the Black Panthers all these like in the late 60s and early 70s and they had a network where they would distribute these and show these and so me and like looking at it if you watch the the beginning of it and you watch the end of it it's like uh kids doing a thing about ecology but then it veers and it's like oh wow they're actually really smart kids because they're talking about corporate pollution and um you know corporations taking more than their share uh and not giving back. Uh oh, and the Vietnam War. Oh. Oh, so that explains why it suddenly got very adult because it was not a kids film and I apologize for that. What a stark contrast to the case of the elevator duck. Um, so anyways, yes, and somebody said in the comments, "Well, at least that washed Hoa out of our mouths." Um, yes, it was the antithesis. I mean, it is uh I would say it's still considered propaganda. Uh, I agree probably with a lot of it because I am very uh leftist uh and progressive and was uh raised in that time. Um but uh fascinating fascinating film. Um and that mask uh the papermâché mask of Mr. Big Wig. Wow. That was quite something of him just stuffing food in his face. Wow. Um yeah. So if nothing else, boy, watching AV Geeks, you're going to see something that you didn't know that you were going to see. Uh, and I hope you appreciate that as much as I do because that's why we collect and why we show films. Um, is to see things that we haven't seen it. Uh, listen to different viewpoints and voices uh especially from the past. It's fascinating because we have a little bit of hindsight that we can apply towards it. Um, but uh, thanks for watching and thanks for the donations for uh, Case of the Elevator Duck. Uh, I think and I feel bad, but um, they only show on uh, they only show a couple of things. So I I Nathan contributed, Kevin contributed uh, and I apologize if I miss somebody. Um, but yeah, if you like what you saw and you would like to see uh me talk about this stuff live, I'm doing a show tonight uh films about and made in Canada and uh it's called Oak Canada and it's at 7 o'clock tonight at the Alamo Draft House and I think there's still some seats and would love to see you in person if I haven't seen you in a while. Uh this is in Raleigh, North Carolina. So, you know, some of you could drive and maybe make it in time, like uh you know, it's 2:05 now, so maybe you could uh um get in the car, drive four hours. Um but uh yeah, we'll do a film strip. It'll be fun. Uh I regrettably I won't be able to do the 16 millimeter projector because one of the films uh one of my favorite films uh is beginning to shrink a little bit and has problems going through the projector and that makes everybody sad when that happens. So anyways, thank you so much for tuning in. I appreciate your eyeballs and I appreciate your comments and uh if you like what you saw, hit the thumbs up. Uh, some of you have already donated today, so there's ability to do that via ko-fi.com/avgeeks. Nathan did that. And patreon.com/avgeeks, but even subscribing and watching other stuff that we've put online helps. So, thank you so much. You guys mean the world to me, even though it doesn't seem like it because I punish you sometimes with some of these things, but it is. It comes from love. It comes from a good place. Um, anyways, we'll see you either tonight or tomorrow. Everybody, take care. We love you. Bye.