AV Geeks 16mm Lunch 6-19-2025

Hello everybody. Welcome to the AV Geeks lunchtime streaming show where I'm Skip Alzheimer and I watch old 16 millimeter films and um there's a weird so I have blue blockers and so that's why there's a blue reflection right there from the window. Um so I'm trying to figure this out. Anyways, um so we have a bunch of stuff I've been scanning on the uh scanner behind me, behind me. Um bunch of stuff and uh I pulled a bunch of Fs mediums. Medium Fs. Medium is an 800 foot can. So, um, but first of all, we'll start off with a, uh, cornet film about coniferous forests. Enjoy. [Music] [Music] A biome is a community of living things. The vegetation that develops in a certain climate region and the animal life that has become adapted to it. Of all the major forest biomes on Earth, the community most dominated by the smallest number of species is the coniferous forest. Caniferous forests grow on high mountain sides and on the level marshlands called the tiga. Even in winter, the leaves of these trees are green. Most of these evergreens are spruces, but the pine, fur, and hemlock are also part of the coniferous forest, trees that produce their seeds and cones. The coniferous forest forms a belt around the top of North America, Scandinavia, and Siberia. It requires a frostfree but cool growing season of from 2 to 5 months. The coniferous forest biome lies south of the Arctic tundra. Where the two biomes meet, there is often a visible tree line. The caniferous forest grows on land that was shaped by glaciers. During the last ice age, which finally ended about 10,000 years ago, glaciers advanced over the land. As they moved forward, they scraped off the top soil, gouged out hollows in the ground, and squeezed the coniferous forest into a narrow band at their southern edge. When the glaciers retreated, they left behind a rocky terrain. In this terrain, a few plants began to get a foothold. Among the first were lychans which can survive in very difficult conditions. As the conditions for survival became more favorable, deciduous shrubs appeared and finally the conifers recolonized the land and became dominant. Conifers are well adapted for life here where snows are heavier than on the tundra. The conifer's spirel-like shape and their flexible drooping branches help these trees shed heavy snows. In winter, when freezing limits the water available to tree roots, adaptations that prevent water loss ensure the conifer's survival. The large tree is an unusual conifer. It sheds its needles during the winter and regrows them in the spring. The loss of needles reduces water loss, but most conifers are evergreens. They keep their needles throughout the year. Their thin needles expose little surface area and have waxy coverings which further help to reduce water loss. Because of the uniformity of the vegetation in the coniferous forest, there are fewer habitats here than in other forest biomes and consequently a smaller variety of animal life. In winter, the forest is quiet and still. There is little wind. The forest provides shelter for the few animals that stay active during the winter. The moose is the largest member of the deer family and so common to the conifer forest that the biome is sometimes called a spruce moose biome. In winter the moose feed on woody plants but depend mainly on body fat stored up during the summer and fall. This is a North American forest, but Scandinavia and Siberia have many of the same animals. The snowshoe hair develops furry pads on its hind feet that help support it in deep snow. Like the moose, snowshoe hairs are able to feed on twigs and dormant leaf buds. Migrating caribou spend the winter in the coniferous forest. The trees offer shelter from the bitter winter winds. In winter, ice locks up the water the trees of the forest depend on. But spring is approaching. Pintailed ducks arrive, beginning a massive migration of water fowl that will nest here along the waterways of the coniferous forest. Slowly, the ice gives way to water. There's more food available for the snowshoe hair. When the snow disappears, its changing color will protect it from predators, like the grizzly bears emerging from their period of winter inactivity. During the winter, some females have given birth. Their cubs begin to explore the changing landscape. As the weather warms, melting snow and ice feed the vast network of streams that water the forest. [Music] Willows and other deciduous trees that grow along the waterways put forth their catkins that precede the growth of leaves. Frogs are among the few amphibians in the coniferous forest. After spending the winter buried deep in the mud of the pond, they emerge and mate. Only a few of the tadpoles that hatch from these eggs will ever become adult frogs. In some places where deciduous trees are mixed with conifers, the forest is less dense and sunlight can reach the ground. Only here can flowering plants grow that are the main source of food for animals in the forest. Aspen leaves, for instance, are the main food for the caterpillar of the aspen toxic moth. Unlike the broad leaves of deciduous trees, the needle-like leaves of conifers are tough and indigestible. Few animals can eat them. Although birds like the red pole make their nests amid them, the young conifers, which can only grow in forest clearings, are safe from the browsing moose. The moose will eat green leaves, twigs, roots, bark, almost any part of a flowering plant that it can, but it leaves the needles of the evergreens alone. In southern coniferous forests where more deciduous trees grow, ponds are home to beavers. They feed on the branches of deciduous trees and collect them for underwater winter storage. Moose enter ponds to forage for underwater plants. This vegetation provides the bulk of their food in summer. Fungi function as decomposers here as they do in other biomes. As they break down the conifer needles that fall to the forest floor, they help to create the thin acid soil. They also provide food for red squirrels. Red squirrels carry the mushrooms to the tops of trees where they dry in the sun before the squirrels bury them. As autumn approaches, the growing season ends. Leaves of the deciduous trees begin to change color among the unchanging evergreens. [Music] There is very little fruit in the coniferous forest, but some flowering plants do produce berries at the end of the growing season. Animals turn to new sources of food. Bears fatten themselves on great amounts of these berries. As winter approaches, the red squirrel eats conifer seeds, but not while the cones are on the trees. It harvests pine cones by the thousands, throwing them to the ground. Now the squirrel prepares to store the cones it harvested. The seeds inside will keep the squirrel wellfed throughout the coming winter. The seeds of conifers also provide food for some animals like the cross bill. The cross bill's beak is especially adapted for removing seeds from deep inside the cones. The pah, a relative of the rabbit, is also busy preparing for winter. It gathers grass to store in its underground burrow. It stays alert for predators like this hawk. Temperatures [Music] fall. Daylight hours grow shorter. The growing season ends and it is winter again. Silence returns to the evergreens of this biome, the coniferous forest. [Music] So that logo at the end says a lot. says a lot about um when Coronet was part of Simon and Schustster and also MTI which was uh Motorola Tele programs which was uh mostly training films initially but then they kind of started dealing with other other things uh related to drugs, bullying etc. All right. Uh here is a BFA film and BFA was also owned by um the Cornet Phoenix people. So now there's this amalgam of cornet MTI Phoenix BFA uh films associates. It's all and we have a lot of it. Uh we've been digitizing for them. So, this is Fusion, the ultimate fire. Sounds like a great album. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] energy. Without it, civilization would fall apart in seconds. Without it, you could not blink an eye or even think to want to. Without it there is nothing, not life itself. Man has always needed energy to survive. But only in the last century has he used massive amounts of it to build a world of complex machines and towering cities. A world that has given us a high standard of living. But to keep it running, we must consume enormous amounts of energy. Most of the energy we use comes from fire. Its heat energy lifts planes across continents and warms our world. Even the electricity we take for granted usually The wires that bring us this energy almost always lead to a central power plant. Inside, steam turbine generators produce the electricity that smoothly powers civilization. To heat the steam that drives these generators, we must have fire. What feeds this fire? fuel from the earth. The decayed remains of plants and animals that lived long before man. In time, they became the fossil fuels, coal, oil, and natural gas. 300 million years of life are stored in these underground fuels. During the last h 100red years, a brief instant in the history of the planet, we have scarred the earth to reach them. Now the fossil fuels that the world needs for its survival are becoming scarce and costly. We have atomic power plants that produce energy by splitting the atom. But their fuels are costly and their byproducts deadly. We need to find a new kind of energy. Otherwise, the materials and machines that run our world may someday become useless relics. [Music] To find a new source of energy, we must look beyond the Earth, out here among the stars. Our sun, like all stars, is a raging furnace. So hot we can feel its warmth across 93 million miles of cold vacuum. [Music] To meet some of our energy needs, we have begun to capture the sun's rays with solar panels. But there is a much more concentrated source of energy. The nuclear fire found inside the sun. The fire of nuclear fusion comes from the basic unit of all matter, the atom. Imagine a single hydrogen atom surrounded by its negative electron cloud. The gentle forces in this cloud provide the energy for the fossil fuel fires we have on Earth. But on the sun, where temperatures reach thousands of degrees, the electron cloud is stripped away. What remains is the tiny positively charged nucleus. Its particles are held together by the strongest force in nature. From this nuclear force comes the energy for the sun's fire. Because it is positively charged, the nucleus is protected by an electrical force field. When nuclei near the surface of the sun approach each other, the electrical force fields prevent them from touching. Deeper in the sun at temperatures of millions of degrees, the hot nuclei move faster and hit harder. [Applause] If two nuclei move fast enough to overcome the electrical force fields, if they can get close enough to touch, the strong force pulls them together and a burst of energy is released. This is nuclear fusion. small hydrogen nuclei combining to form a larger helium nucleus. At the temperatures and pressures found at the center of the sun, vast numbers of hydrogen nuclei are crushed into helium and the fusion fire rages. The same hydrogen nuclei that power the sun are found here on Earth. For it is hydrogen that together with oxygen forms water. [Music] Water. We seldom think of it as a fuel. But if we could learn to build a fusion fire, a pool of water would power a city, and the Pacific Ocean would meet all our energy needs for millions of years. Now, with our fossil fuels running out, we face an enormously difficult task. Creating the fusion fire of the sun here on Earth. For 25 years, scientists have been trying to create a fusion fire and keep it burning. To do this, hydrogen nuclei must be heated to the temperature found at the center of the sun. But any material container used to hold the fire would be vaporized at this temperature. Scientists are trying to solve this problem by suspending the fusion fire between the jaws of a powerful electromagnet. During an experimental run, the intense magnetic field created by the magnet forces hydrogen nuclei toward its center, away from the steel arms. But the nuclei are only held there for an instant. Not long enough to sustain a fusion fire. It may be years before these men will know if their magnet is the best way to produce a fusion fire. Because it may fail, other designs must be tried. At Los Alamos, New Mexico, there is a larger magnet system and a different design, a device called silac. When electrical energy surges through the coils of this machine, it produces a donut-shaped magnetic bottle for fusion fire. If experiments here are successful, a much larger version will be built. When the system is fired, rivers of electrical current must pour through its wires to create a magnetic field strong enough to start a fusion reaction. But the energy produced by the fusion fire is much less than it takes to run the machine. Perhaps these men will find a way to make the fusion fire burn longer. Perhaps they will find a way to make nuclear fusion a new source of energy for mankind. There is another road to fusion. The laser. It's powerful penetrating light may be used to ignite a fusion fire. In Liverour, California, scientists are building the largest laser in the world. When it fires, a powerful laser pulse travels down each of its 20 arms and converges on a target chamber. As they travel down the arms at the speed of light, the laser pulses pick up more energy from amplifiers along the way. All 20 pulses arrive at the target chamber at precisely the same time. Inside, they converge on a tiny pellet of fusion fuel, heating it to millions of degrees and crushing it to a 100 times the density of lead. [Music] If enough nuclei fuse together, the pellet will burn with the energy of a tiny sun. The fuel pellet is a tiny glass or metal balloon. so small it can be lost in the eye of a needle. But if laser fusion works, one pellet will yield enough energy to lift a house 100 ft into the air. This vial contains a million pellets, enough energy to drive a freight train across the United States. Making the pellets is a painstaking task. Out of each batch, perhaps one will be good enough to be used in the giant laser. That one must be found, [Music] carefully examined for defects, and then filled with fusion fuel. Computers have been used to predict how a perfect pellet would be compressed by laser energy in a few billionth of a second. The laser approach to fusion is so complex that giant computers must be used to plan every step. Even the way the laser pulses should behave as they travel toward the target chamber. [Music] A fusion research lab might fire one or two pellets in a day. Each pellet is placed inside a target chamber to contain the hot blast from the fusion reaction. Perhaps someday a target chamber firing pellets in rapid succession will lift us out of the solar system. [Music] These men are trying to build a working fusion reactor before this century ends and before our fossil fuels run out. If they succeed, we will enter an age of inexhaustible energy. Fusion reactors will provide safe, clean power. It seems we have been given just enough fuel to move from one energy source to the next. Now in water, our most abundant resource, we have found a nearly perfect fuel. waiting to take us to the stars. unlimited energy check. Yeah. Uh okay. So, um, here's another, this is ACI, actually. Put this out. ACI Productions, who I'm trying to track down who actually owns ACI. Um, because we have several, we have more than a hundred ACI films and I'm just trying to figure out. So, anyways, this is Forest Fisherman, Story of an Otter. Doing my job. Watching the growth of the plants and trees. Seeing how the deer got through the winter. Making sure there are plenty of fish in the streams and lakes. A forest ranger learns how to watch closely and sees many things. But there is one little creature I rarely catch sight of. A water loving mammal called the otter. [Music] Otter are shy, and since they can smell and hear and see very well, it's hard to get close enough to learn about them. They're as at home in water as on land, and quickly dive out of sight if they think someone's near. [Music] Most often I see only the signs they leave, tracks and remains of fish they've caught and carried to the shore to eat. One day last summer, I finally got a chance to learn about this funny little animal. My neighbor's son, Mark, had come to get the puppy I'd promised to give him, but he also had a surprise for me. Mark's father is a fisherman, and a baby otter had gotten caught in one of his fishing nets. It was too young to be turned loose to care for itself, so Mark brought it to me. I was happy with the trade. By raising the otter, I'd finally get to watch one at close range. But a wild animal has very special needs, and raising one in a home takes a lot of thought and care. He'd need good food, lots of fish and meat, and a place to live where he'd be safe and comfortable. This kind of otter was often called a land otter, and he could live on dry land if he had to, but I knew he always liked to be around water. Luckily, I had a place all ready for him. I dug a small stream through my garden and decided that it would make a perfect home for my new pet. I planned to keep him in a pen set up so that he could splash around in water whenever he wanted to. The baby otter hadn't been in his new home very long before he taught me something I did not know. Otter like company. Alone in his pen, he was miserable. He watched the puppies sadly as they played with each other in the yard. If he were still wild, he would have been running and swimming with his own brothers and sisters. [Music] The puppies were curious about their new neighbor. The young animals seemed to want to get to know each other, but the fence kept them apart. [Music] I wasn't sure the otter would get along with the pups, but I decided to take a chance. I was amazed to see how quickly the otter became one of the crown. The pups seemed just as happy to have a lively new friend. [Music] He could still splash around in the stream that ran through the yard, but he was usually more interested in his new playmates. [Music] Even their mother adopted the otter baby as if he were one of her own puppies. [Music] I was beginning to wonder if the cub was going to forget that he was an otter. [Music] All summer long, I watched and made notes on my otter. The alert, quick little animal was always exploring and learning. Otter are quite smart and very curious, and I usually let him poke around as much as he liked. [Music] Sometimes his curiosity got him into trouble. [Applause] [Music] Autumn came and the first heavy frost of fall covered the landscape. The deer browsed in the thicket. The wild otter stayed hidden in the lakes. But my pet was teaching me new things every day. He was now almost an adult. As the weeks passed, he grew stronger and faster, and he led the puppies quite a chase. Even with his stubby legs, he could outrun a man or a dog, humping his back like an inchworm as he dashed along the ground. [Music] He played with the pups for hours, leading them round and round, teasing and hiding. [Music] All this time, though, my otter hadn't paid much attention to the water. It was a brightly colored ball that first led him into the small pool I'd built for him. [Music] The puppies couldn't quite figure out what their stepbrother was up to. This was a new game, and they weren't very sure about diving head first into the pool. But it was an important new discovery for my otter and for me. I had gotten used to seeing him romping with the pups, happy in his adopted home. Now I was watching him in his own world. And I realized that the time would come when he would leave us. He was perfectly at home in the water. He would swim on his belly or his side or even upside down. He'd come up for air every couple of minutes, then dive back down, pushing himself along with his strong, short legs and webbed toes. The otter's long tail makes a good rudder, and he can twist and glide underwater even faster than most fish. [Music] Winter came and a blanket of snow covered the forest. I began to grow worried about my pet otter. It had been a good thing to help an orphaned young animal to survive, but he was fully grown now and able to take care of himself. [Music] As a cub, he had made a playful, friendly addition to the small group of animals around my house. But as an adult, he began to act more like an otter and less like one of the puppies. He had powerful teeth and jaws and could attack fiercely if he was annoyed. Didn't usually start trouble. I knew the dogs were likely to lose if there was a fight. He spent more and more time around the water and was no longer interested in playing with the puppies. I knew that one day he'd return to his natural life. Before he did, I wanted to make very sure that he could hunt and fish for himself. I built a ladder for him, and he spent most of his time in the icy water, which was as much home for him, as the forest is for other animals. [Music] The otter is happy and active even in the coldest of winters and in water covered with ice. While other animals hibernate through the winter, an otter's thick fur and busy nature keep him warm. My otter sharpened his swimming skill until not even the fastest fish could escape him. [Music] [Applause] [Music] He was free to leave when he chose. And when the small pool froze solid, he left to find faster moving streams so that he could lid search for food in his natural way. In the cold springs of the highlands, he swam and played all winter. [Music] [Applause] [Music] He set up housekeeping in a burrow with an underwater entrance. [Music] He could swim in his door and crawl up through a tunnel to a warm, dry little den. When spring came and the snow and ice had melted, my old pet returned. But now he was a wild animal. Although the playful, bright little fellow never came back to my front yard, he still knew me and wouldn't swim away when I came upon him playing or fishing in a forest lake. I was able to spend many more hours watching him in his own environment. [Music] I've been lucky to get to know one pet otter well. Once there were thousands of these little animals in the streams and lakes, but they become fewer in number every year. Whenever a stream or lake becomes polluted, the fish die, and then the otter can't live either. They need fish to eat and clean water to swim in. For a short time, a baby otter made my home a nicer place. So, I hope someday we'll learn to keep his watery home a clean and healthy place for him to live. [Music] So I got lured into a a cool, calm, meditative state. The narrator was definitely nice and relaxed. Um, all right. So, can I make this work? I don't know. This is going to be I don't think I can do it this time. Um, so I'm going to have to cut the uh the stream short because I have a uh board meeting with I'm on the board for the American Genre Film Archive uh which is an archive of 35mm genre exploitation films that's based in Austin, Texas. And uh so we're having a meeting. Um hopefully uh I'm rubbing off on them to where they're pushing some of their titles that people just don't normally see. Uh and so hopefully those will make it out to theaters and places. Um this is based on me nudging them uh to explore some of these other titles. Um so anyways, uh I'll be back tomorrow. Tomorrow's Friday and so I'll be back and we will watch some more films and I'm scanning a bunch more films in the back here so we'll have some more new ones to watch. Um, but I appreciate you tuning in. I appreciate your eyeballs, your comments, your attention spans because those I know are uh precious commodities. Um, and if you like what you saw, hit the thumbs up, hit the like button. You can also subscribe or um you can donate via the superthanks button or go to patreon.coms donate or ko-fi.comeks. That's coffee.com. Um and uh that money goes to buy some shelving units. So there you go. Shelving units. Oh, and a dehumidifier. That's what um is being shipped out today. Uh because I need to condition the space a little bit more and deal with the moisture issues in the basement. So everybody take care. Sorry we're cutting it short, but I'll make up for it. Believe me. And I'll see you tomorrow. Take care. Bye.