Celluloid Salesman Kino DVD excerpt...
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Description:
This fourth collection of classroom shorts from the A/V Geeks Film Library reveals how sly marketers used 16mm films to shape new generations of loyal consumers. Under the pretense of education, these filmmakers in gray flannel suits promoted their products in the guise of phony newsreels (News Cavalcade), classroom shorts (Your Daily Bread), and travelogues (This Is...Elk Country) -- forerunners of the modern-day infomercial. They depict an American consumer wonderland in which furniture is doused with DDT (Doomsday for Pests), a blender is a piece of modern sculpture (Comprehending Blending), and sex goes hand-in-hand with the sale of copier toner (Miss Puff).
As an added insight into the world of these real-life Mad Men, THE CELLULOID SALESMAN includes a sampling of rare promotional films not intended for public consumption, such as Freeze-In (a spin-off of TV's Laugh-In, aimed at appliance salesmen) and A Summer Opportunity (in which Alistair Cooke extols the benefits of a career in encyclopedia sales).
Curated by Skip Elsheimer
Produced for video by Bret Wood
Complete Record: This fourth collection of classroom shorts from the A/V Geeks Film Library reveals how sly marketers used 16mm films to shape new generations of loyal consumers. Under the pretense of education, these filmmakers in gray flannel suits promoted their products in the guise of phony newsreels (News Cavalcade), classroom shorts (Your Daily Bread), and travelogues (This Is...Elk Country) -- forerunners of the modern-day infomercial. They depict an American consumer wonderland in which furniture is doused with DDT (Doomsday for Pests), a blender is a piece of modern sculpture (Comprehending Blending), and sex goes hand-in-hand with the sale of copier toner (Miss Puff). As an added insight into the world of these real-life Mad Men, THE CELLULOID SALESMAN includes a sampling of rare promotional films not intended for public consumption, such as Freeze-In (a spin-off of TV's Laugh-In, aimed at appliance salesmen) and A Summer Opportunity (in which Alistair Cooke extols the benefits of a career in encyclopedia sales). Curated by Skip Elsheimer Produced for video by Bret Wood
Transcription
[Music] Freez in is meant specifically for the sales people never meant to be shown anywhere else and in fact at the beginning of freezing you'll see it says you know this is for internal use only very interesting and I love seeing films like that because that meant this is not meant for the general public and you can see why cuz it's just ludicrous it's supposed to be a campy haha film but they fail so miserably that it it's the type of thing that I love it's one of the few films that I've shown where people have booed um after I showed it but it's just such an interesting artifact because you know it features the people that we're in laughing and not folks it's suck it to me time and it's it's got jokes but it's just the pacing is just wrong thanks I love watching failure like that and it's like watching an excruciatingly slow train [Applause] wreck
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