Canary Bananas
Format: 16mm silent
Length: 10'
Year: 1935
Realization: Richard Leacock
Determined to make films, I finally bought my own 16mm Victor camera and a nifty Thailhamer tripod. Off we went, Polly Church, Noel Florence and me, to the Canary Islands to make a film about my father’s banana plantation. I wrote a detailed script with little drawings of each shot. Polly was script-clerk, Noel was my assistant. My father provided us with an ancient Morris-Oxford touring car. We made reflectors of plywood covered with silver paint, and we smoked cigars because that is what they did in Hollywood! Back at school I edited with rewinds and cement splices. Then we projected. I knew even then that the script was not sacred, that in filming you found things to be different and adjusted accordingly.
When I look at this film today what surprises me most is that it resembles Turk Sib, which must have stuck in my mind, yet avoids its absurdities.
Not long after completing Canary Bananas, I was sitting in my room at school and saw Robert Flaherty, the father of my classmates Monica and Franny. Flaherty was known as “the father of Documentary”, having made Nanook of the North in 1921, Moana in 1925 and Man of Aran in 1934. He was outside in the schoolyard with a 16mm Kodak Cine-Special (a very fancy camera) mounted on a huge tripod (an Akeley-Gyro) and was filming Barbara McDermott combing her long blond hair. He went on and on. He changed angles, he changed lenses, but he went on and on and I thought, “He must be mad!” and she just kept on combing her hair. Later that day, Bill Hunter brought me to his room and introduced me to Mr. Flaherty and his wife Frances. Hunter had shown them my film and they said some nice things about it, though Mrs. Flaherty mentioned that they were not that impressed by the chop-chop editing of the water sequence. Mr. Flaherty concluded by saying that “Someday we will work together...” or some such, which I took with a huge pinch of salt.
Length: 10'
Year: 1935
Realization: Richard Leacock
Determined to make films, I finally bought my own 16mm Victor camera and a nifty Thailhamer tripod. Off we went, Polly Church, Noel Florence and me, to the Canary Islands to make a film about my father’s banana plantation. I wrote a detailed script with little drawings of each shot. Polly was script-clerk, Noel was my assistant. My father provided us with an ancient Morris-Oxford touring car. We made reflectors of plywood covered with silver paint, and we smoked cigars because that is what they did in Hollywood! Back at school I edited with rewinds and cement splices. Then we projected. I knew even then that the script was not sacred, that in filming you found things to be different and adjusted accordingly.
When I look at this film today what surprises me most is that it resembles Turk Sib, which must have stuck in my mind, yet avoids its absurdities.
Polly Church, Noel Florence and me filming Canary Bananas
Not long after completing Canary Bananas, I was sitting in my room at school and saw Robert Flaherty, the father of my classmates Monica and Franny. Flaherty was known as “the father of Documentary”, having made Nanook of the North in 1921, Moana in 1925 and Man of Aran in 1934. He was outside in the schoolyard with a 16mm Kodak Cine-Special (a very fancy camera) mounted on a huge tripod (an Akeley-Gyro) and was filming Barbara McDermott combing her long blond hair. He went on and on. He changed angles, he changed lenses, but he went on and on and I thought, “He must be mad!” and she just kept on combing her hair. Later that day, Bill Hunter brought me to his room and introduced me to Mr. Flaherty and his wife Frances. Hunter had shown them my film and they said some nice things about it, though Mrs. Flaherty mentioned that they were not that impressed by the chop-chop editing of the water sequence. Mr. Flaherty concluded by saying that “Someday we will work together...” or some such, which I took with a huge pinch of salt.