Vintage documentaries return

THE 1946 documentary short “Seeds of Destiny” described the hunger and devastation of postwar Europe so powerfully that it galvanized support for relief efforts, says Ed Carter, documentary curator for the Academy of Motion Arts and Sciences’ archives.

Though it was never released theatrically, it won an Academy Award. And then, like most of the films featured in the academy’s new screening series “Oscar’s Docs: The First Twenty Years of Academy Award-Winning Documentaries -- 1941-1960,” it disappeared. The majority of the series’ films have not been seen since the year they came out.

“There is a kind of hidden history to all of these films,” Carter says. “They were huge at the time. People have forgotten about that.”

Carter describes “Seeds” as “a hugely important film that no one has heard about.”

After the war, he says, people wanted escapism, and theater owners refused to show the movie because it was too gruesome. “But it was used as a fund-raising tool, and, according to different estimates, it raised $200 million for relief for Europe.”

It was also instrumental in the United Nations’ creation of UNICEF, showing member nations why continued relief for Europe was necessary.

“They realized they needed to continue these efforts, and the film had an impact on their thinking that way,” Carter says. He adds that “Seeds” was similarly used when Congress was debating the Marshall Plan, bringing home the need for a strategy that could help ease hunger in Europe.

“Oscar’s Docs,” which begins Sept. 12 at the academy’s Lynwood Dunn Theatre in Hollywood, is an offshoot of the organization’s popular screening series “Facets of the Diamond,” which celebrated the first 75 best picture winners.

The documentary governors requested a similar series, says academy programmer Randy Haberkamp, and the search for films began.

Both Carter and Haberkamp say it’s been extremely difficult to get decent screening prints for the series.

“In some cases, we have not been able to find negative material on them, and we had to do preservation work from a print,” says Carter.

Even well-known titles such as the 1956 feature documentary winner, Jacques Cousteau’s “The Silent World,” co-directed by a young Louis Malle, has proven to be missing in action.

“I am dealing with the Cousteau people [in Paris],” says Carter. “They are trying to track down materials in Paris, and apparently they are not that well organized. Louis Malle’s son was trying to get the film for a series of his father’s films showing in New York this summer and they weren’t able to get him a print.”

WWII plants the seeds

THE academy decided to create a documentary films category in 1941, mainly because of growing conflict in Europe.

Before the war, few feature documentaries had been produced, and movie audiences were kept informed of events through weekly newsreels.

But the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor spurred both a hunger for information and a desire to shape perceptions with propaganda.

Several of the films in the series were foreign productions, including 1941’s “Churchill’s Island,” made in Canada, and the 1942 winner, “Kokoda Front Line,” an Australian film.

American war documentaries, produced under the auspices of the government, were released in several versions. “There was a definite distinction about what was being produced for the troops and what was being shown to the public,” says Haberkamp. “Also, in several cases, they would take a piece that would have been done for soldiers, recut it and have a different line of narration for public consumption.”

These multiple versions have been a bump in the road for the academy and the National Archives in Washington, D.C, which is making prints for the series. Because the filmmakers are long since dead and the documentation is so poor, both archives have had a difficult time trying to figure out which version to copy. Haberkamp admits that these war documentaries, made for propaganda purposes, are not politically correct by today’s standards. “It was a very one-sided approached to filmmaking,” he says. “They are a little bit difficult to watch.”

Still, he adds, “the interesting thing about the series is when you look at them in chronological order, you do get this sense of movement and things that influenced each other. You see the development of the documentaries, and you get a better sense at that time of what was really fresh. I think it gives audiences more of an ability to look at them objectively. These have a snapshot quality of the time.”

The screening series will also devote two nights to panel discussions. On Sept. 26, veteran combat photographers will discuss their experiences and detail how they got their often extraordinary footage.

“They are all hilarious guys,” says Haberkamp. “You get to relate to the human being behind the lens. You forget about the real danger these people were in”

On Oct. 17, a panel will discuss nature documentaries, which came into vogue in the 1950s, thanks to Walt Disney’s True-Life Adventures series.

“The fact that ‘March of the Penguins’ and ‘Winged Migration’ are such huge hits is amazing to me -- some things never change,” says Haberkamp. “The only thing that changes is the ability to create more startling images because of technology and artistry.”

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‘Oscar’s Docs: The First Twenty Years of Academy Award-Winning Documentaries -- 1941-1960’

Where: The academy’s Linwood Dunn Theatre, 1313 Vine St., Hollywood

When: 7:30 p.m. Mondays from Sept. 12 to Dec. 5 (except for Halloween)

Price: $3-$5 for single tickets; $25-$30 for a series pass

Contact: (310) 247-3000, Ext. 111, or go to www.oscars.org.

Schedule through September

Sept. 12: “Churchill’s Island,” “Prelude to War,” “Moscow Strikes Back,” “Kokada Front Line” and “Battle of Midway”

Sept. 19: “December 7,” “Desert Victory,” “With the Marines at Tarawa” and “The Fighting Lady”

Sept. 26: World War II panel