The Motion Picture Camera (Short 1979)

The Motion Picture Camera: Directed by Karl Malkames. With Karl Malkames, Rick Malkames. The history and development of motion picture machinery is lovingly and authoritatively presented and narrated by ASC cinematographer and film preservationist, Karl Malkames, using actual early motion picture cameras from ‘The Malkames Collection’.

“Karl Malkames wrote, directed, narrated and shot this movie about motion picture cameras — the Malkames family has a tradition of being movie cameramen and take their craft very seriously The result is a survey of movie cameras from about 1900 through 1960.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eItu0026#39;s a well made movie, but a movie for a highly specialized audience. If it were an exhibition at the Smithsonian Institute, it would be a very good exhibition that would raise as many questions for the museum goer as it answered. The construction of these cameras with their ad hoc kludges — in the 1960s, the issue of how much extra film to leave on the loop baffled me — is gone over swiftly as a series of names; and the names, although they may be familiar to fans of old movies, would be known in different contexts.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eAlthough the days of film cameras is passing, the craft of camera-work will remain, and this movie shows us an important stage in the evolution of its tools.”