The University of Georgia Archive films were preserved by Cineric. They consist of political ads run on television during Carl Sanders' 1970 re-election campaign against Jimmy Carter. What makes these unique is that the Maysles Brothers directed these short works in a direct cinema documentary style pioneered by Robert Drew. The Maysles followed Sanders for four days. Breaden noted that Sanders was very aware of the camera and it was hard to get unguarded moments. We then watched four of these remarkably awkward campaign ads. The titles are simply suggestive:
“Running Again”
Sanders actually jogging, then shown in office reading documents, talking to supporters at a BBQ, rowing on a bucolic lake, with wife and children, driving aimlessly, listening to banjo music and clapping ineptly, playing handball, in a plane
“Agriculture”
Talking to a farmer, looking at corn crops, grasping hands for an uncomfortably long time with a worker on tractor, discussing salaries on farm and future of farming (difficulty of maintaining a family on the meager income and a great fear of succeeding generations leaving the farm), Sanders cites government as stepping in and helping out… “Carl Sanders Ought to be Governor Again”
“Horse Pulling Cart”
Running a state government is like running a business- it should modernize, horse and buggy days are gone
“????”
Music montage with repetitive psychedelic refrain of “Sanders Again”
Breaden concluded that the message was ambiguous, Sanders was stilted, and the images just did not resonate with the typical Georgia voter. Hence, Carter’s populist victory was no surprise in retrospect. Sanders campaign also ran more traditional ads directed by Pete Wilson.
“Education”
Scroll with all his accomplishments and a voice-over narration…voice over goes on even as commercial ends
“Child”
Sanders spent more on education, “If you have a child it’s up to you”
“Tree”
Cartoon- “ …you want to hire a man who has cut down a tree to do it again “ Carl Sanders can cut it again”
“Commercial”
We interrupt this commercial to bring you this commercial
Albert Maysles also spoke briefly lamenting the lack of poetic commercials or some content with human value
Juana Suarez introduced Garras de Oro (The Dawn of Justice-Alborada de Justicia). A print of the film was found in 1986 at the Library of Congress. The film department of the Museum of Modern Art and the Goethe Institute were involved in the preservation effort.
Garras de Oro, 1926
Suarez believes they have recovered 80-95% of the original edit. It now clocks in at 56 minutes. Production occurred in Italy with funding from Cali, Colombia. The crew and cast are still unknown. The director P.P. Jambrina was a pseudonym for Alfonso Martínez Velasco, a wealthy merchant and mayor of Cali. The fake name arose after the censure of film. It is unclear whether censure was through the Colombian government, American intervention, or some combination therein. Regardless, the United States was in a perilous international moment, very similar to today, in regards to their Latin American policies: the new applications of the Monroe Doctrine had been criticized as insincere and isolationist by foreign powers, there were American troops stationed in Nicaragua (which the film could easily destabilize), and the controversy surrounding the infamous execution of Sacco and Vanzetti was still fresh in people’s minds. The film would have raised anti-Americanism to rabid levels; this partially explains its disappearance for 60 years. There is scant evidence of multiple screenings at the time of its completion. The film did premiere at the Teatro Moderno in 1927, but after that the record grows murky.
Besides context, the content is also notable. The film deals explicitly with the separation of Panama and Theodore Roosevelt’s complicity. As far as we know it is the first Colombian film to use hand-painted color during a sequence with the flag.
Questions remain though: Who censured the film? Why did no one know about Garras de Oro until the 1980’s?
- Wayne L. Titus