The Seafarers

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Movie
Original title The Seafarers
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1953
length 30 minutes
Age rating FSK 0
Rod
Director Stanley Kubrick
script Want Chasen
production Lester Cooper
music Stanley Kubrick
camera Stanley Kubrick
cut Stanley Kubrick
occupation

The Seafarers is a 30 minute long color documentary that Stanley Kubrick made in 1953 for the New York Seafarers' Union SIU . It is Kubrick's fourth film and third short documentary of its kind.

The film was intended to encourage seafarers to join and showed the benefits one could enjoy as a member of this union. He was for several decades lost and is used today primarily as a document of artistic development Kubrick's attention.

action

The documentation begins with recordings of ships in the port. The narrator Dan Hollenbeck reports on the importance and the work of the seafarers and the importance of their union SIU, which is there for them worldwide. The elaborate work of maintaining contact with the ships at sea is shown, as well as the care of the returnees and the dock workers in the canteen, as well as the possibilities of leisure activities for the seafarers after their return home until their ship leaves again, which they give them at the headquarters of the Union are offered. Additional pictures of ships, machines, a canteen and a union meeting accompany the report.

background

The film was shot in color and overseen by staff from the trade union magazine The Seafarers Log . For the cafeteria scene in the film, Kubrick chose a long, side-firing tracking shot to show the life of the seafaring community. This type of recording is an early application of the technique that Kubrick used in his feature films. Another shot of this type consists of a group of sailors walking across the screen from a shaded area to a sunlit room as they approach the SIU Union Hall.

The film was "discovered" in 1973 by film scholar and filmmaker Frank P. Tomasulo , who arranged for a 16mm copy of the documentary to be placed in the permanent collection of the Motion Picture Division of the Library of Congress .

The Seafarers was released on DVD in 2008 with an audio commentary by directors Roger Avary and Keith Gordon and an interview with one of Kubrick's daughters.

The short is also available as an extra on the 2012 release of Kubrick's first film Fear and Desire .

literature

  • Ralf Michael Fischer: Space and time in the cinematic oeuvre of Stanley Kubrick. Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 2009, ISBN 978-3-7861-2598-3 .

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