Short films don't get no respect!  For one thing, opportunities to see shorts are insanely limited:  they virtually never make it into mainstream theatrical distribution (except for animated shorts),  and the festivals that accept them for screening are few and very far between.  A pity...  Good short films, like well-crafted poems, are often wonders of structural and narrative economy offering big emotional impact.    We've recently been doing some intensive videographic archeology to ferret out the shorts buried in MRC's collections--both fictional shorts and compilations of documentary shorts.  Check them out at:  http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/shorts.html

Over the years, MRC's web pages devoted to literary and dramatic adaptations and readings have, well, gotten out of hand.  The MRC collection of these materials has grown so large that simply listing titles on web pages has become unwieldy and sort of a pain to us.  As a partial solution to this videographic problem, we've created a searchable and browsable Lit Adaptation database:  http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/LiteratureVid.html  Included in this database are movies based on literary and dramatic properties; movies with screenplays or adaptations by notable authors; and filmed dramatic performances, poetry, and prose reading.

Also check out MRC's sizeable listing of Shakespeare on film: http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/ShakespeareVid.html and MRC's videography of classical Greek drama: http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/classicaltheater.html

Cult Film: A film of any stripe that, while ignored or buried by the general market and/or critical Establishment, is kept alive, or resurrected, thanks to the devotion of a particular section of the audience--often responding to the very elements, extremes, or eccentricities that saw the films "fail" (commercially) in the first place.  --Damien Love

Classical exploitation films can be described as "as a marginal cinema operating "in the shadow of Hollywood" from the 1920s through the 1950s, dedicated to "dealing with topics that censorship bodies and the organized industry's self-regulatory mechanisms prohibited"   
["Bold! Daring! Shocking! True!": A History of Exploitation Films, 1919-1959.  Eric Schaefer. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1999]

Lurking in the cinematic ooze somewhere well below the surface of the cleanly Hollywood boxoffice mainstream are the movies your mother told you not to watch (or had no idea your were watching in the first place).  The history of sound movies is filled with such thrown-together potboilers and sleazy oddities, films filled with lurid sex, vice, the seamy underbelly of modern life--all offered up for the price of admission.  Viewed in the right light, such films often have a addictive vitality and campy humor all their own--quintessential cinematic guilty pleasures.  Looked at in another light, they provide strange and often fascinating insights into the fantasies, fetishes, and taboos of the eras in which they were cobbled together.

MRC continues to collect a representative sampling of these midnight movies:  check out the videography at: http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/cultfilms.html

A bibliography of books and articles about cult films and exploitation films is posted at:  http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/cultbib.html

Most of the people who know and use the MRC collection come for the video.  Not surprising given the scope and depth of the collection (and the fact that EVERYONE loves movies).  What most MRC users do not know, however, is that the collection also includes a bounty of sound recordings on cassette and audio CD. The audio collection includes literary and dramatic readings; interviews and speeches; old time radio programs; comedy recordings; a large sound effects library; and selected, historic recordings of protest and other political songs, labor songs, and folk music.

The following is just a random sampling of these audio treasures.  Also be sure to check out MRC's collection of online audio recordings at: http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/onlinemedia.html

Don't Mourn, Organize!: Songs of Labor (Joe Hill)[SOUND RECORDING]

Contents: Joe Hill / Phil Ochs (Billy Bragg) -- Joe Hill's last will / Joe Hill (Utah Phillips) -- Joe Hill's ashes / Mark Levy (Mark Levy) -- The preacher and the slave / Joe Hill ("Haywire Mac" McClintock) -- Joe Hill / Alfred Hayes, Earl Robinson (Paul Robeson) -- Paper heart / Si Kahn, Charlotte Brody (Si Kahn) -- Casey Jones, the union scab / Joe Hill (Pete Seeger and the Song Swappers) -- Mr. Block / Joe Hill (Mats Paulson) -- Joe Hill listens to the praying / Kenneth Patchen (Joe Glazer) -- The tramp / Joe Hill (Cisco Houston) -- Joe Hill / Afred Hayes, Earl Robinson (Earl Robinson) -- The white slave / Joe Hill (Alfred Esteban Cortez) -- Narrative (Elizabeth Gurley Flynn) -- The rebel girl / Joe Hill ; arr. and adapted with original material by Hazel Dickens (Hazel Dickens) -- There is power in a union / Joe Hill (Entertainment Workers IU 630, I.W.W.). Sound/D 71

Malcolm X: Make It Plain.[Sound recording]

Ballot or the bullet speeches -- Common enemy speech (Bandung Conference) -- Unity rally speeches -- 1963 Detroit speeches including Leaders used against revolution. 270 min. Sound/D 182

Sing for Freedom: The Story of the Civil Rights Movement Through Its Songs. [Sound Recording]

Contents: We are soldiers in the army -- Keep your hand on the plow -- This little light -- You better leave segregation alone -- Your dog loves my dog -- Ain't gonna let nobody turn me around -- I woke up this morning with my mind on freedom -- Keep your eyes on the prize -- Oh Pritchett, oh Kelly -- Up above my head -- This little light -- Brown baby -- Which side are you on? -- I'm gonna sit at the welcome table -- Mass meeting and prayer -- Guide my feet -- I'm on my way -- Rev. Ralph Abernathy -- Yes, we want our freedom -- Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. -- Ninety-nine-and-a-half won't do -- Get on board -- No danger in the water -- Medgar Evans speaking -- Keep your eyes on the prize -- We shall overcome. Sound/D 118 

Monkeywrenching the New World Order: Global Capitalism and Its Discontents. [Sound Recording]

"This double CD ranges over the changing politics of globalization, neoliberalism and world trade, colonialism and debt, militarism and policing, native and indigenous rights and struggles, frankenfood and genetic engineering, capitalism and the fairy-tale economic boom -- and the leading alternatives to and struggles against a system which puts profits over people, unregulated growth over sustainability and money over morals." Sound/D 115

Bukowski Reads His Poetry

Contents: Introduction (1:07) -- Creation of the morning line (1:07) -- Death (3:18) -- Sex fiends (3:07) -- "Love," he said (2:07) -- Piss and shit (1:43) -- The death of an idiot (2:32) -- Style (3:51) -- The world's greatest loser (2:57) -- Last days of the suicide kid (2:41) -- The shoelace (3:58) -- Hot (2:57) -- Earthquake (2:00) -- The rat (3:56) -- The best love poem (3:18). "Recorded in performance at the Telegraph Hill Neighborhood Center, San Francisco, September 14, 1972. (Presented by City Lights Books)" -- Container. "Bukowski wrote about losers and boozers, a full course-load of carnal knowledge, and the seamy side of L.A., his hometown, a city of angels with dirty faces and dirtier dreams.". 41 min, Sound/D 178

The Best of the Beat Generation.

Contents: October in the railroad earth (Jack Kerouac & Steve Allen) -- Travelin' blues (Slim Gaillard & his Boogiereeners) -- Like (Jack Hammer) -- Basic hip (Del Close & John Brent) -- Three little pigs (a Grimm fairy tale for hip kids) (Al "Jazzbo" Collins) -- Big high song for someboy (Roy Glenn) -- The beat generation (Bob McFadden & Dor) -- Twisted (Annie -- Marc Anthony's funeral ovation (Lord Buckley) -- Dog (Bob Dorough) -- Pull my daisy (David Amram Quintet, with Lynn Sheffield) -- Bowery blues (Jack Kerouac & Steve Allen) -- My baby (Ken Nordine) -- The murder of two men by a young kid waring lemon colored gloves (Kenneth Patchen, with the Chamber Jazz Sextet) -- A history of jazz (Shorty Petterstein) -- Coffee time (Carmen McRae) -- Blues Montage (Langston Hughes, with Leonard Feather) -- Psychopathia sexualis (Lenny Bruce) -- Sunflower sutra (Allen Ginsberg) -- Bradley the buyer (William Burroughs). Sound/D 184

I Can Hear It Now: The Sixties [Sound Recording]

Narrated by Walter Cronkite. Narrative, principally with excerpts from political speeches and reporters' accounts of historical events; includes excerpts from songs by performers such as Tony Bennett, the Beatles, and Bob Dylan ; narrated by Walter Cronkite. 90 different news reports, speeches and commentaries from the decade of the nineteen sixties. Partial contents: Prologue and John F. Kennedy inaugural, Jan. 20, 1961 through Cuban Missile Crisis -- Richard M. Nixon concedes defeat California election through assassination and four dark days of Kennedy funeral, Nov. 25, 1963 -- Lyndon B. Johnson speaks to joint session of Congress, Nov. 27, 1963 through report from Village of Cam Ne (Morley Safer) Aug. 5, 1965 -- Great power blackout of 1965 through Robert Kennedy eulogy given by Edward Kennedy at St. Patrick's, June 8, 1968 -- Republican and Democratic Conventions 1968 through flight of Apollo 11 first moon landing July 20/21, 1969 -- Nixon greets returning astronauts through Epilogue. Sound/D 192

Old Time Radio. Science Fiction [sound recording]

Mercury theatre on the air. "War of the worlds" / writer, H.G. Wells; with Orson Welles, Frank Readick, Ray Collins, Suspense. "Zero Hour" / writer, Ray Bradbury; with Iza Ashdowne, Parley Baer, Lights out. "Meteor Man" / writer, Arch Oboler; with Pedro De Cordoba, X minus one "Mars in heaven" / writer, Ray Bradbury; with Wendell Holmes, Peter Kapell, Bill Zuckert, Mysterious traveler "Operation tomorrow" / writer, Robert A. Arthur, David Kogan; with Leon Janney, Charlotte Holland., Escape "Time machine" / writer, H. W. Wells; with John Dehner, Lawrence Dobkin, Georgia Ellis, Arch Oboler's plays "Rocket from Manhattan" / writer, Arch Oboler; with Elliott Lewis, Lou Merrill, Irvin Lee., Family theater "Twenty thousand leagues under the sea" / writer, Jules Verne; with Gene Lockhart, Bill Woodson , Suspense "Donovan's brain" / writer, Curt Siodmak; with Orson Welles, John McIntire, Jeanette Nolan, Dimension X "Martian Chronicles" / writer, Ray Bradbury; with Inge Adams, Roger DeKoven, Donald Buka. Originally recorded between 1938 and 1955. Sound/D 97

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