Credit goes to
my fellow blogger, the prolifically talented Chuck Miller
whose blog post on Chronicles of Change inspired me to take a closer look at this
short subject educational film.
From the Aeolus 13 Umbra YouTube channel.
Chronicles of Change is a short subject
film (approximately 15:28) that was produced by the New York State Education
Department and the New York State Museum and Science Service in 1975. For over
two decades, staring in 1976, the year of the NYS Museum’s inauguration at the
Empire State Plaza location, the film was essentially on permanent exhibition,
shown throughout the day for a couple generations of schoolchildren and
visitors.
The film was originally
shown in the museum’s Huxley Theater, a small amphitheater located on the left
just before one enters the gallery. A film projector and a full-sized screen
gave Chronicles of Change a gravitas
worthy of its artistic merit. By the summer of 1999, however, the film was relegated
to a small room opposite the Huxley with a couple benches seating about a dozen
people in front of what was maybe a 24-inch TV monitor. It was a rather ignoble
end for such a wonderful film.
The film
utilizes documentary and industrial film techniques to tell a visual narrative
of the influences of man and nature in the world around us. The narrative is
built in stepping-stones, starting from melting ice to streams, to plant life,
to animal life, to new birth, to animals and man building and altering the
world around us. There is a philosophical and poetic spirit to the film that
marks it as a more artistic effort than the typical educational film.
“The softness of water will wear down the
enduring stone” (Chronicles of Change).
The film was
produced, directed, and photographed by Don Guy, a documentary and short film
maker whose career dates back to the early 1970s, according to his biography on
his YouTube
channel. Guy graduated from the UCLA School of Theatre, Film &
Television with an MFA, and later accrued numerous awards and honors throughout
his career, including a CLIO and a Cannes Golden Lion award as well as an
Academy Award nomination in the Documentary Short Subject category. Despite his
accolades, Guy remains fairly unknown outside the industry. Commercial film
production usually gets regarded somewhat unfairly as the bastard corporate
stepchild of Hollywood, yet the filmmakers are true artists capable of
producing meaningful and moving visual narratives.
While I am
usually loath to cover topics raised by my blogger-friends for fear of seeming
to poach their ideas, I was compelled to present this film to Aeolus 13 Umbra readers
for two reasons. First, Chronicles of
Change deals with influences, both of man and nature, which is the very mission statement of Aeolus 13 Umbra. Second,
the film, particularly the narration and the overall nature theme, has had a
significant influence on my poetry. Some of the verses from my poems Autumn Equinoxand
Summer Solstice show the influence of the
film’s narrative language. I really can’t give justice to how significantly the
film influenced me nor the moment of kismet when Chuck Miller blogged about it.
It was like meeting an old, forgotten friend.
“In time, even mountains fall like the towers of
ancient cities” (Chronicles of Change).
Further, I
transcribed the film’s narration (written by Tom McGrath), provided below,
which reveals a free verse organization that elevates the language to poetry
rather than the dry observations that accompany most documentaries. The
information in brackets indicates screen imagery.
In order to move
forward the legacy of the film I made some small contributions. The version of
the film originally posted is from a VHS tape. I edited out the color bars in the
beginning and pick the film up at the audio track which begins 29 seconds
before the visuals begin. This audio-only introduction provided the
projectionist time to lower the lights and cues the audience the film is about
to begin. I also trimmed the ending a bit to tighten up the unneeded space
between the credits and the seal of the State of New York shown briefly at the
very end. I wanted to as closely recreate the film experience as possible.
Further, I
transcribed the film’s narration (written by Tom McGrath), provided below,
which reveals a free verse organization that elevates the language to poetry
rather than the dry observations that accompany most documentaries. The
information in brackets indicates screen imagery.
[Opening: 29 seconds of black screen with a music background.]
[Sun rises. Melting ice turns into water which runs down mountains,
creating erosion.]
The Sun reveals the Earth and all
its life in endless variation.
Whatever is frozen into form shall
in time change and flow, finding new forms and patterns.
The softness of water will wear
down the enduring stone, and in its own time the stone will flow like water.
In time, even mountains fall like
the towers of ancient cities, yet destruction may lead to creation and violence
to repose.
What we see as permanence is only
momentary, though its moment may seem as long to us as forever.
[Images of mountains, lakes, and forests.]
The shape and bounty of the lands
and the waters all give opportunities and all sets limits to the culture that
man will create.
Within the season and the cycles
the world often appears beautiful and abundant, though sometimes its beauty is
brief as a summer day.
The patterns of nature contain
elemental and living forces ever merging and colliding.
[Storm clouds. thunder, and forest fires.]
Whole environments altered. New
ones created. The survivors must adapt.
[Rain comes to quench out the fire, ocean waves crash on a beach, clouds
roll through the sky.]
Within the body of these forces
also lies the place and time for new beginnings.
Numberless forms adapted to myriad
environments — insect to bird to animal to man.
Each of the creatures is its own
mystery.
[Cells dividing, a butterfly expanding its wings, birds nesting with
their eggs, a bee pollenating a flower, followed by other images evoking birth
and new life.]
Sometimes we seem nothing but an
appetite. All lives in the wild take their food directly from nature. Once man
did the same, and we still look for the summer, hidden and around.
[A hand reaches for an apple. Various images of agriculture and
agricultural workers.]
In our time, we have learned to
transform nature, cultivate fields, extend and multiple our hands through the
machines which are now part of our environment.
All creatures build on the wind.
The spider’s airy city hangs over the void.
[Images of insects and animals in nature.]
The beaver’s home in his watery
parish is no more secure from the winds of change.
For man, nail awaits for hammer and
wood for saw — and some are content to observe.
Human adaptations are often rapid
and restless because they are made through invention though laid out ever so
true.
All that rises shall fall.
[Images of building construction and demolition.]
Destruction is married to creation.
This is the break-up of a frozen
river — this is the leaf-fall of a city.
[Images of building construction.]
In the new season, the city shall
rise again. The stone flowing like water, we build our lives with the elements
— wind, water, earth, and fire — and the city rises in its mineral grandeur
where man is the transformer.
But each of us also lives beyond
nature. Each of us — a special talent among the crowd — learning, thinking,
creating in our own human way.
[Camera follows a man walking through the streets and into a concert
hall to conduct a rehearsal.]
Elemental and living forces ever
merging and colliding. Intersections of and nature. We populate the very
landscapes with images of humanity. Images of culture set on a great and
enduring stage.
[Images of
the landscape, bridges, homes, orchards, forests, mountains.]
An ambient,
natural sound bed sweetened with segment-specific sound effects is used
throughout much of the film, but significant portions include the light and
lyrical touch of The Paul Winter Consort, particularly the title track from
their 1972 album Icarus which can be
heard at the very beginning, setting the tone for the film early on.
Civilization grows by harnessing individual efforts towards
a common goal.
While the scenes
of nature and wildlife were the highlights for me as a teenager, it is the section
on agriculture starting at the 7:11 mark that impresses me the most now. There
is a logical order to the visual imagery, from a single man picking an apple to
many more hands picking a wider variety of fruits and vegetables to machine
cultivation and preparing the produce for shipping. The camera glides above the
fields and the heads of the workers as though the viewer is on a cloud. Its
general composition, it recalls the New Deal government information films of
the 1930s.
The construction
segment beginning at is also a remarkable part of the film. Beginning at 8:52,
we see nature’s architects, spiders and beavers, building their homes. This is
juxtaposed with images of human construction at the 10:08 mark. Again, as with
the agricultural segment, there is a logical order to the visual imagery. It
begins with a single hammer pounding in a single nail to a single piece of wood.
Then, more workers with more hammers and saws and a frame is built. A wall is
erected. A building goes up. The visual composition complements the narration
and advances the theme in a chronological progression.
Chronicles of Change gives the viewer a broader
perspective of the world around us.
As the camera
pulls out at the end of the construction segment, we see the building under
construction is a skyscraper in what presumably is New York City. At the 12:31
mark, the camera then shifts from a bird’s eye view of the street to eye-level
and tracks the movement of a man dressed in black walking through the streets
into an outside performance space with an orchestra (this is not The Paul
Winter Consort). He is the conductor. If this segment had been done in the
1950s, or even the 1960s, one would likely see the conductor to be an older man
of European extraction, but here he is a young African American man with a
righteous afro and a full brush mustache.
Civilization is much like an orchestra comprised of every race, creed,
and color, working together to create something greater than their individual
contribution.
It is a simple,
innocuous image, but for 1975, when segregation was still active in parts of
America just ten years previously, it signals that the times had indeed
changed.
Changing
Eras, Changing Displays
Back in the late
1970s and the early 1980s the New York State Museum had some great exhibits
that incorporated sound and vision. In addition to Chronicles of Change, there was also a small, circular room with
dimmable mood lighting and a Sensurround–type speaker system that ran an audio production
of a recreation of the November 1950 Adirondack storm that came to be known as
“The Big Blowdown.” In fact, the name of the exhibit was “Blowdown Theater,”
which elicited nervous giggles from middle and high school students. Located on
the left just prior to entering the Adirondack Wilderness exhibit room, it was
a unique sound experience that let visitors appreciate some of the power of a
good old-fashioned Nor’easter.
Another exhibit,
located somewhere near the museum gift shop, was a two-story tall screen on
which an ever-shifting light show was displayed. I forget the name of the
display and information on exhibits of the time is woefully thin. Still, it was
a wonderful full-sensory experience to go from Chronicles of Change to “Blowdown Theater” to a psychedelic light
show all within the space of a single visit. It broke up the pacing of the
typically, traditionally turgid static exhibits, some of which still remain
after 45 years.
I last saw Chronicles of Change at the NYS Museum
in July 1999 when it had been moved to that small viewing room I previously
mentioned. I’m not sure if it had been in continuous exhibition between 1976
and 1999, which seems unlikely, but it certainly is not any longer and I would
be surprised if it had been shown at all in the past two decades. “Blowdown
Theater” is also a relic of the distant past and I’ve yet to meet anyone who
remembers the psychedelic light show.
The last time I
was at the museum was probably about ten years ago. Chronicles of Change was long gone. There were some new exhibits, but
one could still see the faded display information cards with the worn out
1970‘s-era lettering styles. The lumberjacks, West Side barbershop, and Tuck
High Chinese dry goods store from Mott Street were still around. It was very
much like visiting old friends and noticing the absence of some others you
never missed until they were gone.
