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2 articles from 2009

10 September 2009 4:11 PM, PDT | QuietEarth.us | See recent QuietEarth news »

George Lucas' experimental short student film, Freiheit, is extremely rare. In fact, most people have only seen about 1 minute of footage from it which is available from the USC website.

The deceptively simple 3 minute film (credited simply to "Lucas" it's hilarious to note) shows a German student escaping across the Berlin Border and being shot to death while on the soundtrack various platitudes about dying for freedom can be heard. While obviously shot in the forests of California and not on location, the film is nonetheless an interesting relic from a giant's early career. See, Lucas is often criticized as being less a director than a technician and his early films (particularly Electronic Labyrinth Thx 1138 4Eb, but also Freiheit) prove that, even early on, Lucas had a fondness for the mechanics of cinema - particularly intense sound design and montage editing techniques.

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22 June 2009 2:15 PM, PDT | Cinematical | See recent Cinematical news »

"I like being thought of as a toymaker who makes films." In the summer of 1971, George Lucas talked with critic / journalist / scholar Gene Youngblood for a program entitled "George Lucas: Maker of Films," which aired on public television station Kcet in Los Angeles. Michael Heilemann of Binary Bonsai has made it available for online viewing, and it's a fascinating watch.

The interview takes place a few months after Thx 1138, his first feature, opened and died a quick death at the box office. It would be two more years before American Graffiti ignited the box office and six years before Star Wars changed everything. Young Lucas was already mighty unhappy with the Hollywood studio system. Binary Bonsai provides context for his late 60s ventures, and then in the interview, Lucas says he started the feature-length version of his short Thx 1138:4Eb in the wake of the freedom created »

- Peter Martin

2 articles from 2009