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Draft:Virginia Bell (filmmaker)

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Virginia Bell (who often worked under the name "Tracy Ward") was one of the few women film directors of sponsored and industrial films.

Career

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Virginia Bell and her husband Robert (Bob) Bell, she worked with On Film, Inc. in Princeton, New Jersey with ties to the avant-garde film community. Fillmakers associated with On Fim include Stan Brakhage, Willard van Dyke, Len Lye, Weegee, and Stan Vanderbeek. According to film historian Rick Prelinger rgarding Bell's contributions to industrial films, "Virgina Bell, who was known professionally by the name Tracy Ward, a gender-neutral pseudonym, was an incredibly imporatnt person in this area and her films are very distinctive works."[1]

In the Suburbs was sponsored by the magazine Redbook, with cinematographer Bert Spielvogel. On Film was commissioned by the Pittsburgh Bicentennial Association to create a commemorative film that was not officially completed and described as " sponsored documentary film with a radical aesthetic grafted onto a text that is otherwise deployed in the service of local capital."[2] Later she worked with Audio Productions.

Filmography

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  • Colors and Textures in Aluminum Finishes (1956)
  • In the Suburbs (1957)
  • The Relaxed Wife (1957)
  • Pittsburgh (1959)
  • Someone's In the Kitchen (1961)[3]
  • // the Salt Has Lost lts Savor (1961) for Westminster Press[4]
  • The Movie Experience: A Matter of Choice (1968) with Charleton Heston as the narrator
  • Threshold. . .Research and the Care of People (1970), "the intangible world of anesthesiology is made dramatically real for the lay public and the medical profession,"[5] sponsored by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences. that was awarded a gold medal at the Atlanta International Film Festival[6]
  • Women in Mind, sponsored by Armstrong Cork Company[7]

References

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  1. ^ Patrick Vonderau, "Vernacular Archiving: An Interview with Rick Prelinger," Films That Work: Industrial Films and the Productivity of Media, ed. Vinzenz Hediger and Patrick Vonderau, Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam, 2009.
  2. ^ Sean P. Kilcoyne. “PITTSBURGH (1959): ‘Equilibriums of Paradox’ and the Bicentennial City of Tomorrow.” The Moving Image: The Journal of the Association of Moving Image Archivists, vol. 12, no. 2, 2012, pp. 70–94. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.5749/movingimage.12.2.0070. Accessed 27 Mar. 2024.
  3. ^ "General Foods Presents a Colorful and Appetizing Look Into Test Kitchens," Business Screen Magazine 8(21), 1961 , 28-29.
  4. ^ "Cinema Verite Used to Stir Religious Involvement," Business Screen Magazine 5(29), 1968, p.42.
  5. ^ Business Screen Magazine 31(4), April 1970, p.11.
  6. ^ "'Threshold' Film Receives Gold Medal at Festival," NIH Record July 8, 1970.
  7. ^ Business Screen Magazine 7(28), 1967, p.15
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In the Suburbs

Colors and Textures in Aluminum Finishes

Virginia Bell in IMDb