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Tommy’s Train is a story about imagination, drive, and the power of a dream. Once existing as a tourist attraction in the city of Anacortes, Washington, Tommy Thompson’s Railway ran every summer from 1987 until 1999. The genuine steam locomotive and coaches were all hand built by Tommy in his garage workshop, and he maintained and operated the railway with his family.
This short travelogue depicts snippets of locations in Hollywood, California, most of them as seen from the streets. Considerable time is taken showing the kinds of architecture of private homes. There are images of various important buildings, and a depiction of the Hollywood Bowl. Finally, there is a sequence revolving around the premiere of the film “Dirigible” (1931) at the famed Chinese Theatre.
Working completely outside the mainstream, the wildly prolific, visionary Stan Brakhage made more than 350 films over a half century. Challenging all taboos in his exploration of “birth, sex, death, and the search for God,” he has turned his camera on explicit lovemaking, childbirth, even autopsy. Many of his most famous works pursue the nature of vision itself and transcend the act of filming. Some, including the legendary Mothlight, were made without using a camera at all, as he pioneered the art of making images directly on film, by drawing, painting, and scratching.
In 1968 Herz Frank made Without Legends (Bez leģendām) at the Kuibishev studios, together with Aloizs Brenčs and Aleksandr Sazhin. The film is based on the memoirs of Hero of Socialist Labor Professor Ivan Vasilyevich Komzin, former head of construction of the V. I. Lenin Volga Hydroelectric Power Station; Hero of Socialist Labor excavator operator V. Klementyev; Honored excavator operator Viktor Vasilyevich Starikov; and writer Konstantin Kirillovich Lapin. Documentary filmmakers from Kuibyshev were making a film about the excavator operator and Hero of Socialist Labor, Boris Yegorovich Kovalenko. However, the material turned out to be too ambiguous to create a film about a model Soviet working man. They turned for advice to the Riga-based documentary filmmaker Herz Frank. He shot additional footage and edited the collected material in such a way that it became a story without legends—about an ordinary person.
