Saturday, August 4, 2007

Damascus and Jerusalem (1936)


Touristic view of Damascus and Jerusalem, showing the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, Haram-esh-Sherif, Mount of Olives, the Wailing Wall, the Jaffa Gate in the old west wall of the city and the dome of the rock.
Born in Washington, D.C. in 1902, Andre de la Varre quit school at 17 and bought a motion picture camera. Traveling to Europe for adventure, he began making his own travel films. In 1924 he became a cameraman for Burton Holmes, a famous travel lecturer who coined the word “travelogue.”
Filmed all over the world between 1926 to 1976, the Andre de la Varre film collection contains black-and-white and color footage, much of it on 35mm. It captures diverse cultures: Paris in the ‘20s, Bali in the ‘30s and Israel in the ‘50s. period.
In the early ‘30s, de la Varre went out on his own as “The Screen Traveler,” making theatrical shorts for independent release, as well as for major Hollywood Studios. He traveled and filmed constantly for the next 40 years until his death in Vienna (1989).

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