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Mexican Holiday (1938)

1938 · Short film · 11 min

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Synopsis

(1938) is a silent, color amateur travelog film chronicling the travels of A.A. MacDonald aboard a passenger cruise ship as it travels through the Panama Canal Zone. MacDonald was a member of the Amateur Cinema League, an organization which promoted best practices among home movie makers; ACL films tend to be much better than normal "home movies" and this is the case here. Note: although the opening title pages note that the film depicts “Our Trip to Mexico January 20, 1938” this is in fact a misnomer as the footage only chronicles the filmmaker's journey through Panama to places like Balboa and Panama City. (Most likely the Mexican portion of the journey was chronicled in another reel of film, now lost.) The ship shown in the film was from the United States Lines and has twin stacks (seen at 1:54). Most likely it is the SS George Washington, SS Manhattan or SS Washington (although these last two ships mostly made runs between Bremen and New York City and not to the Caribbean). United States Lines was the trade name of an organization created to operate German liners seized by the United States in 1917. The Panama Canal Zone was created on November 18, 1903 from the territory of Panama; established with the signing of the Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty, which allowed for the construction of the Panama Canal within the territory by the United States. Text page (0:09). Opening credits overlaid colorful illustration of film reels (0:14). Footage aboard a United States Lines ship:…

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Details

Running time
11 minutes
Collection
Ephemeral Films

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