Last month I wrote about the Museum of the Moving Image, their new Panoram machine, and the Soundies screening exhibition “Coin-Operated Treasures: Black-Cast Soundies from the Astoria Studio.“
The Panoram came with an 8-film reel of Soundies. And not even the MoMI folks have seen them all yet.
This Sunday, July 21, at 1 p.m., the full 8-film reel will screen on the Panoram–exactly the way people watched Soundies in the 1940s. At 3 minutes apiece, the whole program should take about 25 minutes or so.
I’ll be on hand with MoMI curator Barbara Miller for a post-Panoram conversation and audience Q & A. And an impromptu book signing for Soundies and the Changing Image of Black Americans on Screen: One Dime at a Time.
We don’t know for sure that the reel will include one of Dorothy Dandridge’s Soundies, seen here in A Zoot Suit (1941). But I certainly hope so.