Magic Lantern Video & Book Store

Culver  City  Film  Festival

           Culver City, California {ZIP code 90230} uses the motto "The Heart of Screenland", and rightly so.
           Motion pictures were made in Culver City even before the city was incorporated by Harry Culver in 1917. Cecil B. DeMille photographed much of "The Squaw Man" [1914] along the then-willow-lined Ballona Creek. The Thomas Ince Studio, Triangle Pictures (later Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Lorimar, and now Sony-Columbia), Hal Roach Studios (F.M.P.U. during World War II) and The Culver Studios (previously R.K.O. and Selznick and Desilu) produced hundreds of movies and hundreds of television episodes in the nearly 100 years of Culver City's tenure as a major manufacturer of cinema.

           Besides the films famously made on the backlots of Culver City – the "Rocky" series, "Gone With The Wind" [1939], "The Time Machine" [1960], the TV series "Combat" & "The Real McCoys" & "Lucy" & Star Trek", "The Wizard of Oz" [1939], "Citizen Kane" [1941] – many films have been made on the streets and in the homes & businesses of Culver City, and even in once-rural Baldwin Hills.
           Films of the Silent Era, especially, display glimpses of Culver City's Downtown area: Buster Keaton, Laurel & Hardy, Mack Sennett, Charley Chase, Harold Lloyd, Charlie Chaplin, Hal Roach's Our Gang – all filmed there. They often simply went outside the studio property with a camera & crew & actors and created the day's footage improvisationally.

           The movies featured on this Online Culver City Film Festival webpage are those with scenes =of= Culver City, recognizable shots of buildings and streets that often look very much the same today – OR might be long gone but remain vivid in the memories of those who worked or lived in "The Heart of Screenland".