Christopher Webster [Celluloid 09.10.09] movie short cult experimental



George Lucas' experimental short student film, Freiheit, is extremely rare. In fact, most people have only seen about 1 minute of footage from it which is available from the USC website.

The deceptively simple 3 minute film (credited simply to "Lucas" it's hilarious to note) shows a German student escaping across the Berlin Border and being shot to death while on the soundtrack various platitudes about dying for freedom can be heard. While obviously shot in the forests of California and not on location, the film is nonetheless an interesting relic from a giant's early career. See, Lucas is often criticized as being less a director than a technician and his early films (particularly Electronic Labyrinth THX 1138 4EB, but also Freiheit) prove that, even early on, Lucas had a fondness for the mechanics of cinema - particularly intense sound design and montage editing techniques.

I love having a look at the early work of directors and I'm pretty sure that we're the first to bring you the film in its entirely so be sure to take a gander.

Full film after the break.

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hysteria (13 years ago) Reply

Very interesting. I'd never even heard of this film before. It's such a typical student film done with a bit more technical quality than you would normally see.

Now if only there was a copy of Steven Spielbergs 'Amblin' floating around somewhere...

JackCrow (13 years ago) Reply

Amblin ( 1968)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4378828308366060201&ei=nVWqSrK5CpvE2wLM4ZUq&q=Amblin

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