''The Seafarers'' is Stanley Kubrick's fourth film and third short documentary, made for the

Seafarers International Union The Seafarers International Union or SIU is an organization of 12 autonomous labor unions of mariners, fishermen and boatmen working aboard vessels flagged in the United States or Canada. Michael Sacco has been its president since 1988. The org ...

, directed in June 1953. The film was Kubrick's first in color. There are shots of ships, machinery, a canteen, and a union meeting. The film was supervised by the staff of ''The Seafarers Log'', the union magazine. For the cafeteria scene in the film, Kubrick chose a long, sideways-shooting

dolly shot A tracking shot is any shot where the camera follows backward, forward or moves alongside the subject being recorded. In cinematography, the term refers to a shot in which the camera is mounted on a camera dolly that is then placed on rails � ...

to establish the life of the seafarer's community; this shot is an early demonstration of a signature technique that Kubrick would use in his feature films. Another such shot involves a group of seafarers walking across screen from a shaded area to a sunlit space as they approach the SIU Union hall. The film was re-discovered in 1973 by film scholar and filmmaker Frank P. Tomasulo, who arranged for a 16mm print of the documentary to be deposited in the permanent collection of the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library ...

' Motion Picture Division. ''The Seafarers'' was released on

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kind ...

in 2008 with audio commentary from directors

Roger Avary Roger Roberts Avary (born August 23, 1965) is a Canadian-American film and television director, screenwriter, and producer. He collaborated with Quentin Tarantino on ''Pulp Fiction'', for which they won Best Original Screenplay at the 67th Acade ...

and

Keith Gordon Keith Gordon (born February 3, 1961) is an American actor and film director. Early life Gordon was born in New York City, the son of Mark, an actor and stage director, and Barbara Gordon. He grew up in an atheist Jewish family. Gordon was in ...

, as well as an interview with one of Kubrick's daughters. The short is also available as an extra on the 2012 release of Kubrick's first full-length film '' Fear and Desire''.

References

External links

* * * 1953 films Films directed by Stanley Kubrick Seafaring films 1950s short documentary films Sponsored films Documentary films about the labor movement American short documentary films 1950s English-language films 1950s American films {{short-documentary-film-stub