City of Gold (1957 film)

Action

Pierre Berton tells the story of the city of Dawson City, where he was born and grew up. At that time the city was a small town with barely 400 inhabitants. As a child he loved to play in the doll houses acting like huge abandoned houses. Also wrecks of ships and locomotives served as his playground and did not leave him behind wondering where all those things came from. Only the elderly of the village do not have any idea of how Dawson City was during the Klondike Gold Rush in 1897 /98.

In 1897, the gold rush began after a nugget was found in Dawson City. From all over the world, people flocked to the small town that eventually took 30,000 to 40,000 people. Prostitution flourished, but there were no incidents. The police in place prevented any major thefts and crimes. Although only a handful of gold prospectors were in fact successful and the place as rich men left - but returned partially depleted later - seemed to many men, despite the great hardships in place but found something to have what they compensated and moved, zubleiben since forever. Height of the gold rush was July 4, 1898, at the same time the present Dominion Day and the Day of Independence celebrated, the U.S. town but was on Canadian soil.

At the end Berton returns to the present. His father would have liked to died in Dawson City, but opted for a move. Berton himself has not seen the city since his childhood, however, thinks that it is still just as dreamy as it was then and that the ancients who have stayed, have been found in the city 's gold rush their own Eldorado.

Production

City of Gold was produced by the National Film Board of Canada. The black-and-white film mixes real footage of the city from the 1950s (recordings Wolf Koenig and Colin Low ) with archival photographs that are "alive" on zooms and pans. Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns called the film an inspiration for his own operation, which uses strong this effect (see Ken Burns effect ). The film was shown in May 1957 the International Film Festival in Cannes.

Awards

City of Gold was in Cannes in 1957 in competition for the Palme d'Or (short amount) and was awarded the Short Film Award for Best Documentary. The film received an Oscar nomination in 1958 for Best Short Film and was nominated for a British Academy Film Award for Best Documentary. In 1958, he won a Canadian Film Award for Film of the Year and was on the Bilbao International Festival of Documentary and Short film won the Golden Mikeldi.