Ivan Besse was the Strand movie theater manager in Britton, S. Dakota during the Depression. He had a 16mm camera and went about town shooting people at their various activities during the day. He would show the footage before features and newsreels as a way to lure the people into the theatre. Most of the 2 1/2 hours of footage that he shot is of people walking down the street, there are also scenes of a barn being moved, a corn husking contest and kids running out of school. The footage that really stood out to me was these 8 minutes of portraits of children. They had no idea of what a movie camera was. The lack of narrative invites dressing these cinematic dolls with futures, now histories. The melancholic drone of the accompanying organ music tends to lead them into sad tragic finery.

"Britton, SD is of course the greatest of films, one of the few to get to the core of human matters and then stay there for a bit without turning away." Jem Cohen

Footage obtained from The Prelinger Archives / Rick Prelinger for the DeComposer Film and Music series programmed by Bill Daniel and Vanessa Renwick in Portland, Oregon