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At 2:00 on Sunday, November 22nd, 2015, the American Film Institute Silver Theatre and Cultural Center at 8633 Colesville Road in Silver Spring, Maryland will be showing an abbreviated (97-minute) version of 3-D Rarities, a program of painstaking digital restorations of several very early short films in 3D. Of particular interest to railfans will be Thrills for You, a 1940 black-and-white promotional film for the Pennsylvania Railroad (apparently including some GG1's), which was shown at the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco. Other items of indirect interest to railfans on the program are Thru' the Trees, Washington, D.C., a Washington travelogue from 1922 (only the second 3D film ever made); and New Dimensions (a.k.a. Motor Rhythm), a Chrysler promotional film from 1940 that like Thrills for You was shown at the Golden Gate International Exposition. Bob Furmanek of the 3-D Film Archive (www.3dfilmarchive.com), the compiler of 3-D Rarities, will appear in person to present the program.
This program, whose full, 147-minute version contains several additional shorts and which was released on 3D Blu-ray this past June 15th by Flicker Alley, LLC of Los Angeles (www.flickeralley.com), has had recent theatrical showings in Los Angeles and New York, and will most likely have further theatrical showings in other cities in the future.
The AFI Silver Theatre is in the heart of downtown Silver Spring near the intersection of Colesville Road and Georgia Avenue, a short distance from the Beltway exits for those two roads (if you're on the Outer Loop, exit to University Boulevard to access Colesville Road), and a short distance from the D.C. border. It's a few minutes' walk from the Silver Spring Red Line Metrorail station, the associated MARC Brunswick Line commuter rail station, and the associated Paul S. Sarbanes Silver Spring Transit Center, which is served by Metrobuses, Montgomery County Ride On buses, and intercity buses. Silver Spring has a number of hotels in a variety of price ranges. The theater's main webpage is www.afi.com/silver; the page containing the listing for 3-D Rarities is http://silver.afi.com/Browsing/Movies/Details/m-0100000224.
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