As we explained on the WELCOME page, we can no longer ship many products.
But you can and should contact filmmaker Fred Padula, through his web site, fredpadula.com
Two Classic documentary films by San Francisco's
legendary independent film pioneer, Fred Padula
digitally restored and remastered
Ephesus (1965)
DVD, 24 min, $15.00, plus postage
(starting at $7.00 for one video)
Blu-Ray, 24 min, $20.00, plus postage
“Sunday night service at the Ephesian Church of God in Christ, Berkeley, California, where Elder Cleveland unwinds a roof-shaking, soul-quaking "Praise-God" sermon and Brother Hawkins and the choir (before they were the Edwin Hawkins Singers) lay down their nonstop gospel-rock holy-soul sound, with twin Hammond organs and a lot of help from everyone else, dancing, clapping, testifying and talking in tongues in one last Sunday night delirium of black America we may never see again. The church has since been torn down.”
Lito Tejada-Flores
Ephesus has won awards at the San Francisco International Film Festival; Foothill College Independent Filmmakers Festival; Tours Film Festival, France; Melbourne Film Festival, Australia; New York Film Festival; and was presented, by invitation, at the Robert Flaherty Film Seminar, Chicago and the Popli Ethnological Film Festival, Italy..
A Review of Ephesus
by Eleanor Wachs, Ph.D.
Folklorist and Ethnographer
…Padula guides us into the church on a day in 1965: first, quiet and empty—without participants. Throughout these opening scenes and the remainder of the film, the voice over of the church’s leader, Reverend E. E. Cleveland, provides a sense of coherence for the film by telling us which Biblical passages form the basis of his preaching style. The framework of the church service Is presented; the congregants slowly enter; the offering is taken; the testimonies are heard; the sermon begins. Quickly, we become involved in an overpowering religious experience which only visual imagery can provide so powerfully. And we, as audience, lurch forward to be immersed on the movement and sound; the film calls for involvement. Padula quickens and intensifies the pace of the film, and then suddenly the church doors close and the quiet Berkeley street is before us.
Little Jesus (1969)
DVD, 15 min, $10.00, plus postage
(starting at $7.00 for one video)
Blu-Ray, 15 min, $15.00, plus postage
Beautiful people making vibrations with super-contemporary musical artifacts blended with aromatic-anaesthetizing gas masks dispensing Cannabis sativa producing arrogance of moral grandeur submerged within herds of small children and pet dogs. Captures an afternoon during Haight-Ashbury’s 1967 Summer Of Love on Hippy Hill where Haight Street ends in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.
Bonus Features:
These two newly restored and remastered versions of EPHESUS and LITTLE JESUS include, as a bonus feature, conversations between Fred Padula and Ken DeRoux, film curator at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art at the time the films were made, talking about the indie film scene in the 1960s and the making of these films.
About the two formats:
The Blu-Ray version provides the ultimate in viewing quality, but unlike the DVD version it cannot be played on a computer (a Blu-Ray player is required). Both versions are universal, that is to say they can be played in any region or any country around the globe.
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