To Be Alive! is a 1964 short documentary film

Documentary film

Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...

 co-directed by Francis Thompson and Alexander Hammid

Alexandr Hackenschmied

Alexandr Hackenschmied was a leading photographer and filmmaker in Czechoslovakia between the two world wars. He immigrated to the U.S. in 1938 and became involved in American avant-garde cinema...

. The film is notable for its use of a multi-screen format and for winning the Academy Award in 1966

38th Academy Awards

The 38th Academy Awards, honoring the best in film for 1965, were held on April 18, 1966 at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in Santa Monica, California. They were hosted by Bob Hope....

 for Documentary Short Subject

Academy Award for Documentary Short Subject

This is a list of films by year that have received an Oscar together with the other nominations for best documentary short subject. Following the Academy's practice, the year listed for each film is the year of release: the awards are announced and presented early in the following year.-1940s:*1941...

.

Concept and presentation

To Be Alive! was produced by the S.C. Johnson & Son for presentation at the Johnson Wax pavilion at the 1964 New York World's Fair

1964 New York World's Fair

The 1964/1965 New York World's Fair was the third major world's fair to be held in New York City. Hailing itself as a "universal and international" exposition, the fair's theme was "Peace Through Understanding," dedicated to "Man's Achievement on a Shrinking Globe in an Expanding Universe";...

. The film was designed to celebrate the common ground between different cultures by tracing how children in various parts of the world mature into adulthood. The film was shot over an 18 month period in various locations across the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

, Asia

Asia

Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...

 and Africa

Africa

Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

.

In screening To Be Alive!, it was decided to use an experimental method consisting of three separate 18-foot screens. Unlike the Cinerama

Cinerama

Cinerama is the trademarked name for a widescreen process which works by simultaneously projecting images from three synchronized 35 mm projectors onto a huge, deeply-curved screen, subtending 146° of arc. It is also the trademarked name for the corporation which was formed to market it...

 process that joined three screens into a single unbroken entity, the three screens for To Be Alive! were separated by one foot of space.

In 1966, a book based on the film was released by S.C. Johnson. This text included an endorsement by Ralph J. Bunche, the Nobel Prize

Nobel Prize

The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...

-winning United Nations

United Nations

The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...

 undersecretary.

Awards

To Be Alive! made history in late 1964 when it received a special award from the New York Film Critics Circle, which marked the first time that a non-theatrical commercial production was cited for an accolade. (The film was considered non-theatrical because it was included as part of the admission to the Johnson Wax pavilion.)

However, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences ruled that To Be Alive was ineligible for Oscar consideration because of its presentation on three separate screens. To rectify this, the film's producers created a 70mm single-screen version that was shown in 1965 in Los Angeles

Los Ángeles

Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

, qualifying it for the Oscar. It won the Academy Award, beating out another sponsored short documentary: Point of View, produced by the National Tuberculosis Association.

The film was also honored with an award by the National Conference of Christians and Jews.

Limited screenings to date

After a screening at the United Nations Pavilion at Expo 1967 in Montreal, Quebec, To Be Alive was only available for public screening at the Golden Rondelle Theatre at the S.C. Johnson headquarters in Racine, Wisconsin

Racine, Wisconsin

Racine is a city in and the county seat of Racine County, Wisconsin, United States. According to 2008 U.S. Census Bureau estimates, the city had a population of 82,196...

. However, the single-strip 70mm version of the film has been shown in retrospective tributes to co-director Hammid. To date, the film has had no home video or DVD release.