The Dream Is Alive

As daily airstrikes pound civilian targets in Syria, a group of indomitable first responders risk their lives to rescue victims from the rubble.

Why are white men poised to get rich doing the same thing African-Americans have been going to prison for?

A deceptively quiet park in the mist. Mysterious things are happening: a woman disappears, trees fall as if struck by a sudden weakness, and shots ring out. Surveillance cameras observe crows from unfamiliar perspectives. They are the protagonists here – it’s a well-known fact that they are among the most intelligent birds. The camera in their territory: is it a friend or an enemy? A commotion ensues, the crows move to attack. Or are we just imagining all this?

Fascinating - and unintentionally funny - experiments at Austria's famed Institute for Experimental Psychology involve a subject who for several weeks wears special glasses that reverse right and left and up and down. Unexpectedly, these macabre and somehow surrealist experiments reveal that our perception of these aspects of vision is not of an optical nature and cannot be relied on, while the unfortunate, Kafkaesque subject stubbornly struggles through a morass of continuous failures.

Billy falls asleep and dreams Robert L. Ripley takes him on a tour of Believe-It-or-Not land to see many oddities. Vitaphone No. 1320.

Robert Ripley shows a pretty blond a shrunken head and an iron execution chamber. Vitaphone No. 1336.

Robert Ripley draws and shows movies to train passengers. Vitaphone No. 1346.

Robert Ripley gives a show aboard a luxury liner at sea, starting with drawings discussing the origin of the "fathom" and Christopher Columbus being banished from America. Vitaphone No. 1361.

Robert Ripley presents a well-dressed cocktail party an assortment of drawings and film clips showing the world's youngest parents and the largest bible. Vitaphone No. 1362.

In this short film, Robert L. Ripley introduces narrator Leo Donnelly who presents various "Believe It or Not" oddities from around the world as gathered by Ripley. Segments include a NYC clothier that caters to very large men and circus elephant grooming. Vitaphone No. 1363.

This omnibus of film clips include a Savanna golf course made from Civil War trenches, wooden Indians used ourside cigar stores, an American Indian artist from South Dakota who paints upside down, the smallest residence house, a Bronx River statue with mysterious Civil War origins, the Ocean Grove community in New Jersey that closes on Sundays and a futuristic automated parking garage. Vitaphone No. 1364.