Happy birthday Stanley Kubrick! (plus his first professional directing job from 1951)

Teenager Stanley Kubrick and his camera

Stanley Kubrick, the great cinematic genius was born on July 26, 1928, in the Bronx, NY.

To mark this occasion, here’s Kubrick’s first for hire directing job, the 1951 documentary short he made for RKO-Pathé Screenliner, Flying Padre. The short film, later called “silly” by Kubrick, portrays the work of Father Fred Stadtmuller, a Catholic priest in rural New Mexico whose 4000-square mile parish is so large that he uses an airplane to get from one end of it to the other.