the Orphan Film Symposium

Academy Conversations: The Cinematic Impact of PORTRAIT OF JASON

noreply@blogger.com (Dan Streible) — Wed, 22 May 2013 00:01:00 +0000

On May 10, I had one of the most powerful screening experiences of my life. No exaggeration. To open the third biennial "Orphans West" film symposium, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences assembled 5 speakers, 2 files (a DCP and an MOV, to be precise), and a first-rate tech team to present its new restoration of the 1967 film Portrait of Jason. As with the 2001 Orphan Film Symposium 35mm screening of Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett, 1977), as restored by the UCLA Film & Television Archive, I was expecting something great -- but again my expectations were surpassed. Again both the power of the movie and the quality of the restoration took be aback with their greatness.

The screen in the Linwood Dunn Theater is huge, particularly for a facility of fewer than 300 seats.

The seats were filled with an audience who knew this was going to be something special. Indeed it was. Elvis Mitchell, who moderated the post-screening discussion, was assigned the seat next to mine in the second row. About 20 minutes into Portrait of Jason, he got up and walked to the back of the auditorium. No, Elvis had not left the building to check his e-mail; he was retreating from the intensity of the movie. Jason Holliday (or Aaron Payne, by birth) is already a larger than life character, but Shirley Clarke's camera presents him in close ups, tighter close ups, and nothing ever more distant than a medium long shot. To escape the claustrophobic intensity, our moderator chose to view the rest of the movie from the back of the theater.

Compounding the emotional impact of the film's ending, was the addition of a short outtake, or more specifically an audio clip (on MOV). The movie's final moments are already painful to watch. While we watch Jason at the end of his all-night meltdown, we hear from off camera Shirley Clarke and her sometimes-companion, actor Carl Lee, beleaguering their on-camer subject. In this outtake, an even more sado-masochistic verbal exchange occurs. Shirley tells Jason that he once did something so terrible to her that it made her want to kill herself. No one knows what the incident was.

If you can find a theatrical screening, don't wait for the Blu-Ray/DVD release. Portrait of Jason is currently running at the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles.

Below, from AMPAS, is a 5-minute video, Academy Conversations: The Cinematic Impact of Portrait of Jason.

Elvis Mitchell moderates a discussion of Shirley Clarke's Portrait of Jason (1967) with Academy Documentary Branch governor and Oscar recipient Rob Epstein (Times of Harvey Milk), documentarian and Oscar recipient Jeffrey Friedman , (Common Threads), Clarke's assistant during the shooting of POJ Robert Fiore (also director of Pumping Iron and an NYU Tisch alum), and Milestone Films' Dennis Doros. Recorded during "The Real Indies: A Close Look at Orphan Films" on May 10, 2013 at the Linwood Dunn Theater.

Here's the view from Oscar's YouTube channel:

NYU and the Orphan Film Symposium thank the Academy for so generously hosting this event.
And thanks to Milestone for granting us a preview in advance of POJ's West Coast theatrical release.

noreply@blogger.com (Dan Streible) — Fri, 10 May 2013 19:44:00 +0000

Here's maestro Mark Quigley's note on the UCLA Film & Television Archive's participation in the the Orphan Film events at the Academy May 10 and 11.

http://www.cinema.ucla.edu/blogs/archive-blog/2013/05/09/archive-goes-orphans

"Takes in Strays"

noreply@blogger.com (Dan Streible) — Thu, 09 May 2013 08:27:00 +0000

The Los Angeles Times for May 8 features this piece on the Academy's orphan film events of May 10 and 11. Love the phrase "takes in strays." Writer Mark Olsen talked with filmmakers Penelope Spheeris and Jim Hoberman, as well as Milestone Film and Video's Dennis Doros and Randy Haberkamp, who runs the show at the Academy's film archive, its Herrick library, its Pickford Center for Motion Picture Study, and the forthcoming museum.

'The Real Indies: A Close Look at Orphan Films' takes in strays

The festival at Linwood Dunn Theater includes 'Portrait of Jason' and other films that have been lost, overlooked or abandoned.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/moviesnow/la-et-mn-academy-real-indies-orphan-films-20130509,0,5406338,full.story

Filmography for THE REAL INDIES, May 10+11

noreply@blogger.com (Dan Streible) — Tue, 07 May 2013 05:52:00 +0000

QUESTION: What's being projected at the Academy's Linwood Dunn Theater, May 10-11?

ANSWER:

A New Look for the Bell System (Saul Bass, 1969)
A Place to Stand (Christopher Chapman, 1967)
BUILDING THE HOLLYWOODLAND SIGN (Fox News, 1923)
City Harvest (United Films / OWI, ca. 1943)
Don’t Bank on Amerika (Peter Biskind, 1970) excerpt
Exploratorium (Jon Boorstin, 1974)
Felix Ferdinando and His Orchestra in “Musical MomentS” (Bristolphone, ca. 1929)
female-narrated trailers, Packard Humanities Institute Collection (1960-70s)
footage of Hollywood Gay Pride Parade (Pat Rocco, 1971)
footage of Showley Brothers Candy Factory (San Diego, 1924)
Help! My Snowman’s Burning Down (Carson Davidson, 1964)
Hey Mama (Vaughn Obern, 1969)
home movie from San Francisco (Herman Barfield, ca. 1917)
home movie of Satchel Paige and other all-stars (Richard Brooks, 1948)
home movies from Expo 67 (Walter Forsberg, 1967/2004)
home movies from NO MORE ROAD TRIPS? (Rick Prelinger, 2013)
home movies of New Orleans (Helen Hill, 2000-2003)
LEAD-INs (BET, Saundra Sharp and Thom Eubank, 1981)
Mission to Mongo (Jim Hoberman, 1978)
Naked Yoga (Paul Cordsen, 1974) excerpt
OH MY GOD! IT’S HARROD BLANK (David Silberberg, 2008) excerpt
outtake from PORTRAIT OF JASON (1967)
PORTRAIT OF JASON (Shirley Clarke, 1967)
RUNNING AROUND LIKE A CHICKEN WITH ITS HEAD CUT OFF (Les Blank, 1960)
SHIT (Penelope Spheeris, 1969)
snipe countdowns (ca. 1940s-60s) courtesy of Walter Forsberg
T.A.C. Magnavox TV ad (ca. 1972)
The Love Charm (Ray Rennahan, 1928) excerpt
The Shape of Films to Come (CBS, 1968) excerpt
Transformations (Ralph Sargent for IBM, 1968)
Two: A Film Parable (Satyajit Ray, 1964)
What About Thad (BYU/LDS Motion Picture Studio, 1973)
When the Organ Played “Oh Promise Me” (Cecil Stokes, ca. 1943)

Get thee to A CLOSE LOOK AT ORPHAN FILMS, 10 & 11 de mayo

noreply@blogger.com (Dan Streible) — Mon, 06 May 2013 03:53:00 +0000

Cinco de mayo 2013

OMG! It's nearly time for the third iteration of what some Angelinos call "Orphans West." As happened in May 2009 at the Silent Movie Theater with The Cinefamily and Los Angeles Filmforum, and in May 2011 at the UCLA Film & Television Archive's Billy Wilder Theater, this year the Academy is teaming with the NYU Orphan Film Symposium to bring a variety lineup of orphan films to Los Angeles. They call it The Real Indies: A Close Look at Orphan Films.

May 10, 8pm PORTRAIT OF JASON (1967) new restoration by the Academy Film Archive and Milestone Films. With guest speakers Robert Fiore (one of the very few crew members present for Shirley Clarke's all-night shoot with Jason), Oscar-winning documentarians Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, and critic Elvis Mitchell.

Simply a great film.

May 11, 10:30 am til 11pmish -- More than 25 films and excerpts + lunch for a mere $15!
Reviving neglected works ranging from Penelope Spheeris's unseen student short (SHIT, 1969) to Jim Hoberman's experimental political essay film MISSION TO MONGO (1978 -- did you know the great critic J. Hoberman made films?) and Jon Boorstin introducing his beautiful EXPLORATORIUM (1974). Plus steam punk-archivist Dino Everett demonstrating a rare but functioning 16mm sound-on-disk projector from 1929. Plus the golden-tongued Rick Prelinger talks about his new production NO MORE ROAD TRIPS? Plus trailer, snipes, home movies, re-creations of home movies, small-gauge and 70mm films, the debuts of several new preservation projects, and brands few have heard of, like Auroratone and Bristolphone.

Newly added to the lineup: a tribute to Les Blank, with his first film RUNNING AROUND LIKE A CHICKEN WITH ITS HEAD CUT OFF (1960, made at the University of Southern California), print courtesy of Flower Films, and an excerpt from David Silberberg's documentary OH MY GOD! IT'S HARROD BLANK (2008). (Last-minute thanks to Harrod and David for their timely help.)

So SoCal friends: Buy tickets now, please! The evening screenings will be especially hot tickets, it seems.

Linwood Dunn Theater -- 1313 Vine Street -- Hollywood

http://www.oscars.org/events-exhibitions/events/2013/05/real-indies.html

a co-presentation
of

the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

and

New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and Department of Cinema Studies

ACP: Free screening in Boston, Saturday, May 18th, 2pm

noreply@blogger.com (Dan Streible) — Thu, 02 May 2013 03:14:00 +0000

Happy May Day

From: Regina Longo

Regina M. Longo, PhD

Visiting Lecturer

Department of Film and Digital Media

University of California Santa Cruz

E-mail: regmlongo2@gmail.com

URL: http://film.ucsc.edu/

Director

The Albanian Cinema Project

URL: www.thealbaniancinemaproject.org

Wanted: graduate student presentations for Indiana University's Orphan Film event

noreply@blogger.com (Dan Streible) — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 01:06:00 +0000

Bloomington, IN --

The announcement below is from Martin L. Johnson [the film scholar, not Osa Johnson's filmmaking husband], who is organizing a one-day conference leading into the Orphans Midwest symposium at Indiana University Bloomington. Dr. Johnson [thought not that Dr. Johnson] received his PhD from NYU Cinema Studies in 2011, has been teaching at UNC Chapel Hill, and has accepted a faculty position at Catholic University in Washington for fall 2013.

Martin Johnson and Caitlin McGrath (U of Maryland) co-chair the Nontheatrical Film and Media Scholarly Interest Group within the Society for Cinema and Media Studies. Dave Sagehorn (doctoral candidate at Northwestern U), as the group's grad. student rep., is helping to plan the conference described below. This Thursday session is also designed to allow graduate students to attend the Orphans Midwest extravaganza that follows it.

The September 26th daytime event will be followed immediately that evening by the opening of the Orphan Film Symposium entitled "Materiality and the Moving Image," which will continue all day and night Friday and Saturday, September 27 and 28, 2013. All at the IU Cinema. Registration is open. www.cinema.indiana.edu/about/orphans-midwest/

Call for Papers -- from graduate students

contact martin.johnson@nyu.edu

Orphans, Disciplines, and the Institutions of Cinema:

Placing Orphan Films

Indiana University Bloomington

Thursday, September 26, 2013

When the first Orphan Film Symposium was held in 1999, the agenda was clear from its title: “Saving ‘Orphan Films’ in the Digital Age.” Fourteen years, and eight symposia, later, orphan films no longer need scare quotes to be identified, and many previously obscure and unknown films are now at the center of archival and historical investigations of the cinema. Moreover, recent edited collections such as Charles Acland and Haidee Wasson’s Useful Cinema (Duke, 2011), and Devin Orgeron, Marsha Orgeron, and Dan Streible’s Learning with the Lights Off: Educational Film in the United States (Oxford, 2012), demonstrate the history of these films before they were orphaned; they were produced, distributed, and exhibited as part of a larger nontheatrical network and as active participants in alternative cinema cultures.

In this one-day, graduate student conference is presented by the Nontheatrical Film and Media Scholarly Interest Group of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, in conjunction with Orphans Midwest (Sept 26-28), Indiana University Cinema, Film and Media Studies at Indiana University, the Department of Cinema Studies at New York University.

We ask for papers that consider the analytical, historiographic, and disciplinary consequences of "placing" orphan films in particular theoretical and historical categories. For example, does the identification of orphan works as educational, medical, industrial, scientific, or other genres of films remind us of the specific circumstances of their reception, or does it needlessly encourage a tendency to ahistorically categorize films? Are auteurist histories of individual directors overly dependent on art cinema modes of analysis, or do they give us a way to think of these works are more than mere expressions of institutional ideologies? Should we use the traditional tools of film studies, such as close reading, to analyze orphan films? Or is it preferable to create new methodologies that allow us to consider the tens of thousands of films that make up the orphan archives? How can researchers of orphan films benefit from dialogue with those in science studies, media ethnography, digital humanities, media archeology, and other emerging fields of study to produce interdisciplinary historical and theoretical work on orphan films?

Please submit 300-word proposals, and a brief bio, by May 10, 2013 to Martin.Johnson[@]nyu.edu. If you wish to propose a pre-constituted panel, workshop, or alternative presentation mode, please contact us as soon as possible to discuss your plans.

Academy spotlight on 'Orphan Films'

noreply@blogger.com (Dan Streible) — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 01:05:00 +0000

According to Susan King and the April 17th L.A. Times. . . .

The academy will shine the spotlight on 'Orphan Films' in May

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will showcase rarely seen, previously overlooked films with a two-day screening series "The Real Indies: A Close Look at Orphan Films" May 10 and 11 at the Linwood Dunn Theater in Hollywood.

The series, presented in partnership with New York University and the Orphan Film Symposium, will feature the West Coast premiere of the restoration of "Portrait of Jason," Shirley Clarke's 1967 documentary about a gay African American self-described hustler. Elvis Mitchell will moderate a panel after the screening that will include Dennis Doros, co-founder of Milestone Films, which recently restored the film in partnership with the Academy Film Archive, and Robert Fiore, the film's assistant to the director.

The series will feature rare home movies, promotional films, silent rediscoveries and experimental shorts including works by Saul Bass and Satyajit Ray. Plus there are premieres of the restorations of Oscar-nominated "Exploratorium," Jim Hoberman's "Mission to Mongo" and Academy Award-winning cinematographer Ray Rennahan's "The Love Charm."

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/moviesnow/la-et-mn-the-academy-will-shine-the-spotlight-on-orphan-films-in-may-20130417,0,1735442.story?track=rss

Call for Presentations on Obsolescence and Orphan Films

noreply@blogger.com (Dan Streible) — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 02:34:00 +0000

Orphans 9

The 9th Orphan Film Symposium

March 30 - April 2, 2014
@ EYE
in Amsterdam

New York University Cinema Studies joins with EYE (Film Institute Netherlands) and the University of Amsterdam for the ninth international gathering of archivists, curators, scholars, preservationists, and artists devoted to screening and discussing orphan films (i.e., an eclectic variety of neglected moving images). Film, video, and digital works from around the world will be projected in the magnificent EYE building in Amsterdam, all presented with context provided by expert speakers and creative accompanists.

Call for Presentations:

The Future of Obsolescence

The theme of “Orphans 9” is obsolescence, broadly conceived. We invite proposals for presentations on the histories and futures of film and other moving image media. The symposium will consider not only technological and format obsolescence, but also the ways that audiovisual media have recorded and deployed ideas, content, representations, genres, narratives, fashions, and ideologies deemed obsolete or outdated. What neglected cinema artifacts or orphaned media should we re-view and reconsider in order to better understand the world? How should preservationists, archivists, historians, curators, and scholars deal with film and obsolete “new media”? What orphan films document these phenomena and issues? What does “media archaeology” teach us? How are artists, producers, and others using, reviving, and transforming remaindered film and video material? How do archives, museums, libraries, schools, cinematheques, and sister institutions participate in the remix culture of recombinant media 2.0?

Throughout the three days and four nights of the symposium, selected speakers will lead presentations, screenings, and discussions. Proposals that include the screening of rare, rediscovered, or recently preserved works are encouraged. New media productions using archival or abandoned material are sought for the symposium’s screenings as well, as are technical presentations on moving image archiving and preservation.

E-mail questions and proposals to Dan.Streible@nyu.edu. First round of proposal review begins June 28, 2013. For more information and updates, visit www.nyu.edu/orphans.

NYU | Cinema Studies | MIAP UVA Media Studies | P&P

www.nyu.edu/tisch/preservation www.student.uva.nl/mpap

The Academy takes a Close Look at Orphan Films (May 10-11, 2013)

noreply@blogger.com (Dan Streible) — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 14:32:00 +0000

Join us!

30 films in 27 hours! 34 speakers! a lunch! a reception! in Hollywood! all for $20!

See and hear Dino Everett project motion-picture film on a 1929 model Bristolphone 16mm sound-on-disk projector

+
premieres of new preservation on films such as

The Bishop of Hollywood (Hollywood Comedies, 1924) rediscovered short

Exploratorium (Jon Boorstin, 1974) introduced by the director

Mission to Mongo (Jim Hoberman, 1978) from Anthology Film Archives

The Love Charm (1928) two-strip Technicolor; NFPF New Zealand rediscovery

City Harvest (OWI, ca. 1943) "victory gardening" in Chicago's ethnic neighborhoods

+
varieties including

A Place to Stand, 70mm multiscreen film for Expo '67

with home movies of Expo 67, assembled by Walter Forsberg

Transformations (Ralph Sargent for IBM, 1968) introduced by the director

Hey Mama (Vaughn Obern, 1969) UCLA student film about Black Venice

Naked Yoga (Paul Cordsen, 1974) excerpt, Best Documentary Short Subject

Lead In (Thom Eubank and Saundra Sharp, 1981) wraparounds for B.E.T.

speaking. . . .

Academy curators: Cassie Blake, Ed Carter, Tessa Idlewine, Lynne Kirste, Josef Lindner, Heather Linville, Brian Meacham, Sean Savage, and Mark Toscano, with May Randy Haberkamp, Haduong, and Mike Pogorzelski.

Media makers: Jon Boorstin, Rob Epstein, Robert Fiore, Jeffrey Freidman, Rick Prelinger, Ralph Sargent, S. Pearl Sharp, and Penelope Spheeris.

Archivists/scholars/curators/etc.: Snowden Becker, Hadrian Belove, Dino Everett, Dennis Doros, Walter Forsberg, Jan-Christopher Horak, Priya Jaikumar, Liz Keim, Jeff Lambert, Kathleen Maguire, Ross Melnick, Mark Quigley, Jacqueline Stewart, Dan Streible, Todd Wiener, and Chuck Wolfe.

US Premiere of "Nëntori i dytë" (The Second November)

noreply@blogger.com (Dan Streible) — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 20:42:00 +0000

Quick: name your favorite Albanian film. . . . Chances are even dedicated cinephiles have not had the opportunity to see many, if any, movies produced in Albania. Here's an excellent way to start.

The Orphan Film Symposium is a partner (in a modest way) to the Albanian Cinema Project, which is making a big splash with its first public event in the US -- screening a newly restored feature film!

Come to this free screening of The Second November, March 27. But do e-mail your request for a seat, because this screening will certainly fill up.

* * * *

NYU's Department of Cinema Studies presents

The US Premiere of
Nëntori i dytë (The Second November)
1982, 93 minutes, dir. Viktor Gjika
Followed by a discussion on the state of Albanian film preservation with Albanian filmmaker Fatmir Koci, Albanian American film producer and screenwriter Thomas Logoreci, Colorlab CEO Russ Suniewick, and Albanian Cinema Project director Regina Longo.

Wednesday, March 27, 6:15pm
NYU Tisch School of the Arts
Department of Cinema Studies
721 Broadway, 6th Floor, Michelson Theater

*** RSVP to CinemaStudiesEvents@gmail.com***

Most Albanian films made before 1991 were never translated into another language and are rarely screened outside of Albania. The Albanian Cinema Project's (ACP) newly launched preservation initiative is changing this fact, bringing a 'new' national cinema to international screens.

Our digital restoration of Viktor Gjika's 1982 patriotic drama Nëntori i dytë was completed just in time to celebrate 100 years of Albanian Independence from Ottoman rule (1912-2012). It premiered to a packed house at the 13th Festival of Albanian Film in Tirana, on November 3, 2102. And now, for the first time, will play for US audiences in the first ever English language adaption of Gjika's socialist realist epic, restored by Colorlab Corp.

Be part of the first American audience to screen Nëntori i dytë, and to hear firsthand accounts from Albanian filmmaker Fatmir Koci (Tirana Year Zero, 2001; Land of the Eagles, 2007;Time of the Comet, 2008), Albanian American film producer and screenwriter Thomas Logoreci, ACP Director Regina Longo, and Russ Suniewick, CEO of Colorlab Corp, who have formed ACP to help save and restore Albania's film heritage.

The campaign to relocate the collections of the Albanian national film archives to a new, mold-free facility is at the heart of our mission. Working with the support of the Albanian Ministry of Culture, the US Embassy in Tirana, the Association of Moving Image Archivists, the Orphan Film Symposium, the Library of Congress Audiovisual Archives and the Albanian American National Organization, the Albanian Cinema Project is dedicated to preserving, restoring, and promoting Albanian film heritage.

Co-sponsored by Wesleyan University and the Albanian Cinema Project.

Dan Streible | (917) 754-1401

Assoc. Professor of Cinema Studies & Director of Graduate Studies

Moving Image Archiving & Preservation Program, Assoc. Director

Orphan Fim Symposium, director, www.nyu.edu/orphanfilm

NYU | Tisch School of the Arts | Department of Cinema Studies

* AMPAS Orphan Film Showcase @ Academy Film Archive, Hollywood, CA, May 10-11, 2013

** Orphans Midwest @ IU Cinema, Bloomington, IN, Sept. 26-28, 2013

*** Orphan 9, The Future of Obsolescence, @ EYE, Amsterdam, March 30 - April 2, 2014

noreply@blogger.com (Dan Streible) — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 21:49:00 +0000

A note for Chicago-areas moviegoers that the Music Box Theatre 70mm Festival wraps tonight with PLAYTIME by Jacques Tati, + this piece of direct animation by Danielle Ash & Jodie Mack. Made fot the 2012 Orphan Film Symposium, this will be its second-ever screening.

Camera/phone video taken inside Museum of the Moving Image:

Melton Barker Foils Film Historiographers and Auteurist Critics

noreply@blogger.com (Dan Streible) — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 01:19:00 +0000

On a very happy note indeed:

This Sunday's New York Times featured this article on "The Kidnappers Foil" series of movies and their filmmaker Melton Barker.

The Legacy of a Camera-Toting Huckster

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/movies/the-kidnappers-foil-a-local-talent-national-treasure

Writer Amanda Petrusich presents an exemplary journalistic account of the history and significance of this previously obscure body of motion picture work. (So few journalists get the quotations of their interviewees correct; she does, near as I can tell.)

Congratulations to Caroline Frick (T.A.M.I.) and Dwight Swanson for getting these orphans onto the National Film Registry -- and into the Times. If you've not previously sampled Mr. Barker's oeuvre, please take this opportunity. [See www.meltonbarker.org]

And if there were any doubt that orphanista Caroline Jane Frick has long been on a mission to immortalize Ennis Melton Barker, consider that her doctoral dissertation specifically holds up Barker as the orphan filmmaker par excellence. In "Restoration Nation: Motion Picture Archives and 'American' Film Heritage" (University of Texas at Austin, 2005), 245, she writes about the Orphan Film Symposium.

So-called “orphanistas” gather and lobby for increased attention and, most importantly, funding for a more organic or “real” American film heritage – ephemeral advertising footage, home movies, medical training films, and more. Albeit, armed with an ironic distance and postmodern sensibilities, participants in the orphans film movement hope to place individuals such as Melton Barker, an itinerant Texas filmmaker, next to (or at least, on the same list as) Howard Hawks – and the arbiters of national heritage are doing just that. [Emphasis not in the original.]

Barker ca. 1930s (Frick Collection)

For more about the man, including this rare photograph, see the article by our now-proven arbiter of national heritage, author of Saving Cinema: The Politics of Preservation (Oxford, 2011), founder of the Texas Archive of the Moving Image, assistant professor of Radio-TV-Film at the University of Texas, Austin, at-large alternate appointee to the National Film Preservation Board, former Curator of Motion Pictures at the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film, and president of the Association of Moving Image Archivists (whew):

Caroline Frick, "Jack Rabbit Genius: Melton Barker, Itinerant Films, and Creating Locality," The Moving Image 10.1 (Spring 2010): 1-22.

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

(photo courtesy of Jim Ponder)

And, begging your pardon for this personal dog-loving indulgence, we note that one of the photos of Mr. Barker the Times used includes the nearly-forgotten auteur with his pixelated pup.

FUND [and] the Albanian Cinema Project

noreply@blogger.com (Dan Streible) — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 21:20:00 +0000

Thanks to the Albanian Film Archive and the Albanian Cinema Project, a new piece of preservation is in the works as part of the Orphan Film Project. At this moment, a 16mm print (with a magnetic soundtrack) is in transit from Tirana to New York. Archivist Eriona Vyshka (head of collections and cataloging) has assigned catalog entry KF-16 the title [Albanian dances from northwest and north regions]. (Perhaps the short title among the preservation team will become North by Northwest??) Throughout the spring 2013 NYU semester, Bill Brand and his MIAP graduate students will preserve this six and half minutes of footage as part of the yearly Film Preservation course.

video frame grab from KF-16 (Courtesy of the Albanian Film Archive)

The work will take place at the BB Optics laboratory in Tribeca, funded by NYU’s Department of Cinema Studies (home of both MIAP and the Orphan Film Symposium). All preservation and access materials -- the original print, a new preservation negative and sound track, a new print, and digital reference copies TBD -- will return to the archive. An access copy will also be deposited with the NYU Film Study Center for research and classroom use.

Watch the film (without sound).

Part 4 of 4

Women from the town of Tropoja dance.


(Image: sq.wikipedia.org)

The film itself was part of an “ethno-choreography” series created under the guidance of esteemed ethnomusicologist Ramazan Bogdani, professor emeritus at the University of Tirana’s Folklore Institute. If I understand the Wikipedia entry correctly, Bogdani's output includes 221 ethnographic film recordings totaling approximately 60,000 meters (nearly 200,000 feet) of 16mm film, running some 350 hours, described in a 746-page 3-volume catalog.

The intertitles indicate the dancers were filmed in the towns of Shënkoll (district of Lezhe) and Tropojë (near the Kosovo border). Eriona Vyshka translates the sections of the film as:

Dance of sowing the crops (work rituals)

Wedding song

Dance of “Logue” [?] (lyrical, erotic)

Tropoja women dance (lyrical, epic)

18 December 2012
(Ministry of Defence; www.mod.gov.al)

Born in 1943, Bogdani remains active in publishing his work. In fact, the 100th anniversary of Albanian independence in 2012 saw not only the creation of the Albanian Cinema Project, but official state recognition of Bogdani’s publication of a six-volume series of books on ethno-choreography. Less than a month ago Dr. Bogdani spoke at the federal Centre of Culture, Media and Defence [!] Publications, in cooperation with the Academy of Sciences. His concluding remark about the study of folklore today has resonance with conceptualizing the study of folk dance as recorded on film. Today’s is “the folklore of festivals,” rather than “the traditional folklore of the rhapsode [or rhapsodist, a performer of poetry] by his fireplace in Dukagjin playing the lute, or dancing in a wedding.” One must go to international festivals to see past traditions re-created in performance; or, we might add, watching a film or video recording made in the past.

For those of us limited to English-language sources, there is at least one book from which to learn:
Ramazan H. Bogdani, Etnokoreografi kosovare hasjane (Tirana: Globus R, 2005), 323 pages; 150 photographs; English summary of 16 pages. According to Albanian-Folklore.com [yes!] the volume is "complementary to the 1977 publication of Folklori koreografik i Hasit. This book is a further study of the dances of the Has region [Kosovo]. The characteristics are described per village with photographs of the costumes and dances. A further chapter describes the 17 mentioned dances themselves, sometimes using the full description by measure with musical scores...."

Nota bene!

A delightful irony for English-Albanian cross-promotion:

the final frame of the film.

Courtesy of the Albanian Film Archive

FUND of course is the Albanian word for "end." But for the purposes of the Albanian Cinema Project and the AQShF, funds are needed to accelerate the preservation of this national film heritage. You can read more about the urgency and cultural value of this effort at the project website. Or write to ACP director Dr. Regina Longo [ regmlongo2 @ gmail ].

For now, simply FUND!

. . . and more Ritchie Training image repurposing, Orphans 3

noreply@blogger.com (Dan Streible) — Sat, 12 Jan 2013 17:40:00 +0000

. . . and there was also this "Orphans 3" repurposing of the USC Newsfilm image. We had a memorable screening of Decasia in the School of Music Recital Hall. James Bond (Full Aperture Systems) somehow got the big 35mm projector into the small projection booth. He also made sure we got the Dolby correct. Bill Morrison said the presentation that night sounded as good as it ever had. Nice and loud too.

Auld Lang Syne for Girl on the Bus

noreply@blogger.com (Dan Streible) — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 22:36:00 +0000

p.p.p.s.

Dave Kehr's blog bids an end to 2012 with a Groucho intro to The Girl on the Bus and Decasia.

www.davekehr.com

The Girl from SAFETY ON THE SCHOOL BUS

noreply@blogger.com (Dan Streible) — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 21:07:00 +0000

postscript to previous post:

A/V Geeks proprietor Skip Elsheimer provides the missing metadata about the acetate child crystalized into im/mortality by Bill Morrison. And thereby incidentally reminds us why collectors, geeks, and entrepreneurs are essential to film preservation, and, let's say, cultural heritage in general.

The Decasia shot comes from the A/V Geeks Archive's 16mm print of an educational film from the legendary Centron Corporation of Lawrence, Kansas:

logo from A Citizen Makes a Decision (1954)

Safety on the School Bus (1951)
released by Young America Films
11 min., b/w, sd., 16mm
OCLC no. 5913398

Despite having been assigned a unique identifier number by an unknown librarian for the Online Computer Library Center (nonprofit producer of the glorious public access catalog WorldCat.org), no libraries are currently listed in the WorldCat record as holding any kind of copy of Safety on the School Bus.

How did the frame from this unique A/V Geeks print get to Decasia and how did the print get damaged?

skip@avgeeks.com writes this Boxing Day morning, 2012:

It was damaged when Hurricane Fran [Sept. 1996] flooded my basement and knocked out power so the sump pump stopped working. Water damaged around 200 films. I was very depressed about it and didn't really want to go through the collection to assess the damage. Then I got a request from Bill Morrison, who was only looking for damaged material. That gave me the push to find the bad stuff...

Saludos to Elsheimer and fellow Atomic Age men and women who collect films abandoned by their owners (first-, second-, and third-hand) and who hold own to them even after floods and hurricanes, having faith in their Orphic value.

courtesy of Skip Elsheimer.

Much more could be said, but for the holiday moment, I will just underscore the point about film preservation and access occurring outside of official channels of collecting institutions or copyright holders.

We do have an increasing amount of knowledge and appreciation about Centron and its kindred producer-distributors. (See Faye E. Riley's University of Kansas dissertation and her essay "Centron, an Industrial/Educational Film Studio, 1947-1981," in Hediger and Vonderau's Films that Work, 2009). However, even the most likely source of access to Centron films, the University of Kansas library in Lawrence, has only 5 records for Centron-authored works in its catalog. Tellingly, 4 of the 5 items containing Centron films are DVD compilations -- each of which Skip Elsheimer curated or produced or both: Atomic Age Classics, vol. 1 and vol. 8, How to Be a Man, and How to Be a Woman.

# # # #

p.p.s.

What Skip Elsheimer et al. are up to

in Raleigh, North Carolina,

April 25-27, 2013:

www.bastardfilmencounter.com

Decasia/Fantasia; Nitrate/Acetate; 35/16; Tallow/Fat

noreply@blogger.com (Dan Streible) — Mon, 24 Dec 2012 21:15:00 +0000

Speaking of a film "where we experience impermanence" (see previous post), here's a Christmas Eve return to Decasia, the Fantasia of found footage feature film fun. Dave Kehr (love him long time) reminds us in his 12/21-23 New York Times column ("Symphony of Compostitions from Decomposition") that Icarus Films (ditto) presents Michael Gordon & Bill Morrison's (ditto) 35mm motion picture on Blu-Ray.

http://www.icarusfilms.com/new2012/deca.html

Two images continue to be associated with the promotion of Decasia. Each has its aesthetic value, whether in motion or as a still. However, each has a tiny "slippage" worth noting when thinking about "found footage" and how these images signify what they do.

The first, with its snow-flakey crystalline patterns, is seasonal today. However, it's curious that this particular frame enlargement is so often reprinted as representative of Decasia. The shot of the young girl on a school bus, seemingly looking into the camera, sticks out from most of the footage -- at least to viewers familiar with film stocks and aesthetics of varying historical vintages.

NYTimes.com credit reads: Icarus Films

First, she sits in a mise-en-scene of a post-WWII world (albeit in 16:9 here!). Most all of Decasia otherwise has the veneer of the 1920s or 30s. And in fact its source materials were mostly born in that earlier time.

Second, because of the above, Decasia's display of decay is physically sourced to motion-picture film printed on stocks with a base made of cellulose nitrate (aka 'nitrate film'). Nitrate is famously beautiful and lustrous when projected and infamously (1) photochemically unstable and hence subject to rapid decomposition if not optimally stored and (2) highly inflammable (or flammable; one of those rare pairs of words that can be both synonym and antonym to each other). The characteristics of this material's decay are not like those of the later "safety film" manufactured on a cellulose acetate base. Decasia's bodies and things were shot in the 1920s and 30s, when nitrate was the norm. (It remained so until 1951.)

Therefore the Girl on the Bus looks to be from a later era because she was. The patina that covers her frame is also symptomatic of the later acetate film stocks. It's science, not magic. A fact, not a feeling.

Here's how the gold-standard research of the Image Permanence Institute describes the impermanence of acetate film.

Another consequence of base deterioration is the appearance of crystalline deposits or liquid-filled bubbles on the emulsion. This is evidence of plasticizers, additives to the plastic base, becoming incompatible and oozing out on the surface. They can appear on either the base or emulsion side of the film. Plasticizers are chemical additives that are mixed in with the cellulose acetate during manufacture. . . . The high plasticizer content of acetate films reflects a desire to make film as non-flammable [aka 'non-inflammable,' ed.] as possible. The second function of plasticizers is to reduce the dimensional instability of film due to solvent loss or humidity change. All cellulosic films will shrink under dry conditions and expand under damp conditions; minimizing this behavior is an important role of plasticizer additives.
-- James M. Reilly, IPI Storage Guide for Acetate Film (Rochester, NY: Image Permanence Institute, 1993, rev. 1996), 12. See also: D. G. Horvath, The Acetate Negative Survey (Ekstrom Library, University of Louisville, 1987); C. R. Fordyce's article "Motion Picture Film Support: 1889-1976, An Historical Review," SMPTE Journal, 85 (Jul. 1976): 493-95; and, from one of the inventors of 16mm film at Eastman Kodak in the 1920s, C. E. K. Mees, "History of Professional Black-and-White Motion-Picture Film," Journal of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, 63 (Oct. 1954): 125-40.

The shot of the Girl on the Bus comes from a 16mm acetate print of a film in Skip Elsheimer's A/V Geeks collection. He has in fact done entire curated film programs about school buses -- shown while the audience travels in an actual school bus. At avgeeks.com, find DVD compilations of his educational 16mm prints, including Extreme School Bus Adventure!

The second image often illustrating the nature of Decasia also appears in the Times notice, also from Icarus's Blu-Ray disc promotion. It looks like this.

NYTimes.com credit line: University of South Carolina Moving Image Research Collections/Icarus Films

As Dave Kehr notes:

Mr. Morrison has clearly logged a lot of hours at film archives — including the Museum of Modern Art, the Library of Congress and George Eastman House — in pursuit of particularly evocative instances of decay. Some shots seem almost too good to be true, as when an early-20th-century boxer spars with the shifting mass of nitrate rot that has erased his punching bag.

Even TV Guide's capsule review refers to "such evocative scraps of footage as a boxer gamely pummeling a pulsating streak of bubbling emulsion."

Indeed this is a striking image, especially when set in motion. As the filmmaker himself has noted, it conveys a sense of futility and mortality that is Decasia's theme. However, it derives not from one of the Big 6 film archives, but from the notable nitrate collection at the University of South Carolina. The Fox Movietone News Collection was housed in what was known as the Newsfilm Library when Morrison was mining its massive contents. (Now it's called USC Moving Image Research Collections, and its glories are now appearing online as part of a developing "Digital Video Repository." See mirc.sc.edu.) As noted elsewhere, more than half of the imagery in Decasia has South Carolina/Fox roots. This particular shot is not Movietone (sound-on-film, born in 1927) but silent-era footage from the newsreel service that was then known only as (wait for it...) Fox News. :-(

Just as the strip of film has a physical referent in a particular place (the vaults in Columbia, SC), the emulsion on the nitrate strip was created originally by a particular real-world subject in front of the hand-cranked 35mm camera. For the purposes of viewing Decasia, Kehr is correct in describing the Man as "an early-20th-century boxer." Yet in recognizing that this shot was "found" (using an exacting cataloguing system!) in an archival collection, we can also wonder about its historicity. We could easily re-imagine this same footage (decayed or not) illustrating something about, say, the 1920s (the golden age of sports) or the history of prizefighting.

soundtrack CD (Cantaloupe Music, 2002) limited edition DVD (Other Cinema)

Sparring Man battling an amorphous abstract opponent is actually Sparring Man Willie Ritchie (born Gerhardt Anthony Steffen), training (as the camera operator Lou Hutt knew when showing up to film the boxer) for a comeback title bout against then lightweight champion Benny Leonard (born Benjamin Leiner, he held the title from 1917 to 1925). Ritchie was lightweight champion of the world from 1912 to 1914, the "white hope" era, when Jack Johnson held the heavyweight crown. The original Fox catalog record is correct, but perhaps a bit misleading today, stating that Ritchie was training for a championship match with Leonard. Indeed the press of June 1923 (when this scene was filmed in San Francisco) reported that Ritchie was training for his comeback and wanted to a title match. But he never got it.

No doubt Morrison was drawn to the part of the updated catalog record that says "various scenes of Willie Richie [sic] training... including: jumping rope, using punching bag (emulsion deterioration)." And "Note: TBP [to be pulled or printed, due to physical condition]; emulsion deterioration, severe [yay!] at times." Had he been making a documentary on, say, the history of boxing, he might have been more drawn to the other Fox footage of Willie Ritchie. Both pieces of film (MVTN 3370 and 0930) have the assigned title, Boxing: Ritchie Trains, but the less deteriorated piece was shot by San Franciscan Sam Greenwald, almost a year earlier.

To tie up this posting in a bow, we might note that the last piece of silent film in the USC MIRC catalog attributed to cinematographer Hutt is MVTN 8567 (San Francisco, Dec. 27, 1928): Bust/Statue of "Santa" Made of Tallow/Fat. The content summary reads: "Chef Gustave Milhan carves a "Santa Claus" from 500 pounds of tallow (fat). It took four months to make."

# # #

This "stock" photo from Corbis company [100 million images] comes from the noted Bettman Archive [11 million photos], which it purchased in 1995. According to the Corbis Images site: "Original caption:1935- - Benny Leonard, Lightweight Champion, on a barn-storming trip, took on Willie Ritchie, ex-champion for four rounds at San Francisco and took a whipping. However, in a later fight in New Jersey, he knocked out Ritchie in 8 pounds [sic]."

I wonder if that 1935 date is accurate? Could be, if they were barnstorming. But they both look in fighting trim.

More likely, the photo is from 1919, when Leonard was champion and Ritchie retired, serving in the U.S. military as a boxing instructor at training camps. In "Ritchie May Try to Stage 'Comeback'" (Aug. 20, 1922), the San Francisco Chronicle noted Ritchie's "sensational four-round fight against Benny Leonard" in San Francisco, and "a longer match in Jersey, where Leonard handed Ritchie a decisive beating."

The photo below, from a memorabilia dealer, is identified only as an "antique photo" from a 1918 charity benefit, showing Leonard shaking hands with Ritchie (left). The newsies' front page extras refer to Italy, Flanders and battle, confirming this is not one of the postwar Ritchie bouts.

www.josportsinc.com/catalog

Whirling Dervish Time Machine Dream Night

noreply@blogger.com (Dan Streible) — Mon, 24 Dec 2012 05:24:00 +0000

On December 21, 2012, (Bradley) Eros + (Jeanne) Liotta presented a screening/seance in the Maya Deren Theater at Anthology Film Archives, recognizing the 20th anniversary of the short Super 8 film Dervish Machine they made and toured with.

Light Cone will rent you a 16mm print for €31.
1992/16 mm / coul-n & b / son / 10 '00
"Meditations on the movement and be developed and craftsmen inspired by Gysin and Dream Machine by Sufi mysticism and pre-cinema. Knowledge of the fragility of existence reflects the toughness of the material. The film itself becomes the place where we experience impermanence and reveals the moving image."

Cellphone video (12.21.12) of Anthology Film Archives projection of a video copy of the 16mm film entitled Towers, Open Fire (1963, Anthony Balch, Brion Gysin, and Wm. S. Burroughs).

The spinning cylinders are "dream machines" (see the useful http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreamachine)

After a Super 8 projection of the original film, the duo reunited to present a series of films, drawings, objects, slides, performances, and texts that either inspired or were proto-parts of Dervish Machine. The idea is actually part of a series curated by Bradley Eros, described in the Anthology calendar this way:

CATALYSTS (or, EXPOUNDED CINEMA) is a new series wherein avant-garde filmmakers reveal the secret sources and inspirations for a specific film from their body of work by a show-and-tell presentation through readings, films, music, images, dreams, documents, private tales, or exhibits demonstrating the roots and branches of experimental personal cinema: Exegesis by demo. Experience the cultural and personal artifacts that influenced the works and unravel the process from initiation to completion of the creative dynamics that form a work of film art.

The audience included more than a few people who were part of that process in 1992 or before. Ken Jacobs was there, for example. His short color silent film fragment Death of P'twon (1963), the last he made with Jack Smith, was a rarity.

The notably un-worn 16mm film has some handsome footage of Mr. Smith that shows him in something like a 'documentary' light. (Not that it's not a totally performative piece of a film that was never completed.)

A few times during the evening Liotta mentioned working with or meeting painting student and soon-to-be filmmaker Bill Morrison at the Cooper Union School of Art. He helped Eros/Liotta do some hand-processing of film, using a handheld rotating drum.

Liotta's drawing of that spinning cylinder showed it to be part of the leitmotif of the whirling dervish / dream machine. It also reminded me of Edison's drawing of the original phonograph design, which was later the basis for the prototype for the Edison-Dickson kinetograph --
a spiraling strip of small celluloid images wrapped around a cylinder, here drawn with an eyepiece imagined as the viewing device.

When I read the description of Dervish Machine I thought of Bill Morrison's 2002 film, Decasia, now about as well known as experiment film gets these days. Having been around when he was exploring the Fox Movietone News archive for his creative work, I was aware that more than half of the footage in Decasia came from the University of South Carolina's Fox newsfilm collection. That large cache of 35mm holds some of the true treasures of time-machine cinema recordings from the 1920s and 30s, the early sound outtakes being some of the most interesting. On the second or third viewing of Decasia, I noticed that one of the newsreel shots of an actual "whirling dervish" bookends Morrison's film. In the University of South Carolina's Moving Image Research Collections two catalog entries identify the footage:

MVTN 2-49: Egyptian Dancers (11 minutes)

MVTN 2-50: Egyptian (Whirling Dervishes) Dancers (shot in Cairo, December 28, 1928) (4 minutes)

The latter is a partially edited story, with the era's stereotypical xenophobic intertitles about "strange" peoples of the East. The unedited footage, however, allows a more marvelous site (and sound!) of the performance and performer.

One can look at the Whirling Dervishes footage and understand its historical origins. It was part of the same shoot by the Fox newsreel crew of Brutt and Ellis. The camera and sound operators were in Bethlehem on Christmas day, recording Bethlehem Street Scenes. And the next day in Jerusalem filming Palestine Police Band. Earlier in the month they were in Gibraltar (How Britain Holds Pathway to India) and Naples (filming "native dancers" doing the tarantella. The first item in the catalog attributed to Brutt and Ellis is called Haymaking, shot in -- ironically -- Damascus [Pennsylvania], July 25, 1928.

However, now I will ever look at the footage in Decasia as connected to a period a decade earlier, when Morrison was connected to Liotta and Eros and the Dervish Machine project.

The evening ended with a replay of the Eros + Liotta film, but in the form of the 16mm blowup by maestro Bill Brand of BB Optics.

more about the 2012 National Film Registry

noreply@blogger.com (Dan Streible) — Sat, 22 Dec 2012 00:04:00 +0000

A post-script to yesterday's post:

CBS News online has a nice gallery with images from each of the 25 titles on the 2012 Registry, as well as some stills about film preservation. This was the only source Google image search found for an image from Parable.

CBS News also has like galleries from 2010 and 2011.

a frame grab from Parable (1964). Rumors of this film presenting "Jesus as a clown" were obviously exaggerated.

About PARABLE: Watch Mark Quigley's interview with Rolf Forsberg.

noreply@blogger.com (Dan Streible) — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 00:40:00 +0000

Guest blogger Mark Quigley is Manager of the UCLA Film & Television Archive's Archival Research and Study Center, who modestly describes himself as an "access archivist." As an adjunct faculty member, he teaches in UCLA's Moving Image Archive Studies master's program.

------------------------------------------------------

Born in 1925, Rolf Forsberg began his career in the arts as a playwright and director in the Chicago theatre scene. (He was married to Second City improv master, Josephine Forsberg from 1945 to 1965). As a filmmaker, Rolf has written and directed dozens of productions, most notably, a number of innovative sponsored religious films, including Antkeeper (1966) and Stalked (1969; featured by archivist Skip Elsheimer on his “A/V Geeks Educational Archive Religion" DVD). Rolf also co-directed the 1979 feature documentary, The Late Great Planet Earth, narrated by Orson Welles. Rolf is still working today, writing documentaries about the U.S. National Parks.

Parable (1964) made Rolf’s career as a writer/producer/director of sponsored films. Commissioned by the New York City Protestant Council of Churches for their 1964 World's Fair pavilion, the short film with a European art house feel was controversial, daring to use allegory in depicting “Christ as a clown.” Despite threats of violence and protests from numerous factions -- including objections from Robert Moses, president of the New York World’s Fair -- audiences embraced the strange, powerful short, with Newsweek calling Parable “very probably the best film of the fair.” Parable remained controversial, making local headlines in 1971 for its temporary removal from the Los Angeles Library system for promoting, “anti-establishment type things.” The film ultimately became a best seller in the religious 16mm market, successfully meeting the church’s aim of reaching secular audiences, and paving the way for Rolf’s hire on many subsequent film experiments to be funded by church organizations.

Watch Rolf Forsberg talk about Parable. (5:53)

Orphan films beget Orphan films.

In 2003, the UCLA Film & Television Archive acquired nearly the entire run of the ambitious religious TV anthology series, Insight (1960-1983), which also enjoyed distribution on 16mm to classrooms and churches. In 2006, I received a call from writer Paul Cullum, who was looking for a disturbing religious film (a dystopian take on government food assistance) that he had seen as a teen in Sunday school. We both thought it was likely an Insight episode, but after much research it turned out to be a 1971 Lutheran short titled, And Then They Forgot God, made for the production company, Family Films. Our search for that obscure film is chronicled in the Dan Streible-edited Orphan Film issue of The Moving Image, vol. 9, no. 1, (Spring 2009).

Through that deep research, we came upon a fortuitous red herring -- recurring references to “Rolf Forsberg” as a “maker of odd religious films.” After tracking Rolf first in Chicago, and my later meeting with him in California, the UCLA Film & Television Archive became home to a number of Rolf's personal prints of his films. Our continued interest in Rolf's complex body of work, which is simultaneously surprisingly secular, expressionistic, and independent, has led to an extended dialog with the kind filmmaker, including a few rounds of an informal oral history (on digital video as well as good ol' audio cassette) and an even greater number of extremely enjoyable Sunday get-togethers for sharp reminiscences of a golden career.

Thanks to Dan Streible and the Orphan Film Project for creating and nurturing a dynamic forum where talents such as Rolf Forsberg are embraced for rediscovery and reaffirmation. Earlier this year, the "Orphans 8" symposium at Museum of the Moving Image featured a brief overview of Rolf's sponsored films, including a screening his provocative classic, One Friday (1973), which imagines an all-out race war. From that Orphans exposure came a BAMcinématek screening of Rolf's prescient ecological film Ark (1970), which played before Douglas Trumbull's partially Ark-inspired Silent Running (1972).

This momentum, of course, has now culminated with the Librarian of Congress naming Rolf's Parable to the 2012 National Film Registry.

-- Mark Quigley

* * * * * * * *

Primary documents, from the Times of New York (1964) and Los Angeles (1971).

Sharyn Elise Jackson's 2004 NYU honors thesis "International Participation in the New York World's Fair 1964-1965," mentions Parable.

* * * * * * * *

Q: HOW DO I PURCHASE A DVD?
A: Parable is available from EcuFilm (United Methodist Communications) for $44.95.
www.ecufilm.org, (888) 346-3862

Worldcat.org's record for Parable documents libraries holding it in 16mm, VHS, and DVD versions. Here's one library record, for the DVD.

Parable [videorecording] / The Protestant Council of the City of New York
written by Rolf Forsberg; produced by Fred A. Niles; directed by Tom Rook, Rolf Forsberg. Produced by the Council of Churches of the City of New York"--Back cover
Originally released as a motion picture in 1964.
--> Filmed with the cooperation of Circus World Museum, Baraboo, Wisconsin.[Nashville, Tenn.] : United Methodist Communications: EcuFilm, [2005?].
(22 min.) : sd., col. ; + 1 leaders guide (11 p. ; 18 cm.)

Announcement of the video availability of Parable came in a 2004 press release.

For some reason the record's item summary and subject listing are in French.

Pantomime mettant en scène un clown qui prend la place des exploités dans une troupe de cirque. Bande sonore originale.
Subject: Morale pratique.

The leader's guide is available for free download at the United Methodist Communications web store. The catalog description reads:

A timeless classic of service and self-sacrifice, Parable was the groundbreaking, award-winning film that astounded crowds at the 1964 New York World’s Fair. Using only strong visual images and music, Parable continues to speak volumes to contemporary audiences about compassion, combating injustice, and selfless giving. Simple. Direct. Sure to affect any age or ethnic group and spark endless discussion. This is one film that your class will remember for years to come. Free guides are available for each title under the Free Study Guide section. Council of Churches of the City of New York.

Audience: Youth and adults
Suggested Settings: Sunday school, retreats, youth groups

The leader's guide also suggests showing the film to an audience either twice, or with "interrupted viewing" for discussion. Another suggestion: "After a showing, you might leave the room darkened and comment: Let’s think for a moment about what we have seen...."

PARABLE and other neglected films on National Film Registry

noreply@blogger.com (Dan Streible) — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 04:40:00 +0000

The Library of Congress today announced the 25 films added to National Film Registry for 2012.
www.loc.gov/today/pr/2012/12-226.html

Many in archiving, preservation, and orphan film circles are particularly amped about this year's list. Librarian of Congress James Billington, offered up a quite diverse set of American films, the most eclectic group of 25 in his 24 years of being the sole arbiter of all 600 titles now on the Registry.

Among those with an orphan or non-Hollywood status (15 as I count them), there are riches. So too among the Hollywood 10 (if I may). Classics enshrined on the Registry cover a variety of genres and eras. "Just in time for Christmas," the LOC gives us the boomer touchstone A Christmas Story (1983), followed by the Delmer Daves-directed Western drama 3:10 to Yuma (1957), the iconic Siegel-Eastwood cop drama Dirty Harry (1971), a George Cukor comedy remembered as Judy Holliday's best, Born Yesterday (1950), a Blake Edwards comedy absolutely owned by Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961; map the novella and movie here!), the Penny Marshall-directed comedy best remembered for a man's line (Tom Hanks: "There's no crying in baseball!"), A League of Their Own (1992), a William Seiter-directed Hal Roach comedy starring Laurel & Hardy, Sons of the Desert (1933), and the franchise/zeitgeist movie about which nothing more need be said here because it's all around us all the time, The Matrix (1999).

Add to the Hollywood-distributed titles two features we might call "independent" in today's sense. Otto Preminger, truly a trouble-making independent supported by the studio system, made Anatomy of a Murder (1959), with a Duke Ellington score, Saul Bass titles (great poster!), and a cast of big name actors. The New Yorker published Lillian Ross's long and memorable profile of Preminger in 1966, when he was suing distributor Columbia Pictures and Screen Gems for -- get this -- cutting up his 160-minute movie so that commercials could be inserted during television broadcasts of Anatomy of a Murder! Much lower down the fiscal chain of command comes Monte Hellman's low-budget ($800,000) road movie cum cult picture, Two-Lane Blacktop (1971). Our leading men? James Taylor and Beach Boy Dennis Wilson! -- who don't play music, sing, or score the film! Shot on stretches of Route 66, from California to Tennessee, it works on a time-capsule level as well.
AND it's about to be released on BluRay by Criterion. See also "Ten (sixteen, actually) Reasons I Love Two-Lane Blacktop," by Richard Linklater, another 2012 Registry honoree.

The 15 other films are a great gumbo.

Of the silent-era picks, the entry listed as The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Title [sic] Fight (1897) is by far the oldest. I don't know how the stray word Title got into the Library of Congress press release. But there it is. And so more than 2,000 websites have already repeated this little error. The Veriscope Company's moving-picture recording of the heavyweight prizefight between Jame J. Corbett and challenger Robert Fitzsimmons is not exactly an unknown film in histories in cinema -- where it is conventionally known as The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight everywhere from Wikipedia to the Internet Movie Database. Actually, there was no official title for the work, so far as I know. No copyright record exists (although the Veriscope Company claimed to have filed for copyright. And there was likely no on-screen title printed into the celluloid in 1897. Newspaper ads used varying descriptive titles.

Thanks: Daniel Dempsey.

In terms of preserving the Veriscope film, the BFI's National Film and Television Archive and the Museum of Modern Art have preserved copies on 35mm, but neither is anywhere close to complete. Fight film collectors Jim Jacobs and William Cayton's salvaged the knockout portion of the recording from a brittle print in their Big Fights, Inc. collection (sold to ESPN/ABC).

Other fragments of The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight exist elsewhere. Just this year I received a note from someone who found his father owned a six-frame clipping of an original print.

As you can see from this scan the collector sent, the image was of an unconventional dimension. The film stock was 63mm wide (rather than 35mm) and the wider aspect ratio about 1.66:1 (rather than 1.33:1). All told, Enoch Rector's ability to capture the entire event -- 14 three-minute rounds with one-minute breaks, plus action before and after the bout -- on his unique format was unprecedented. Three cameras were said to have exposed some 10,000 feet of film. The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight was the only film made using this technology. The investors made a fortune on the roadshow exhibition and left the show business.

There's more about this in my book Fight Pictures: A History of Boxing and Early Cinema (2008). Corbett-Fitz gets its own chapter.

Grant Lobban (www.in70mm.com)
offers this detail:

In 1983 the National Film Archive undertook the task of copying the original 63mm footage onto 35mm film. Using some material available from their archives together with extra reels provided by Jim Jacobs.... [The NFA] rephotographed the positive print cartoon style using a light box and register pins. Each frame being advanced by hand. The final 35mm print was of the masked frame type with an aspect ratio of about l,66:1 with the normal space being provided for a future sound track. . . [T]he fight film had also been copied by Karl Malkames Inc. in New York. In this case the printing was done using a special variable-pitch printer movement designed by Karl Malkames A.S.C. The final copy negative had a larger image extending the full width between the perforations.

The other silent movies on the 2012 Registry are from 1914: Uncle Tom's Cabin and Maurice Tourneur's The Wishing Ring. This version of the Harriet Beecher Stowe story was no doubt selected to stand on the Registry for the many film adaptations of what was 19th-century America's most popular theatrical production. Sam Lucas, who plays Uncle Tom, was the first African American actor to perform the role on film, and had been the first on stage as well. This arguably also made him the first black actor to play the lead role in a feature film. I've not seen The Wishing Ring, but it's an idyll of old England filmed in Fort Lee, New Jersey, by a newly arrived (and talented) French director.

Both 1914 films came from the new producer-distributor World Film Corp., co-founded by William A. Brady. Brady also headed Shubert Pictures, which produced The Wishing Ring. I doubt the coincidence was noted before both were selected to the Registry. (Or is this a Brady conspiracy? For Mr. Brady was the showman who managed the ring/stage/screen career of Gentleman Jim Corbett, making him a principal in the production of The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight too!) Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised to find William Aloysius Brady's fingerprints all over early cinema history. He was, after all, president of the National Association of the Motion Picture Industry from 1916 to 1921. In other words, Brady was the immediate predecessor of Will Hays, tsar of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association (1922-1945).

In the next posting, we'll take up the un-Hollywood additions to the National Film Registry:

Kodachrome Color Motion Picture Tests (1922)
The Middleton Family at the New York World’s Fair (1939) Prelingeriana
The Kidnappers Foil (1930s-1950s) an amazing legacy of itinerant productions
Parable (1964) religious allegory made for the World's Fair
They Call It Pro Football (1967) from NFL Films, whose founder died this year
The Spook Who Sat by the Door (1973, Ivan Dixon) wow!
Hours for Jerome: Parts 1 and 2 (1980-82) by maestro Nathaniel Dorsky
Samsara: Death and Rebirth in Cambodia (1990) Ellen Bruno's thesis documentary
Slacker (1991) Richard Linklater's low-low-budget indie that sparked a scene
One Survivor Remembers (1995) Oscar-winning documentary by Kary Antholis
The Times of Harvey Milk (1984) finally. . .

For now we can end with a tease:

Earlier this year, Mark Quigley (UCLA) and videographer Farzad Nikbakht recorded an interview with Rolf Forsberg, the veteran filmmaker responsible for the controversial but acclaimed Parable.

China Girls: The Unknown Faces of the Silver Screen

noreply@blogger.com (Dan Streible) — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 21:04:00 +0000

The Orphan Film Project and NYU Cinema Studies are cosponsoring this swell event at Anthology Film Archives, programmed by Genevieve Yue. Join us!

Her notes from the Anthology Film Archives calendar:

The various faces of the “China girl,” sometimes called a “China doll” or “girl head,” have appeared in more films than any actress, though she is almost never seen, save for the fleeting glimpses an audience might catch at the end of a film reel.

Macalester.academia.edu/Yue

These images of a woman, demurely positioned next to color swatches, have appeared on the leader of every commercial manufactured film since the late 1920s and continue in limited use today. The China girl image is instrumental in determining exposure, image density, and color balance, forming a kind of cinematic unconscious. Her essential but often overlooked role in film history has also made her a compelling subject for experimental filmmakers variously examining issues of celluloid materiality, the behind-the-scenes workings of the film industry, and the often marginal role of women. In some cases, the China girl is no less than the enigmatic icon of a vanishing medium.

Two programs highlight nine experimental films using the China girl, as well as a talk by programmer Genevieve Yue, and a projection performance by Sandra Gibson and Luis Recoder. (May we also say that Sandra Gibson is a 2010 graduate of NYU's M.A. program in Moving Image Archiving and Preservation?)

Program 1 Thursday, November 29 at 6:45 pm (ca. 80 minutes) all in 16mm

Owen Land, INSTITUTIONAL QUALITY (1969, 5 min)

Owen Land, FILM IN WHICH THERE APPEAR SPROCKET HOLES, EDGE LETTERING, DIRT PARTICLES, ETC. (1965/66, 5 min, silent)

Morgan Fisher, STANDARD GAUGE (1984, 35 min)

Michelle Silva, CHINA GIRLS (2006, 3 min)

Thomas Draschan and Stella Friedrichs, TO THE HAPPY FEW (2003, 5 min)

Brian Frye, NADJA (2000, 3 min)

Timoleon Wilkins, MM (1996, 8 min)

Mark Toscano, RELEASING HUMAN ENERGIES (2012, 5.5 min)

Program 2 Thursday, November 29 at 9:00 pm

“Blink and Burn: China Girls in Experimental Film”

A talk by Genevieve Yue

A SOURCEFUL OF SECRETS (2002/2012)

Projection performance by Sandra Gibson and Luis Recoder

Gibson & Recoder at Orphans 2008

–.

Illustration at top from "China Girls / Leader Ladies," web page created by Northwest Chicago Film Society

with images from Benjamin Tucker, Becka Hall, and Chicago Film Archives

including a moving image from CFA (16mm WINK)

See also

Julie Buck and Karin Segal's "Girls on Film" exhibition at Harvard
http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2005/07.21/00-girls.html

Watch the Buck & Segal movie, GIRLS ON FILM (2005)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nVBDX3P5TY&feature=share&list=PL23EEA35BB2E06885

post-Sandy media restoration at Eyebeam Center (aka go MIAP!)

noreply@blogger.com (Dan Streible) — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 00:07:00 +0000

Here’s a New York update after the destruction wrought by last week’s hurricane (too terrible to be named “Sandy”).

Executive summary? Students and alumni from NYU’s Moving Image Archiving and Preservation Program are doing great things, including volunteering in disaster recovery efforts.

As I type this, some are on the ground at the recently flooded facilities of Eyebeam Art + Technology Center, a New York-based not-for-profit organization.

Here’s a post-Sandy e-mail several of us in MIAP received after the first wave of salvage and rescue operations. It’s author also wrote a MIAP thesis entitled “Disaster Planning And Recovery: Post-Katrina Lessons For Mixed Media Collections” (2006).

Subject: Eyebeam restoration (aka go MIAP!)
On Sat, Nov 3, 2012 at 9:12 PM, Kara Van Malssen (kara@avpreserve) wrote:

Dear MIAP folks,

Thanks so much to those of you who have come out to help at Eyebeam the past two days. You've been really incredible. We would never have got so far without your ingenuity, knowledge, skill and dedication. This has been an amazing learning experience for me, so I hope it has been for you as well. Nothing like a disaster to give you a crash course in disaster recovery!

BUT, we are not done, and we could really use your talents again tomorrow [Sunday]! Mornings have been slow, so the more of you who can come in the morning (starting around 10:15), the better.

If someone can forward the info to the 1st years MIAP students, that would be super.

Howard, Mona, Dan, Alicia -- you should be proud of the 2nd years (oh and a few faculty and alumni too, including Josh R[anger], Erik P[iil], Chris L[acinak], Seth A[nderson], Walter F[orsberg].... Hope I haven't forgotten anyone; it's been a real whirlwind could of days). Unfortunately, I don't have a group pic, but I've attached a few shots of people in action.

Erica Titkemeyer

Dan Erdman

Kristin MacDonough, Shira Peltzman, Walter Forsberg

Erik Piil

Hope everyone who I haven't talked to is doing ok!

Thanks again,

Kara

-----------------

On Sat, Nov 3, 2012 at 10:14 PM, Mona Jimenez, MIAP’s Acting Director, replied.

Wow! Inspiring work, all!! Forwarded to first years.

---------------

Mona’s message was followed by this:

On Sun, Nov 4, 2012 at 1:29 PM, (dan.streible@nyu) wrote:

Hi, Kara, Chris, Mona, Howard and Moving Image Archiving & Preservation heroes.

No reason not to shout this out to everyone.

This is just the most recent of many reasons I am so proud to be affiliated with the program and the individuals in it. Not only is your work inspiring because it is 'impactful' (as Jodie Foster said in Contact) but your works are continuing evidence of how freakin' HARD you work.

For those being introduced to this conversation, for the first time: the Subject line references the ongoing disaster-recovery actions being taken in New York by MIAP ally Chris Lacinak's AudioVisual Preservation Solutions with many MIAP alumni and student volunteers at the not-for-profit Eyebeam Art + Technology Center. For 3 or 4 days running now.

This volunteering of hard (skilled) labor by MIAP peeps is all the more laudable given how much MIAP students achieved the 4 previous weekends.

• Friday, October 5: NYU Cinema Studies Community Weekend – AMIA @ NYU game night;

• Saturday, October 13: a student-generated Archiving the Arts conference at NYU Tisch;

• Saturday, October 20: alums and students volunteer at Home Movie Day at the Museum of Modern Art;

• Saturday, October 27: MIAP student-generated and co-hosted World Day for Audiovisual Heritage 2012 as part of the Museum of Modern Art's annual international film preservation festival, To Save and Project.

And of course the conference and the WDAVH event involved months of planning.

None of this was done as course work per se. These are impactful[!] events conceived and executed by MIAP students and their recruited allies.

No doubt I am omitting other amazing acts of professionalism and generosity these people have achieved in the past month. And of course many of these people were themselves undergoing the hardships of the hurricane aftermath. (You might be aware that one of the current MIAP students lost nearly all of her worldly possessions due to the flooding in New Jersey -- yet she remains part of the volunteer cohort!)

Even as MIAP/Cinema Studies students-staff-faculty-alumni remain international leaders in the field's theoretical and intellectual development, they are obviously kicking ass in practice. Making the world better for the living and their future descendants.

Also: Get some rest, all y'all.

Your admirer,

Dan Streible
NYU | Tisch School of the Arts | Cinema Studies | Moving Image Archive and Preservation Program
www.nyu.edu/tisch/preservation

------------

Looking back at Facebook postings, it seems to have been MIAP alum Peter Oleksik (now a video conservator at MoMA) who contacted Marko Tandefelt (Eyebeam's Director of Technology and Research) to set the work in motion.

See more photos of Team Eyebeam at work: http://www.facebook.com/AVPreserve

# # #

noreply@blogger.com (Dan Streible) — Sat, 20 Oct 2012 16:17:00 +0000

#HMD2012