the Orphan Film Symposium

transition from 7 to 8: 83 days

noreply@blogger.com (Dan Streible) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 06:49:00 +0000

With the 8th Orphan Film Symposium now 83 days away, we've suggested tweeters use the Twitter handtag #orphans8 .

To receive the discounted rate for early registration, register by January 31.
http://www.nyu.edu/orphanfilm/orphans8/attend.php

Audio, text, and video documentation of the 2010 Orphan Film Symposium is now online. See the listings at http://www.nyu.edu/orphanfilm/orphans7.

Included are video interviews with 25 symposiasts, recorded during April 7-10, 2010. These are short (generally about 3 minutes) and edited. The full unedited footage will be posted to the Internet Archive as well. These recordings were made by Intelligent Television with aid of the Library of Congress. Supervising producers were Alexandra Frank, Peter Kaufman, Isabel Muruzábal Lamberti, and Hayley Roberts. Editing was done by Ioannis Papaloizou. Funding camer from NYU's Visual Arts Initiative Award ("Orphan Film and Video Access Project"), with the aid of Bill Brand (BB Optics) and Ron Sadoff (NYU Film Scoring Program). Footage is downloadable and available for use under a Creative Commons licence agreement (attribution-noncommercial).

Here is a sample, with Colorlab's VP Russ Suniewick explaing how he became involved in the orphan film movement ten years ago.

 #orphans8

Two 2012 Orphan Symposia Run Simultaneously

noreply@blogger.com (Dan Streible) — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 14:30:00 +0000

Just to avoid confusion:

The NYU Orphan Film Symposiun is April 11-14, 2012.
The UCB Orphan Works Symposium is April 12-13.

Yes, there are two orphans symposia happening simultaneously. Let a hundred flowers bloom. "Orphan Works & Mass Digitization: Obstacles and Opportunities" is hosted by the University of California Berkeley School of Law and the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology.

NYU's moving image copyright instructor, Rina Pantalony, recommends the white paper on orphan works published this week: David Robert Hansen, "Orphan Works: Definitional Issues," (December 19, 2011). Berkeley Digital Library Copyright Project White Paper No. 1. Available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1974614.

"Orphan Works & Mass Digitization" features 6 sessions and a keynote by the recently appointed Register of Copyrights, Maria Pallante.

Sessions are built around these questions and their "and why?" follow-ups:

Who wants to make use of orphan works?

Who is concerned about broader access to orphans?

What is the best approach to addressing the orphan works problem?

What role should registries play in averting orphan work problems?

Who wants to do mass digitization?

Should data mining of in-copyright digital works be permissible?

The symposium's home page is www.law.berkeley.edu/orphanworks

Below is the event's precis, quoted in full.

In 2006, the US Copyright Office recommended legislation to allow unlicensed reuses of in-copyright works whose rights holders cannot be located through a reasonably diligent search to solve the "orphan works" problem. Contributing causes to this problem are a lessening of copyright formalities (such as notice of copyright claims on copies of works and voluntary registration of copyright claims) and several extensions of copyright terms. The European Commission has recently proposed a directive that would also open up greater access to orphan works in Europe.

Although orphan works legislation made some headway in Congress in the late 2000s, its progress was stalled for several reasons, including Google's announcement in the fall of 2008 of a settlement of a copyright infringement lawsuit brought by the Authors Guild and five trade publishers over Google's scanning of in-copyright books from the collections of major research libraries for purposes of indexing their contents and serving snippets in response to user search queries.

The Google Book settlement proposed an innovative way to provide greater access to orphan books. Under the settlement, Google would have been entitled to commercialize all out of print books in the Google Book corpus, including orphans, as long as it provided 63 per cent of the revenues to a new collecting society whose job would be to track down rights holders so these rights holders could collect money for Google's uses of their books.

In March 2011, Judge Chin rejected the proposed settlement on the ground that it was inconsistent with copyright rules that require that rights holders give permission before commercial uses are made of their works. In Judge Chin's view, solving the orphan work problem should be done by Congress, not through a class action settlement.

The Register of Copyrights has written to key members of Congress to indicate that the Office would be willing to consider how to address the orphan works problem now that the Google settlement has been rejected.

Given the failure of the Google Book settlement and the newly proposed orphan works directive in the EU, the time is ripe for renewed consideration about how best to solve the orphan works problem. Among the kinds of questions that may be addressed in the symposium are: Is legislation necessary to achieve a solution to the orphan works problem, or can fair use achieve some of the goal? Should orphan works legislation be aimed at creating an exception for reuses of orphan works, or should reusers of orphan works only be subject to more limited remedies if a rights holder later shows up? What other solutions should be considered? To what extent is ambiguity about who as between authors and publishers own ebook rights contributing to the orphan work problem? What factors should be considered in determining what constitutes "a diligent search"? Should every potential user of an orphan work have to do such a search, or can users rely on searches conducted by others?

REGISTRATION is now open for both symposia.

However, www.nyu.edu/orphanfilm/orphans8/attend.php is the place to begin your comparison shopping.

a new Sam Fuller film to premiere

noreply@blogger.com (Dan Streible) — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 16:54:00 +0000

Add to the list of screenings and speakers at the 8th Orphan Film Symposium this: a newly preserved film shot by young Samuel Fuller during his service with the Big Red One. Thanks to Christa Fuller and the Academy Film Archive, Fuller scholar Marsha Orgeron will introduce the first screening of a silent amateur film the emergent auteur shot shortly after the end of WWII. Unlike the harrowing and powerful film Sam Fuller shot of the liberation of Falkenau concentration camp in April 1945 (screened at Orphans 2008), this one is playful and parodic, bearing the title How to Light a Cigar. A most apropos title for the famously cigar-chomping cineaste.

Can't wait.

Third draft of the 2012 Orphan Film Symposium lineup

noreply@blogger.com (Dan Streible) — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 18:05:00 +0000

Symposium registration is open and online. Seats sell quickly, so register for the April 11-14, 2012 Orphan Film Symposium before 2011 expires.

* * * *

• Michael Aronson & Elizabeth Peterson (U of Oregon) "You Are Getting Sleepy/Hungry/Horny...": The Life and Times of Lester Beck, Filmmaking Psychologist; with screenings of the newly-preserved, pioneering sex education film Human Growth (Sy Wexler, 1948), and the sole Kodachrome print of Adaptive Behavior of Golden-Mantled Ground Squirrels (Beck, 1942)
• Yvonne Zimmermann (U of Zurich / NYU Visiting Scholar) Sponsored Films by Hans Richter: Die Börse als Barometer der Wirtschaftslage [The Stock Market] (Swiss Exchange Zurich, 1939) restored by la Cinémathèque suisse
• Making Films at AT&T/Bell Labs, 1967-1974: filmmakers Lillian Schwartz, Nell Cox, and Bill Brand screening newly preserved 16mm works: including Schwartz's UFOs, Galaxies, Pixillation, Enigma, and Googolplex, Brand’s Touch Tone Phone Film (1973), as well as Cox and Leacock's Operator (1969)

• Other Orphans: Fugitives, Bastards, and Test-Tube Babies
            * Anna McCarthy (The Citizen Machine), Pushing on the Analogy
          * Tina Campt (Columbia U) Orphan Photos, Fugitive Images: Family Photography and the African Diaspora in Europe
          * Hadi Gharabhagi (NYU) The Bastard Files: State "Terrorism" and the Press in the USIS's News of Iran (1954)
• Sunniva O’Flynn (Irish Film Archive) curates a program from the IFA collections
• Jay Schwartz (Secret Cinema) and Louis Massiah (Scribe Video Center) on The Jungle (1967, 12th + Oxford Street Filmmakers)
• David Schwartz (Museum of the Moving Image) The Living Room Candidate: Presidential Campaign ads
• Anke Mebold (Deutsches Filminstitut) newly restored feature: Die Hochbahnkatastrophe, aka Elevated Train Catastrophe: 16th Sensational Adventure of Master Detective Harry Hill (Germany, 1921), introduced by Tom Gunning (U of Chicago)
• Jon Gartenberg & Jeff Capp (GME) Tassilo Adam: Moving Image Adventures in Indonesia

• Elena Rossi-Snook (NYPL for the Performing Arts) The Young Filmmakers Foundation Collection

• Karl Heider mini-tribute: [Experimental Study of Apparent Behavior: The Moving Film] (1943, Fritz Heider and Marianne Simmel), with remakes of the Heider-Simmel film by University of South Carolina students of Simon Tarr (in digital video) and by Dartmouth College students of Jodie Mack (in color 16mm)

• Julia Noordegraaf (U of Amsterdam) and Leenke Ripmeester (Eye Film Institute Netherlands) on Joop Geesink’s Dollywood Advertising Films
• Mona Jimenez (APEX Ghana) and Manthia Diawara (NYU) on finding Hamile: The Tongo Hamlet (1964, Ghana Film Industry Corporation)
• Susan Courtney (U of South Carolina) on how orphan films impact media scholarship
• Nico de Klerk on The Hands of a Stranger (Richard Heffron, 1965) documentary about a hospital in South Vietnam; appropriated by Friends of Vietnam (Belgium)
• Yongli Li (Beijing Film Academy & U of South Carolina) introduces Light Cavalry Girl (Jie Shen, Central Newsreel and Documentary Film Studio, Beijing, 1980)

Light Cavalry Girl (1980), Chinese Film Collection, USC Moving Image Research Collections

• Ivan von Sauer (BBC Worldwide) and Craig Kridel (U of South Carolina) on School: A Film about Progressive Education (1939, Lee Dick)
• Dan Friedlaender (Temple U) & Adrianne Finelli (U Mich) Men and Dust (1940, Lee Dick) labor advocacy film about diseases plaguing zinc and lead miners
• Sergei Kapterev (Moscow Research Institute of Film Art) Soviet space films, including Flight to a Thousand Suns (1963)
• Alice Lovejoy (University of Minnesota) Czechoslovak Army Films and Excess of Persuasion, with filmmaker Vojtěch Jasný
       * Opportunity (Vojtěch Jasný, 1957) agitational drama warning soldiers about infidelity
   * Crooked Mirror (Karel Kachyňa, 1958) on proper military dress
   * Army Newsreel 3/65 (Karel Vachek, 1965) liberation of Ostrava
     * Metrum (Ivan Balad’a, 1967) transportation in Moscow
• Mark G. Cooper (U of South Carolina MIRC) Roman Vishniac microcinematography
• Mark J. Williams (Dartmouth) television newsfilm from KTLA, et al.
• Mark Quigley (UCLA) One Friday (Rolf Forsberg, 1973) classroom discussion film imagines an all-out race war in the U.S.

One Friday (1973) courtesy of Rolf Forsberg and UCLA Film and Television Archives

• Allyson Nadia Field (UCLA) and Jacqueline Stewart (Northwestern) The L.A. Rebellion Project: Daydream Therapy (Bernard Nicolas, 1980)
• Walter Forsberg (NYU Libraries) A Second Date: Let’s All Go to the Lobby (195?) and Snipe History
• Robert Martens presents Auroratone's When the Organ Played 'O Promise Me' (Cecil Stokes, 194?) with Bing Crosby. [with great thanks to Ralph Sargent and Alan Stark of Film Technology Co.]
• Jaime Partsch (Universidad del Este, Puerto Rico) Films by Governor Jesús T. Piñero <archiveswiki.historians.org/Piñero_Collection>

• Martin L. Johnson (U of North Carolina) Booster films and the Paragon Feature Film Company: The Lumberjack (Wausau, 1914), Past and Present in the Cradle of Dixie (Montgomery, 1914), and The Blissveldt Romance (Grand Rapids, 1915)
• Catherine Jurca (CalTech) The “Motion Pictures’ Greatest Year” Campaign: The World Is Ours (MPPDA, 1938)
• Audrey Young (Cineteca Nacional) The Film that Survived the Fire: Cine Móvil (1976) [thanks to Colorlab]
• Irene Lusztig (UC Santa Cruz) The Motherhood Archives (work in progress) documentary essay film on the construction of motherhood and an archival history of maternal education films

from Best-Fed Baby (U.S. Children's Bureau, 1925)

• Jennifer Horne (Catholic U) Welcome to the Nanny State: Carlyle Ellis and the U.S. Children’s Bureau, 1919-1926. Screening Best-Fed Baby (1925) neo-natal health hygiene

• Larry A. Jones (The Arc of Washington State; Seattle Disability Law) with Laura Kissel (U of South Carolina) Children Limited (1951, Children's Benevolent League) advocacy film about children with developmental disabilities and their families; rediscovered in 2011 at the Library of Congress

+
• Helen Hill Media Education Center fundraising video (Whispering Statues, 2011)

Helen Hill Media Education Center from Whispering Statues.

• Jeanne Burkhardt and Snowden Becker (Center for Home Movies) [Francena Feeding the Chickens] (Charles Camp, 1905) and Muggins the Cow Horse (Colorado roundup footage, 1904) [Are these the oldest surviving amateur films in the U.S.?]


"What happens if you eat watermelon seeds?" (Helen Hill, 1997)

• James Bittl (HBO) introduces “Fast Facts” and "Gross Facts,” Helen Hill’s interstitial animations for Street Sense (1997-98, CBC-TV)
• Danielle Ash & Jodie Mack (2010 Helen Hill Awardees) a commissioned 70mm film
• Helen Hill Award recipient films, TBA
• The Florestine Collection (2011) a film by Helen Hill, completed by Paul Gailiunas

and more . . . .

UPDATE: ∆ • Perceptions of the Heider-Simmel Film • ∆

noreply@blogger.com (Dan Streible) — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 02:17:00 +0000

Here's a followup to the posting of May 2008 about Experimental Study of Apparent Behavior: The Moving Film (1943), aka the Heider-Simmel film.

At the time, I was unable to find out much about psychologist Fritz Heider's student, co-investigator, co-author, and, presumably, co-filmmaker, Marianne L. Simmel. But her obituary reveals she would have been 20 years old when the film was made (about the same age as the experiment's movie-viewing subjects). Turns out she was still alive when I first wrote about the film, but only the appearance of her online obituary alerted me to the fact that she died in 2010.

"In Memoriam - Marianne Simmel," Cape Cod Modern House Trust blog, April 9, 2010, http://ccmht.blogspot.com/2010/04/in-memoriam-marianne-simmel.html.

Here we read that Simmel "survived the Holocaust in Europe, grew up on Manhattan's Lower East Side, went to Smith College, got a PhD at Harvard, and taught psychology for many years at Brandies University." Many readers will perhaps be amused to learn that, "getting fed up with the academic life," she moved on to a successful career in textile design. Simmel "produced a large body of designs, in some cases informed by her previous work in human perception and the brain."

Simmel's later work as a designer indicates she was probably responsible for the animation produced for the Heider study of apparent behavior.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Below: Simmel design in her online obit.

Above: cel from the 1943 film. (From American Journal of Psychology)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The Simmel textile rediscovery rhymes well with the fact that it is animator Jodie Mack who has done, with her Dartmouth students, a 2011 color film remake of Experimental Study of Apparent Behavior. Here are some frames she scanned from the 16mm.

Professor Mack too is fond of textiles and geometric forms. Here's a sampler of frames from four Mack films.

And if there were any doubt about Jodie Mack's fondness for geometry, here she is in costume.

While the Orphan Film Project looks to the University of South Carolina's Moving Image Research Collections to preserve the Heider-Simmel film, it turns out that the Cape Cod Modern House Trust has the same interest in Marianne Simmel's orphaned art.

The blog post concludes:

After searching unsuccessfully for an institution interested in preserving her work CCMHT has arranged to archive her art work and textile designs which will be stored at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum in its secure art storage facility. We hope to exhibit her work in the future and preserve if for scholars and admirers.

Looking forward to seeing the Heider-Simmel film and its progeny, when admirers at the Orphan Film Symposium honor Fritz Heider's son Karl in April 2012.

Second draft of the 2012 Orphan Film Symposium lineup

noreply@blogger.com (Dan Streible) — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 03:41:00 +0000

Symposium registration is open and online. Seats sell quickly, so register for the April 2012 Orphan Film Symposium before 2011 is over.

* * * *

• Michael Aronson & Elizabeth Peterson (U of Oregon) "You Are Getting Sleepy/Hungry/Horny...": The Life and Times of Lester Beck, Filmmaking Psychologist; with screenings of the newly-preserved, pioneering sex education film Human Growth (Sy Wexler, 1948), and the sole Kodachrome print of Adaptive Behavior of Golden-Mantled Ground Squirrels (Beck, 1942)
• Yvonne Zimmermann (U of Zurich / NYU) Sponsored Films by Hans Richter: Die Börse als Barometer der Wirtschaftslage [The Stock Market] (Swiss Exchange Zurich, 1939) restored by la Cinémathèque suisse
• Making Films at AT&T/Bell Labs, 1967-1974: filmmakers Lillian Schwartz, Nell Cox, and Bill Brand screening newly preserved 16mm works: including Schwartz's UFOs, Galaxies, Pixillation, Enigma, and Googolplex, Brand’s Touch Tone Phone Film (1973), as well as Cox and Leacock's Operator (1969)

• Other Orphans: Fugitives, Bastards, and Test-Tube Babies
            * Anna McCarthy (The Citizen Machine), Pushing on the Analogy
          * Tina Campt (Columbia U) Orphan Photos, Fugitive Images: Family Photography and the African Diaspora in Europe
          * Hadi Gharabhagi (NYU) The Bastard Files: State "Terrorism" and the Press in the USIS's News of Iran (1954)

• Sunniva O’Flynn (Irish Film Archive) curates a program from the IFA collections
• David Schwartz (Museum of the Moving Image) The Living Room Candidate: Presidential Campaign ads
• Anke Mebold (Deutsches Filminstitut) newly restored feature: Die Hochbahnkatastrophe, aka Elevated Train Catastrophe: 16th Sensational Adventure of Master Detective Harry Hill (Germany, 1921), introduced by Tom Gunning (U of Chicago)
• Jon Gartenberg & Jeff Capp (GME) Tassilo Adam: Moving Image Adventures in Indonesia

• Karl Heider mini-tribute: [Experimental Study of Apparent Behavior: The Moving Film] (1943, Fritz Heider and Marianne Simmel), with remakes of the Heider-Simmel film by University of South Carolina students of Simon Tarr (in digital video) and by Dartmouth College students of Jodie Mack (in color 16mm)

• Julia Noordegraaf (U of Amsterdam) on Joop Geesink’s Dollywood Advertising Films
• Mona Jimenez (APEX Ghana) and Manthia Diawara (NYU) on finding Hamile: The Tongo Hamlet (1964, Ghana Film Industry Corporation)
• Susan Courtney (U of South Carolina) on how orphan films impact media scholarship
• Nico de Klerk on The Hands of a Stranger (Richard Heffron, 1965) documentary about a hospital in South Vietnam; appropriated by Friends of Vietnam (Belgium)
• Yongli Li (Beijing Film Academy & U of South Carolina) introduces Light Cavalry Girl (Jie Shen, Central Newsreel and Documentary Film Studio, Beijing, 1980)

Light Cavalry Girl (1980), Chinese Film Collection, USC Moving Image Research Collections

One Friday (1973) courtesy of Rolf Forsberg and UCLA Film and Television Archives

• Martin L. Johnson (U of North Carolina) Booster films and the Paragon Feature Film Company: The Lumberjack (Wausau, 1914), Past and Present in the Cradle of Dixie (Montgomery, 1914), and The Blissveldt Romance (Grand Rapids, 1915)
• Catherine Jurca (CalTech) The “Motion Pictures’ Greatest Year” Campaign: The World Is Ours (MPPDA, 1938)
• Irene Lusztig (UC Santa Cruz) The Motherhood Archives (work in progress) documentary essay film on the construction of motherhood and an archival history of maternal education films

from Best-Fed Baby (U.S. Children's Bureau, 1925)

• Jennifer Horne (Catholic U) Welcome to the Nanny State: Carlyle Ellis and the U.S. Children’s Bureau, 1919-1926. Screening Best-Fed Baby (1925) neo-natal health hygiene

• Larry A. Jones (Seattle Disability Law; the Arc of Washington State) Children Limited (1951, Children's Benevolent League) advocacy film about children with developmental disabilities and their families; rediscovered in 2011 at the Library of Congress

+
• Helen Hill Media Education Center fundraising video (Whispering Statues, 2011)
• Jeanne Burkhardt and Snowden Becker (Center for Home Movies) [Francena Feeding the Chickens] (Charles Camp, 1905) and Muggins the Cow Horse (Colorado roundup footage, 1904)


"What happens if you eat watermelon seeds?" (Helen Hill, 1997)

• James Bittl (HBO) introduces “Fast Facts” and "Gross Facts,” Helen Hill’s interstitial animations for Street Sense (1997-98, CBC-TV)
• Helen Hill Award recipient films, TBA
• The Florestine Collection (2011) a film by Helen Hill, completed by Paul Gailiunas

and more . . . .

Listen to Walter Forsberg show home movies on the radio

noreply@blogger.com (Dan Streible) — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 02:28:00 +0000

Listen:

www.wnyc.org/shows/lopate/2011/oct/14/ninth-annual-home-movie-day
Walter Forsberg tells Leonard Lopate about the wonders of the Ninth Annual Home Movie Day, this one observed at the Queens Museum on Saturday, October 15.

Columbia University Colloquium on Helen Hill films

noreply@blogger.com (Dan Streible) — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 20:44:00 +0000

From: Columbia University Cultural Memory Colloquium <cumemory@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Sep 20, 2011 at 12:55 PM

Dear friends,

Join us in our continuing conversations about cultural and collective memory in our contemporary world. Our first event is to take place on Monday September 26th when we will welcome Professor Jenny Davidson from English and Comparative Literature who will be presenting on the work of filmmaker Helen Hill. Please find a further description below. We will meet at 6PM in 754 Schermerhorn Extension.

Helen Hill, experimental animator and handmade film advocate, was shot and killed in her home in New Orleans in January 2007. Her last film, completed posthumously by her husband Paul Gailiunas, is 'The Florestine Collection.' One Mardi Gras Day in New Orleans some years earlier, Hill found more than a hundred handmade dresses in trash bags on the curb; she set out to restore them and recover the story of the woman who had made them, a recently deceased African-American seamstress named Florestine Kinchen. Both the dresses and the footage were seriously damaged by Katrina; the completed film includes Helen's original silhouette, cut-out, and puppet animation, as well as flood-damaged and restored home movies. Three of Hill's films will be screened - 'Madame Winger Makes a Film' (9:29), 'Mouseholes' (7:40) and 'The Florestine Collection' (31:00) - followed by a discussion by Professor Jenny Davidson that will touch on questions about memorialization and the materiality of film, the persistence and contingency of archives and the imperatives of preservation in the wake of catastrophe.

first draft of the 2012 Orphan Film Symposium

noreply@blogger.com (Dan Streible) — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 20:03:00 +0000

Symposium registration is open. Register online. Seats sell quickly, so we recommend registrating for the Orphan Film Symposium before 2011 is over.

Here are some of the expected screenings and speakers for Orphans. Others will be announced in November 2011.

• Yvonne Zimmermann (U of Zurich / NYU) Sponsored Films by Hans Richter: Die Börse als Barometer der Wirtschaftslage [The Stockmarket] (Swiss Exchange Zurich, 1939) restored by la Cinémathèque suisse (Swiss Film Archive).
• Making Films at AT&T/Bell Labs, 1967-1974: filmmakers Lillian Schwartz, Nell Cox, and Bill Brand screening newly preserved 16mm works: including Schwartz's UFOs, Galaxies, Pixillation, Enigma, and Googolplex, Brand’s Touch Tone Phone Film (1973), as well as Cox and Leacock's Operator (1969)
• Sunniva O’Flynn (Irish Film Archive) curates a program from the IFA collections
• David Schwartz (Museum of the Moving Image) The Living Room Candidate: Presidential Campaign ads
• Anke Mebold (Deutsches Filminstitut - DIF) newly restored feature: Die Hochbahnkatastrophe, aka Elevated Train Catastrophe: 16th Sensational Adventure of Master Detective Harry Hill (Germany, 1921), introduced by Tom Gunning (U of Chicago) with live musical accompaniment
• Julia Noordegraaf (U of Amsterdam) and Giovanna Fossati (EYE Netherlands Film Institute), Joop Geesink’s Dollywood Advertising Films
• Mona Jimenez (APEX Ghana) and Manthia Diawara (NYU) on finding Hamile: The Tongo Hamlet (1964, Ghana Film Industry Corporation)
• Susan Courtney (U of South Carolina) on how orphan films impact media scholarship
• Nico de Klerk (EYE) The Hands of a Stranger (Richard Heffron, 1965) documentary about a hospital in South Vietnam; appropriated by Friends of Vietnam (Belgium)
• Jon Gartenberg & Jeff Capp (GME) Tassilo Adam: Moving Image Adventures in Indonesia
• Karl Heider mini-tribute: [Experimental Study of Apparent Behavior: The Moving Film] (1943, Fritz Heider and Marianne Simmel)
• Jodie Mack (Dartmouth) and Simon Tarr (USC) remakes of the Heider-Simmel Apparent Behavior film, in 16mm and digital video
• Yongli Li (Beijing Film Academy & U of South Carolina) introduces Light Cavalry Girl (Jie Shen, Central Newsreel and Documentary Film Studio, Beijing, 1980)

Light Cavalry Girl (1980) U of South Carolina Moving Image Research Collections, Chinese Film Collection

• Craig Kridel (U of South Carolina) and Ivan von Sauer (BBC Worldwide) School: A Film about Progressive Education (1939, Lee Dick)
• Dan Friedlaender (Temple U) & Adrianne Finelli (U Mich) Men and Dust (1940, Lee Dick) labor advocacy film about diseases plaguing zinc and lead miners
• Sergei Kapterev (Moscow Research Institute of Film Art) Soviet space films
• Alice Lovejoy (University of Minnesota) Czechoslovak Army Films and Excess of Persuasion, with filmmaker Vojtěch Jasný
       * Opportunity (Vojtěch Jasný, 1957) agitational drama warning soldiers about infidelity
   * Crooked Mirror (Karel Kachyňa, 1958) on proper military dress
   * Army Newsreel 3/65 (Karel Vachek, 1965) liberation of Ostrava
     * Metrum (Ivan Balad’a, 1967) transportation in Moscow
• Mark G. Cooper (U of South Carolina MIRC) Roman Vishniac microcinematography
• Mark J. Williams (Dartmouth) television newsfilm from KTLA, et al.
• Mark Quigley (UCLA) One Friday (Rolf Forsberg, 1973) classroom discussion film imagines an all-out race war in the US

One Friday (1973) courtesy of UCLA Film and Television Archives

• Allyson Nadia Field (UCLA) and Jacqueline Stewart (Northwestern U) the L.A. Rebellion project: Daydream Therapy (Bernard Nicolas, 1980)
• Walter Forsberg (NYU Libraries) A Second Date: Let’s All Go to the Lobby and Snipe History
• Jaime Partsch (Universidad del Este, Puerto Rico) Films by Governor Jesús T. Piñero <archiveswiki.historians.org/Piñero_Collection>

• Martin L. Johnson (U of North Carolina) Booster films and the Paragon Feature Film Company: The Lumberjack (Wausau, 1914), Past and Present in the Cradle of Dixie (Montgomery, 1914), and The Blissveldt Romance (Grand Rapids, 1915)
• Catherine Jurca (CalTech) The “Motion Pictures’ Greatest Year” Campaign: The World Is Ours (MPPDA, 1938) two-reel comedy includes Charley Grapewin watching The Great Train Robbery (1903) and visits to Monogram, other studios
• Irene Lusztig (UC Santa Cruz) The Motherhood Archives (work in progress) documentary essay film on the construction of motherhood and an archival history of maternal education films

frames from Best-Fed Baby (US Children's Bureau, 1925)

• Jennifer Horne (Catholic U) Welcome to the Nanny State: Carlyle Ellis and the US Children’s Bureau, 1919-1926. Screening Best-Fed Baby (1925) neo-natal health hygiene
• Larry A. Jones (Seattle Disability Law; the Arc of Washington State) Children Limited (1951, Children's Benevolent League) advocacy film about children with developmental disabilities and their families; rediscovered in 2011 at the Library of Congress
+
• Helen Hill Media Education Center fundraising video (Whispering Statues, 2011)
• Snowden Becker (Center for Home Movies) [Francena Feeding the Chickens] (Charles Camp, 1905) and Muggins the Cow Horse (Colorado roundup footage, 1904)


"What happens if you eat watermelon seeds?" (Helen Hill, 1997)

El Primer Encuentro Archivo Memoria, organizado en conjunto con el Orphan Film Project

noreply@blogger.com (Dan Streible) — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 01:18:00 +0000

CINETECA NACIONAL INICIA PROYECTO

DE RESCATE FÍLMICO DE LA SOCIEDAD

• Iniciativa impulsada por la Cineteca Nacional que busca el rescate fílmico de la memoria social del país

• Además de la conservación y preservación, Archivo Memoria tiene como objetivo gestar nuevos proyectos creativos de cineastas y artistas contemporáneos a partir del material rescatado

• El Primer Encuentro Archivo Memoria, organizado en conjunto con el Orphan Film Project, es una primera muestra de la importancia de este proyecto

Conaculta Cine, a través de la Cineteca Nacional, presenta Archivo Memoria, innovador proyecto que busca rescatar archivos fílmicos “olvidados”, que algunos historiadores del cine en la actualidad denominan como orphan film o cine huérfano. Materiales surgidos de la sociedad cuyo carácter amateur les brinda una honestidad como testimonio histórico de su momento y cuyo valor antropológico se acrecienta con el tiempo. Por tal motivo su preservación se hace necesaria como un primer paso para su difusión hacia nuevos públicos, misión fundamental para la presente administración de la Cineteca, fijada desde sus primeros días en el 2010.

Archivo Memoria se propone emprender la búsqueda de estos registros en imagen, de aquello “no visto” que también forma parte de la historia fílmica de nuestra nación: películas de eventos familiares ─bautizos, bodas, cumpleaños─, noticieros, cine turístico, películas industriales, material censurado, cine educacional, obra experimental, pruebas de cámara, grabaciones bélicas, material de archivo, animaciones, pietaje antropológico y otros fragmentos efímeros.

Registros que dejan ver el contexto en el que fueron creados, y que en conjunto reflejan los cambios por los que ha transitado la sociedad mexicana. Material que a primera vista podría parecer intrascendente pero que, de alguna manera, tiene un valor histórico que enriquece el patrimonio cultural de la nación y que, guardado en armarios o bodegas, sin las condiciones técnicas apropiadas para su conservación y preservación, corre el riesgo de desaparecer. Películas no sólo de gran valor para la historia de nuestra cultura, sino con un gran potencial para reutilizarse y que hoy en día sirve para comprender la historia reciente de México.

Además de rescatar, conservar y preservar estos registros históricos, Archivo Memoria también busca que el contenido de dicho material pueda ser reutilizado creativamente por los cineastas y artistas mexicanos contemporáneos, quienes podrán hacer uso de él de acuerdo a intereses artísticos determinados y bajo estricto consentimiento de los propietarios del material. A largo plazo, el proyecto podría ser una forma de inaugurar, promover y posteriormente profesionalizar el cuidado y la reutilización de este tipo de estos registros audiovisuales en México. Los ejemplos de cineastas que trabajan con material de archivo son innumerables: Ken Jacobs, Gustav Deutsch, Craig Baldwin, Jesse Lener, Gregorio Rocha, Angela Ricci Lucchi y Yervant Gianikian, sólo por mencionar algunos artistas visionarios que han sabido apreciar en su justo valor el material fílmico como memoria, no sólo de una persona o familia en particular, sino como el retrato de un momento histórico determinado, con todo el peso sociocultural que ello conlleva y que está plasmado como un marco referencial irrepetible.

Es por este motivo y en búsqueda de la preservación de archivos fílmicos no sólo provenientes de la industria cinematográfica, sino también de aquellos que proceden de las inquietudes personales y familiares, reconociendo y respetando así su valor como memoria de nuestra cultura y nación, que hacemos un atento llamado a las personas que posean este tipo de materiales a que se sumen a este esfuerzo de la Cineteca Nacional por el rescate y reutilización de material que podría marcar un descubrimiento trascendental para la historia del país y que sirve como herramienta en la construcción de la identidad.

Como parte de esta iniciativa, la Cineteca Nacional, en colaboración con el Orphan Film Project y Walter Forsberg (y Audrey Young), llevará a cabo, el próximo viernes 26 y sábado 27 de agosto, el Primer Encuentro Archivo Memoria, el cual mostrará los resultados del Orphan Film Symposium, junto con hallazgos del proyecto Archivo Memoria y los primeros cortometrajes realizados por los artistas e investigadores Kyzza Terrazas e Issa García Ascot.

Ambos programas, titulados La Historia Olvidada y Cine Arte, espectivamente, exhibirán entre otros trabajos: Berlin 1936 Olympics Home Movies [10 min/video/1936], de la Universidad de Nueva York, Carta a un Ingeniero de Kyzza Terrazas [10 min/video/2011], de la Cineteca Nacional, Cine Móvil [13 min/16mm/1976], de la Cineteca Nacional, Selecciones de Archivia Films [30 min/16mm y DVD], A Trip Down Market Street de the Miles Brothers [12 min/video digital/1906] de los Archivos Prelinger, Muestra de material del archivo Luis Osorno Barona [25 min/video], Un Modo de Decir de Issa García Ascot [7 min/video/2011], de la Cineteca Nacional, y La Segunda Primera Matriz de Alfredo Gurrola [14 min/video/1972].

Cabe mencionar que la historia de los archivos huérfanos, que en su concepción más básica es material fílmico que ha sido abandonado por su dueño, no es reciente, tiene su origen en París, con Henri Langlois, cinéfilo y archivista francés cofundador de la Cinemateca Francesa y la Federación Internacional de Archivos Fílmicos (FIAF). Personaje trascendental en la historia del cine, Langlois trabajó en la preservación de películas históricas y de la posguerra en su propia casa, donde resguardaba material al que más tarde le encontró un lugar: la Cinemateca. Por supuesto que con el paso de los años el proceso para conservar y preservar material fílmico ha sufrido cambios, todos para su beneficio; hoy en día diversas instituciones en el mundo tienen su propio programa de rescate de archivos huérfanos.

# # #

Lillian Schwartz’s Computer Animations Slated for Preservation (thanks to Walter Forsberg)

noreply@blogger.com (Dan Streible) — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 17:52:00 +0000

Lillian Schwartz’s Computer Animations Slated for Preservation

2011 AVANT-GARDE MASTERS GRANTS

National Film Preservation Foundation + The Film Foundation

A recent press release with the above title delivered good news for NYU Cinema Studies and its MIAP program. However, the official announcement does not reveal the extensive, unpaid, extramural preservation advocacy work of NYU Libraries Research Fellow Walter Forsberg (MIAP ’10).

Thanks to his efforts, the pioneering computer-generated films created by Lillian Schwartz at Bell Labs in the 1970s will soon be saved through the 2011 Avant-Garde Masters Grants awarded by the two preservation foundations. Schwartz’s films are housed at the Ohio State University Libraries. However Forsberg’s push initiated the partnership with NYU’s Orphan Film Project that led to preservation work.

The press release continued:

“A generation before Toy Story, innovative artists were already making computer-generated films, but they’ve gone mediumly uncelebrated until now,” said Dan Streible, acting director of NYU Cinema Studies’ Moving Image Archiving and Preservation (MIAP) program. “Lillian Schwartz worked alongside AT&T research scientists to create new ways of generating geometric forms, colorful abstractions, and human figures in motion. Her films document the state of computer language in the early seventies, but they also remain delightful to see and hear as works of art. Thanks to this Avant-Garde Masters grant, NYU MIAP students and film preservation professor Bill Brand will work with Ohio State, Forsberg, and Lillian Schwartz herself to save, screen, and study some of her earliest experiments, beginning with the 1970 film Pixillation, her first.” The others are Olympiad (1971), Enigma (1972), Mutations (1972), and Papillons (1973).

* * * *

An admirer of Schwartz’s work, Walter Forsberg, who is also a filmmaker, met the New York-based artist in 2010 and by year’s end had initiated an ad hoc film preservation partnership with Schwartz and Lisa Iacobellis, curator at Ohio State University Libraries. NYU Libraries media preservation specialist Alice Moscoso helped him inspect the OSU material. In spring 2011, film-to-film preservation began with partners Colorlab and the NYU Orphan Film Project. Schwartz’s short films UFOs (1971) and Galaxies (1974) were preserved pro bono by Colorlab, with Bill Brand’s BB Optics and second-year MIAP students (led by June Oh) also participating.

April: Forsberg introduced the premiere screening of the new 16mm print of Galaxies at the Wisconsin Film Festival’s special Orphan Film Symposium session.

May: Brand introduced the premiere of UFOs at “Celebrating Orphan Films,” a two-day symposium co-presented by NYU Tisch / Cinema Studies and the UCLA Film and Television Archive.

June: Lillian Schwartz joined Forsberg and Brand for a special program of her films at the 57th Robert Flaherty Film Seminar, held at Colgate University and programmed by Dan Streible. Her films had such an impact that, throughout the week, 150 seminarians treated Schwartz like a rock star, roaring with approval each time her work appeared on the screen.

July: NFPF selects five Schwartz films for the Avant-Garde Masters grant.

July: NY Women in Film & TV award a preservation grant for Schwartz’s Googolplex (1972).

August: MIAP alumni Audrey Young (’08) and Forsberg show UFOs and Galaxies at the Cineteca Nacional de México, as part of their two-day curated event entitled “Primer Encuentro Archivo Memoria, en colaboración con el Orphan Film Project.”

September: Lillian Schwartz will introduce her films at Anthology Film Archives, part of “Sonic Truth: Films from the 2011 Flaherty Seminar,” emceed by Dan Streible. Monday, September 12, 7:30 pm.

October - May 2012: Three Schwartz films are part of the traveling series “Flaherty on the Road”: Pixillation, UFOs, and a documentary about Lillian Schwartz at work, The Artist and the Computer (1980).

April 11-14, 2012: The 8th Orphan Film Symposium will feature a session on the films produced by artists working at Bell Labs in the late 1960s and 1970s, with a screening of all the newly preserved 16mm films by Lillian Schwartz. Bill Brand, who himself was part of that experience, and Walter Forsberg will be on the panel, along with documentary filmmaker Nell Cox, who made films with Ricky Leacock for AT&T/Bell Labs, including Operator (1969) and French Lunch (1967).

As if that were not enough, Mr. Forsberg is also the lead producer of a second DVD for the Orphan Film Project, along with NYU Libraries and Colorlab. The collection of works on the theme of outer space include Ms. Schwartz’s Galaxies and UFOs.

Posing for a mock publicity photo. In February 2011, the foursome previewed a 16mm print of Lillian Schwartz's UFOs. Walter Forsberg (foreground) drives the Steenbeck; filmmaker and Schwartz fan Jodie Mack (center); media preservation specialist at Bobst Library, Alice Moscoso (right); Orphan Film Symposium director Dan Streible (standing).

Proposals are still being accepted for . . . .

noreply@blogger.com (Dan Streible) — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 03:32:00 +0000

a production of the
NYU Department of Cinema Studies, Tisch School of the Arts

San Francisco Silent Film Festival & Orphan Films

noreply@blogger.com (Dan Streible) — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 02:57:00 +0000

It's been a good week. First Bologna's Cinema Ritrovato recognized the Orphans 7 DVD.

Now this: http://sfsilentfilmfestival.blogspot.com/2011/07/orphan-films-featured-at-festival.html

http://sfsilentfilmfestival.blogspot.com/2011/07/orphan-films-featured-at-festival.html

Orphan Film DVD awarded special prize for "Most Original Contribution to Film History."

noreply@blogger.com (Dan Streible) — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 16:55:00 +0000

Some welcome news from friend of the show Lee Tsiantis, writing from Bologna, Italy. Il Cinema Ritrovato Film Festival today announced its DVD Award winners for 2011.

The Orphan Film Symposium DVD -- Orphans 7: A Collection of Orphan Films -- won a special prize for "Most Original Contribution to Film History."

Thanks to all who made it happen.

More details soon.

What happened at Celebrating Orphan Films? Part 2 -- Saturday

noreply@blogger.com (Dan Streible) — Sat, 21 May 2011 16:10:00 +0000

The headline for the day is that the 28mm projector worked flawlessly, while the computer projection of PowerPointy slides had to be hand-cranked, as it were. Not surprising, but work noting.

Chris Horak gave a presentation entitled "Designed by Saul Bass: The Alcoa Account." A healthy number of film scholars know that Bass (1920-1996) created amazing credit sequences and posters for Alfred Hitchcock and others, and some also know that Bass directed some films, especially the Oscar-winning short Why Man Creates (1968 -- which for some reason was shown on the very first episode of CBS's 60 Minutes). But to see some of this work in a bunch, as we did, is something of a revelation. The ingeniousness of Bass design is striking. Horak demonstrated the designer's influences from Bauhaus artist György Kepes and filmmaker/theorist Sergei Eisenstein.

Horak began by showing the opening title sequence from North by Northwest ("not an orphan film") and followed with numerous Bass-created logos and other film clips. The more memorable, and surprising, was from a lesser-known feature film, Something Wild (1961). The lengthy black-and-white montage consists of shots of New York's skyline and a placeless sky in which we see only the sun and flocks of birds in formation. I can't say what the rest of Something Wild is like, but the Bass-made sequence alone makes me want to see it. That, and the fact that those credits consist of an interesting set of names: lead actress Carroll Baker, cinematographer Eugen Schüfftan (see Metropolis [!], etc., etc.), and director Jack Garfein (who was married to Baker, a fellow Actors Studio veteran). This was one of only two feature films that the theater director Garfein made, the other being the underappreciated, underdistributed The Strange One (1959, based on Garfein's Broadway debut effort, End as a Man). In praise of UCLA Film & Television Archive, it must be noted that the archive, in this same Billy Wilder Theater, paid tribute to Garfein in September 2010, showing both features and his third film: the documentary A Journey Back (1987) is about his revisit to Auschwitz, where he'd been imprisoned as a teen.

But I digress. Horak's presentation makes one anticipate all the more his forthcoming book on Saul Bass, for which he was awarded an Academy Scholar grant.

Throughout Saturday, Mark Quigley programmed very short "interludes" between panels, most from the UCLA collection. Animated TV station indentification reel (early 1960s) showed the work of TV Graphics Inc., an advertising company owned by Lee Blair, husband of Disney artist Mary Blair; featuring the work of Lee's brother, animator Preston Blair. The brief appearance of a logo for WOR-New York, drew a smattering of applause from some of the city's ex-pats.

Love this handsome photo of the Mary and Lee Blair on a drawing tour of South America.

To be continued . . . .

What happened at Celebrating Orphan Films?

noreply@blogger.com (Dan Streible) — Sun, 15 May 2011 23:14:00 +0000

Celebrating Orphan Films: a co-production of UCLA Film & Television Archive, NYU's Orphan Film Symposium, and Los Angeles Filmforum.

What happened on the first night, Friday, May 13, when these offbeat orphan films were projected on to the big screen at the Billy Wilder Theater? Some idiosyncratic morning-after descriptions.

in the projection booth at the Wilder Theater

Progress, Indeed (Jim Bittl and Russell Sheaffer, 2010)

In the excitement of the kick off, Chris Horak called the session to order, and before we realized it, we'd forgotten to show this trailer from the 7th Orphan Film Symposium. So we showed it after an intermission, and, indeed, it played well again, seeing John Wayne introduce clips of animation by Helen Hill, Jodie Mack, and Danielle Ash. The timing of its editing is spot on.

Madison News Reel (ca. 1932)

Recently declared a "cult film" by David Bordwell, we got the 35mm print of this short short only in the nick of time. There was some weird something about insurance that delayed getting it from Maine to Hollywood (ok, Westwood). Sean Savage (Academy Film Archive) delivered his deeply researched decoding of the film after we watched it cold. It's enigmatic qualities always are maximized when served cold. But, as Mr. Savage indicated, even explaining what one can about this truly uncanny compilation film of unknown provenance and vintage, mysteries still linger. For me, this film is evidence of how creative and uncliched the work of amateur filmmakers can be.

The Augustas (1930s-1950s)

Presented/narrated by Heidi Rae Cooley (University of South Carolina), this time with her home-town parents in the house. Each time she shows this beautiful film with her digital-age examination of place, space, location, dislocation, tagging, data and metadata, the tight presentation of live voice and projection gets more polished. I'm starting to get it, the theoretical analysis, that is.

The “Iron Horse” in Hollywood (Fox newsreel, 1925)

Introduced by Mark G. Cooper (University of South Carolina) watching this on a big screen made much more detail discernible. Unlike my DVD preview experience, this time it was obvious that several of the 'cowboy' performers had TOM MIX stitched on the back of their shirts in large letters. An important thing to think about given The Iron Horse was a Fox production, directed by John Ford, whose mythos of the American West is linked to Tom Mix. This footage was shot in front of Grauman's Egyptian Theater (where the LA Filmforum screens these days). Boy, there is no mistaking Sid Grauman in photos or footage. No one else had that hair cut.

Brother and Sister Motorcycle Act (Fox Movietone News, cinematographer Al Brick, 1931)

Staged and shot on a back road in Hollywood, Putt and Dessie Mossman. I noticed that Brother Mossman rides an Indian make of motorcycle. And that he rides it "cowboy style," according to the announcer we hear (and oddly see on screen). "Just a little fun with Sister." A fine catchphrase that stood up well after subsequent screenings.

Light Cavalry Girl (1980)

"They'll be the hit of the festival," as Uncle Max said of the Von Trapp Family Singers in that famous non-orphaned film. And indeed, as we had hoped, there was much buzz about this short documentary. It enchanted those who I heard speaking about it later. Yongli's introducion to the film was, in a word, perfect. She made an artful set of animated Keynote slides, which culminated with us hearing a recently recorded telephone greeting (in Chinese) from the 81-year-old director of Light Cavalry Girl, Jie Shen.

Two enlightening facts Yongli conveyed. (1) The women in this Chinese military unit appeared in the film without permission of their superior officers, so they were subsquently broken up as a unit and sent to a mundane policing duty. (2) Jie Shen believes that the film print we screened may be the only one in existence! And my question (3) weren't these cavalry girls riding Indian motorcycles too?

UFOs (1971) and Galaxies (1974) by Lillian Schwartz, were both presented with viewers watching through Chroma-depth 3-D spectacles. It worked. Oohs and aahs.

Robert Abel promo reel (1970s)

Tony Best (UCLA) gave a most excellent presentation of this reels compiling dozens of animated logos, stations IDs, commercials, promos, etc. made by Abel & Associates. One thing I appreciated was Tony giving a long list of the TV and ad industry terms for all the varying types of short-form productions. This bodes well for Orphans 8 -- Made to Persuade -- next year.

And Then They Forgot God (1971)

L.A.-based writer Paul Cullum and the irreplaceable Mark Quigley (UCLA) replicated the pitch-perfect intro to this existential Chrisitan humanist Lutheran drama and their down-a-rabbit-hole search for the title and then for a print. The colors in this surviving thing, even after color correction, are so washed out it's arty. And hearing a slight reverb in the sound track made for a subtle eery extra effect. Adam West as the prosecutor is Kafkaesque. Paul and Mark devined that his teledrama was the work of writer-director Sy Salkowitz, best known for the TV series Ironside. That on-screen credit was absent from the battered 16mm print the duo purchased, but it was on a print in the Billy Graham archive. So Mark was able to place it tactfully onto the video transfer we watched. Evidence of how orphan films can be saved when Methodists, Catholics and Lutherans work together with Jews and evangelical Baptists.

Muzak (1972)

Reserve Film and Video Collection empresario Elena Rossi-Snook serendipitously popped up in L.A. from the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. She pluck this little gem from obscurity and brought it to our attention at an AMIA screening in 2010. Although it stands on its own as a curious and ambiguous mini-profile of the minds who were running the Muzak corporation, this film couples oh so nicely with And Then They Forgot God. A 1971-72 present future in which people are diminished and manipulated by a distrubing, almost Borg-like apparatus.

What happened on Saturday, May 14, from 10am to 11pm at "Celebrating Orphans Films"?

More on that soon. . . .

Almost show time

noreply@blogger.com (Dan Streible) — Sat, 14 May 2011 00:10:00 +0000

inside the Billy Wilder Theater at UCLA

Celebrating Orphan Films program guide now online!

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Quigley) — Wed, 11 May 2011 20:41:00 +0000

Download the "Celebrating Orphan Films" program guide:

http://www.cinema.ucla.edu/sites/default/files/OrphansProgram.pdf

posting this one more time!

noreply@blogger.com (Dan Streible) — Tue, 10 May 2011 04:17:00 +0000

Celebrating Orphan Films:
Screenings & Discussions

May 13-14, 2011

UCLA Billy Wilder Theater

http://www.cinema.ucla.edu/events/2011-05-13/celebrating-orphan-films

A ten-dollar pass = admission to everything.

Friday, May 13

7:30 pm

Progress, Indeed (2010)

Jim Bittl and Russell Sheaffer created four trailers for the 7th Orphan Film Symposium, “Moving Pictures Around the World.” Here John Wayne learns about the innovative film techniques of Helen Hill, Jodie Mack, and Danielle Ash. Other trailers appropriate clips from the obscure Cromwell the Wicked (1926), General Motors Around the World (1927), a USIA film, and the Soviet propaganda marvel We Never Tire of Speaking of Mothers (1975).

Madison News Reel (ca. 1932)

Found in a barn in Bristol, Maine, this 200 feet of nitrate film was nearly overlooked amid a pile of empty reels. No one knows who made this uncanny collage, which references citizens of Madison, Maine. Introduced by Sean Savage (Academy Film Archive), who published a near-definitive study of this amateur compilation film of rare vintage. The animated logo (still at right) for the BCE, he notes, may be the only surviving copy of this once-common bit of film.
Source: Northeast Historic Film, Ronald Yates Collection.

The Augustas (1930s-1950s)

This 16-minute, 16mm silent compilation edits together footage taken of no fewer than 36 places called Augusta extant in the US during the years of amateur filmmaker Scott Nixon’s travels. Featuring road signs and other markers naming “Augusta,” it celebrates the expressive potential of keyword labels, which in the film come to designate not only several concrete places, but also no one place in particular. In this way, Nixon’s film offers a cinematic example of what have become familiar concerns in the context of recent social-networking communities: location awareness, self-documentation, and information-retrieval. Presented by Heidi Rae Cooley (University of South Carolina). Source: University of South Carolina Moving Image Research Collections (USC MIRC).

The “Iron Horse” in Hollywood (1925)

Fox newsreel footage shot on February 25, outside of Grauman’s Egyptian Theater. Promoting the release of John Ford’s epic The Iron Horse, a steam locomotive arrives (on flatbed truck), carrying Tom Mix’s cowboys and costumed Arapaho and Shoshone performers (although Ford’s cast and characters were Sioux, Cheyenne, and Pawnee). Introduced by Mark G. Cooper (University of South Carolina). Source: USC MIRC Fox Movietone News Collection.

Brother and Sister Motorcycle Act (1931)

On a back road in Hollywood, Putt and Dessie Mossman perform stunts for the Fox Movietone newsreel camera and microphone. Source: USC MIRC Fox Movietone News Collection.

Light Cavalry Girl (1980)

Produced by the Central Newsreel and Documentary Film Studio in China, Light Cavalry Girl, pays homage to the motorcycle stylings of the military’s top female cyclists. This ten-minute film was directed by one the country’s most prolific documentary filmmakers, Jie Shen. It won a Silver Medal at the Hungarian International Sports Film Festival. Introduced by Yongli Li of the Beijing Film Academy and University of South Carolina. Source: USC MIRC Chinese Film Collection.

Lillian Schwartz: two films by the pioneering computer artist

Introduced by Bill Brand (BB Optics) and presented for the first time in 3-D. Thanks to the filmmaker and to Walter Forsberg (NYU Libraries). Source: Ohio State University Libraries.

UFOs (1971)

This playful graphic work by Bell Labs artist-in-residence Lillian Schwartz and computer scientist Ken Knowlton features an array of computer-displayed forms that evolve and mutate into layers of colored abstract shapes. Preserved in 2011 by Brand and students in his NYU Film Preservation class.

Galaxies' 16mm mag track. Thanks to Walter Forsberg for leading the way.

Galaxies (1974)

Lillian Schwartz collaborated with NASA computer programmer Frank Hohl to create this colorful computer-simulation of disk-like “galaxies” moving through space at various speeds. Preserved by Colorlab for the Orphan Film Symposium’s forthcoming DVD.

Robert Abel promo reel (1970s)

This 35mm promotional reel highlights the work of pioneering visual effects firm Robert Abel & Associates, and includes the iconic, award-winning 7-Up television advertisement Bubbles (1974, right). Presented by Tony Best (UCLA Film & Television Archive).

And Then They Forgot God (1971)

Prolific episodic television writer Sy Salkowitz wrote and directed this outré dramatic telefilm set in a dystopian future. With a grim plot twist that rivals the darkest of Twilight Zone episodes, this humanistic parable centers on an average couple (Joseph Campanella and Beverly Garland) as they face starvation due to a Kafkaesque bureaucracy. Also features Adam West as a policy-obsessed prosecutor. Presented by writer Paul Cullum and Mark Quigley (UCLA). Source: UCLA Film & Television Archive.

James Campanella in And Then They Forgot God

Muzak (1972)

This idiosyncratic and funny documentary first aired on WNET-New York’s nightly TV news program The 51st State (1972-76). Filmmakers Tony Ganz and Rhody Streeter record straight [?] interviews with executives of America's "efficiency through music” corporation, revealing the pocket protector-clad social engineers of elevator music infamy. Introduced by Elena Rossi-Snook (NYPL). Source: Reserve Film and Video Collection, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

Saturday, May 14

10:15 am Introductions
Dan Streible (NYU Orphan Film Symposium) and Mark Quigley (UCLA ARSC)

Designed by Saul Bass: The Alcoa Account
Presented by Jan-Christopher Horak, Director, UCLA Film & Television Archive.

Noted as a pioneer of distinctive credit sequences and posters for Hollywood feature films, Saul Bass’ equally intriguing modernist television work is much less known. Some of these broadcasts works, including title sequences and commercials for the Aluminum Corporation of America, reveal that Bass was not only a student of artist, designer, and theorist György Kepes, but also of filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein.

+ Animated TV station indentification reel (early 1960s)

Demo reel of Mad Men-era, mid-century modern broadcast ephemera by TV Graphics Inc., an advertising company owned by Lee Blair, husband of Disney artist Mary Blair; featuring the work of Lee's brother, animator Preston Blair. Source: UCLA Film & Television Archive.

10:45 am 100 Years of Home Movies: 1905-2005

[Francena Feeding the Chickens] (1905)

A home movie from 1905? Yes! CHM guided it to LOC.

Pioneering Western filmmaker Charles Camp (1860-1929) shot this footage of his niece Frances during a visit to "the Bickling homeplace" close to the time of his four-month-long engagement at the 1905 Lewis & Clark Exposition in Portland, Oregon. This short document of his niece at home in Colorado, along with a series of stills from the 1904 roundup footage reproduced in Camp's 1928 book Muggins the Cow Horse, may be the only surviving remnants of Camp's cinematic work. Snowden Becker (Center for Home Movies) introduces the rediscovered film in this 35mm re-debut screening. Source: Library of Congress.

Projecting 28mm: [New Hampshire home movie] (ca. 1920)

Most 28mm gauge film prints were copies of 35mm movies, sold or rented for nontheatrical exhibition. But shortly before 1920, the American company Pathéscope released its New Premier Motion Picture Camera, which made it possible for amateurs to shoot on safety film. Amateur-made 28mm home movies rarely survive, and even more rarely are seen on original projectors. Archivist Dino Everett projects these found films on a 1919 model New Premier Pathéscope projector. Film and equipment made possible by the Hugh M. Hefner Moving Image Archive, USC School of Cinematic Arts.

Marie Dickerson Coker home movies (1930s-1950s)

As an accomplished singer, dancer, and musician, Marie Dickerson Coker performed at Los Angeles hot spots, including the Cotton Club. She was also one of the first African American women to receive a pilot's license, performing in air shows as a member of an all-female flying team. Coker's charisma shines in these recently discovered home movies, which include footage of her travels to Hawaii and moments from everyday life. Presented by Trisha Lendo (UCLA Film & Television Archive) & Leah Kerr (Mayme A. Clayton Library and Museum).

Helen Hill’s home movies (2003-05)

The most recent preservation work on the flood-damaged Super 8 films shot by the late artist Helen Hill show the funky New Orleans scene that she and her husband Paul inhabited and animated. We see the couple’s house post-Katrina and other pieces of film used in The Florestine Collection (2011), “a film by Helen Hill, completed by Paul Gailiunas.” Introduced by Dan Streible (NYU), founder of the Orphan Film Symposium. Preserved by Harvard Film Archive with the Center for Home Movies; video and digital transfers by the Library of Congress.

Orphans 2006: Bill Brand advises Helen Hill on saving her Katrina-damaged films.

"What if you eat watermelon seeds?"

+ Fast Fax (1997-98)

Animator Helen Hill made these witty whimsical micro-interstitials (of 3 to 15 seconds duration) for the Canadian Broadcast Corporation’s educational TV series Street Sense. Thanks to the research of NYU student Jim Bittl, the original CBC broadcast masters were preserved in 2010 and copies deposited with the Helen Hill Collection, Harvard Film Archive.

12 noon Latterday Newsreels

NYC Street Scenes and Noises (1929)

In November 1929, a Fox Movietone newsreel van recorded synchronous-sound footage of two locations of concern to the city’s Noise Abatement Commission: Times Square and “Radio Row” (Cortlandt Street), with its many shops selling radio sets. Does the raw footage record noises, or a modernist city symphony? Source: University of South Carolina Moving Image Research Collections.

New York Street Scenes (1960)

B-roll newsreel footage shot in Manhattan, from a camera car traveling Broadway and 7th and 8th Avenues. Numerous takes showing Penn Station, Loew’s State Theatre, the old Madison Square Garden facade, the Smoking Camel billboard, the Coliseum building in Columbus Circle, and other buildings and theater marquees no longer extant. Preserved at UCLA Film & Television Archive in a newsreel preservation workshop as part of the Moving Image Archive Studies (MIAS) program. Presented by Roger L. Brown, MIAS alum.

Hearst News of the Day newsreels (1963-1967)

Excerpts from Hearst’s theatrically-released News Of The Day during its final years of production. In addition to a reel of newsreel stories compiled by a collector, and a newsreel issue covering the Watts riots of 1965, the presentation includes the final Heart newsreel, released in December 1967. Presented by Blaine Bartell, Senior Newsreel Preservationist, UCLA Film & Television Archive.

Lunch break

2:00 pm Tele-visions

+ Meadow Gold TV spots (mid-1950s)

Charming animation from TV Graphics, Inc., featuring characters from Mary Blair’s award-winning Little Golden Book, I Can Fly (1951). Source: UCLA Film & Television Archive.

The American Archive sizzle reel (2011)

Stephanie Sapienza (CPB) presents on behalf of the American Archive, a Corporation for Public Broadcasting initiative to locate, preserve, and make publicly accessible thousands of hours of public media from local stations, CPB.org/features/americanarchive. The Archive’s 2009 pilot project located 2,400 hours of audio and video recordings related to civil rights and World War II from 24 stations across the U.S. Rediscovered material includes a kinescope found by HoustonPBS: live coverage of a 1956 city council meeting addressing the racial integration of Houston schools. Dan Rather was in the reporters' pool, and the standing-room-only crowd was witness to a visceral public debate on race in America.

KTLA-TV newsfilm of the 1970s

Television historian Mark J. Williams (Darmouth College) presents selections culled from a larger collection of vintage KTLA news segments curated by UCLA's Archive Research and Study Center for an upcoming online exhibition. Starring: Mary Pickford & Eulia Love; Edith Head & Cesar Chavez; Anita Bryant & Roman Polanski.

Help Thy Neighbor (1952)

Described as "the first do-gooder of the airwaves," Hal Styles hosted the television series Help Thy Neighbor. People appearing on this live program told of their problems and viewers at home were asked to phone in with pledges of help. In this episode, Styles hosts a pregnant 15-year-old and a man whose wife had been missing. While earnest in its good Samaritan aims, the proceedings are draped in eerie shadows of human despair and voyeuristic exploitation. Presented by Dan Einstein, UCLA Film & Television Archive.

3:45 pm break

4 pm Experimental Out-takes

Outfest Legacy Project x2

UCLA preservationist Ross Lipman presents a pair recently preserved rarities.

Mona’s Candle Light (ca. 1950)
Collector Geoff Alexander discovered this 16mm film in an unmarked box he bought at a flea market. The unidentified filmmaker recorded performers (singer Jan Jensen and "drag king, Miss Jimmy Reynard") and patrons of Mona's, a lesbian bar in San Francisco. A deceptively simple document, it presents exceedingly rare images of queer life on its own turf, and on its own terms, a generation before gay liberation.

Epilogue / Siam (1969)

A diptych of intimate lyrical portraits by the late New York underground filmmaker Tom Chomont. Filmmaker/curator Jim Hubbard notes, “Chomont’s films offer a lyric depiction of the ordinary world, but at the same time reveal an unabashedly spiritual and sexualized parallel universe.”

Tom Chomont's Siam

A Fire in My Belly (1986-87)

While the infamous four-minute video of this title, recently created and then censored by the Smithsonian has now been widely seen, this longer (13-minute) rarely screened 16mm preservation print of David Wojnarowicz’s Super 8 work-in-progress reveals a film far more subtle and complex in its meaning and texture. Presented by Bill Brand (BB Optics), who preserved the film for NYU Fales Library & Special Collections.

The Word Made Flesh?

Unresolved Thoughts on the Unchecked Curatorial Power of Archivists

Mark Toscano (Academy Film Archive) presents

S.W. L.A. (1971)

Rob Thompson shot this short experimental film in Southwestern Los Angeles.

Snail Film (1972)
A mysterious and perhaps legendary piece made by animator Chris Casady while a student at CalArts.

5:30 pm College Collage: a Trio of Student Films

Kinky (ca. 1966)

This UCLA student film captures a psychedelic, kaleidoscopic montage of students, beatniks, and hippies on the sidewalk in front of Canter's Deli on Fairfax Avenue. The happening is edited to music by The Kinks. Presented by the filmmaker James Joannides, who co-directed with classmate Maurice Bar-David.

Patient 411: A Progress Report (ca. 1965)

A faux case study of a male hustler, produced by the "California Institute of Neuropsychiatry." The film’s onscreen credits for "technical staff" include "J. Morrison," which refers to then UCLA film student Jim Morrison, soon to gain fame as lead singer of The Doors. Morrison was cinematographer for the film and also provided creative input. Presented by the filmmaker, Ronald Raley.

Five Situations for Camera, Recorder and People (1965)

This beginning UCLA student workshop film intercuts absurdist sequences of increasing violence, providing a fascinating glimpse into UCLA's film school in the 60s, with then student Jim Morrison as location sound man. Director Alex Prisadsky recalls that working on Morrison's student film a week earlier helped to inspire some scenes in this production. Includes footage of a bonfire celebration after a Bruin basketball victory.
Read Alex Prisadsky's entertaining account of making films with Jim Morrison.

6:00 pm Dinner break

Saturday (cont'd)

7:30 pm Closing screenings, closing remarks

The Transgressor (1918) excerpt

Produced by the Catholic Arts Association amid the First Red Scare and released only in Catholic parishes and schools, this elaborately staged dramatic narrative promotes religious principles against the background of a violent clash between labor and capital. Presented by Andrew Myers (UCLA Cinema and Media Studies). Special thanks to David Shepard. Source: UCLA Film & Television Archive.

The Passaic Textile Strike (1926) reel 5

This legendary labor film, made by International Workers Aid to support New Jersey workers amid a bitter strike, survived in incomplete form until NYU’s Tamiment Library rediscovered a missing reel when it acquired the Communist Party USA Collection. The badly decayed nitrate film was painstakingly rescued by the Library of Congress, revealing a segment showing the plight of “the pale children of the hovels.” Introduced by Steven J. Ross (University of Southern California), author of Working-Class Hollywood.
Cello accompaniment by Shannon Kelley (UCLA Film & Television Archive).

The Unshod Maiden (1932)

This Universal sound-era parody of Lois Weber’s feature film Shoes (1916) uses a male voice-over commentary to mock a re-edited version of Weber’s earnest plea for women’s wage equity. Part of a wave of similar shorts, the movie demonstrates Hollywood’s rapid disregard for silent cinema in the wake of recorded sound and a broader disregard for Weber’s vision of politically-engaged popular cinema. Introduced by Weber scholar Shelley Stamp (UC-Santa Cruz), who was instrumental in the just-completed restoration of Shoes. Source: Library of Congress.

Two 16mm Paintings
Artists make films that are of, as, and about painting. Divergent approaches to visual pleasure are framed by a 1950s Uruguayan jazz improvisation and a 1960s minimalist gesture. Introduced by Bill Brand.

Color (1955)

This abstract work by Lidia García Millán is considered the first experimental film shot in color in Uruguay. Preserved by BB Optics, Trackwise, and the Library of Congress, for the Fundación de Arte Contemporáneo in Montevideo and the Orphan Film Project. Source: NYU Department of Cinema Studies. Special thanks to the filmmaker.

Black and White Movie (1968-69)

By painter and filmmaker Robert Huot. "A nude woman is revealed, and then obliterates herself entirely, in extreme slow-motion. This film is 'about' painting. Outside of painting itself, it is the only really intense criticism I have ever seen." - Hollis Frampton. Source: Canyon Cinema.

Sunday (1961)

A 50th anniversary screening of Dan Drasin’s stunning document of a police crackdown on a peaceful demonstration of amateur folk singers in Washington Square Park, Sunday, April 9, 1961. Drasin was still a teenager when he made this early verité work. Every frame he shot that day appears in the film, along with a few shots taken by friends. Preserved by UCLA Film & Television Archive for the Orphan Film Symposium, with funds from The Film Foundation. Introduced by Dan Drasin.

Daydream Therapy (1980)

Student film by Bernard Nicolas set to Nina Simone’s haunting rendition of “Pirate Jenny.” The film is one of the rediscoveries of the UCLA Film & Television Archive’s “L.A. Rebellion” preservation and exhibition project, which explores this key artistic movement of Los Angeles-based Black filmmakers working at and around UCLA in the 1970s and 80s. Presented by Allyson Nadia Field (UCLA Cinema and Media Studies).

Three Super 8 films by Andrea Callard

Introduced by Bill Brand (BB Optics). Source: NYU Fales Library & Special Collections.

Andrea Callard works in diverse media -- drawing, photography, audio, video, painting, and collage. Based in New York since 1973, she was the Secretary of the artist group Collaborative Projects, Inc., popularly known as Colab. From 1975 to 1979 Callard made Super 8 films, as did other downtown artists during the “No Wave Cinema” movement that Colab spurred.

11 thru 12 (1977)

In this most untypical, and until recently unrecognized “No Wave” masterpiece, Andrea Callard uses the structure of the I Ching to explore the absurdity of explanation and the limits of the measuring mind.

Lost Shoe Blues (1976)

West of the recently completed World Trade Center, the yet-to-be developed Battery Park City landfill had emerged as an undeclared natural preserve. Andrea Callard found unexpected riches of clover that she surveys with her Super 8 camera. Her vocal rendition of “Lost Shoe Blues” adds to the ironic discovery a complex sentiment of regret.

Flora Funera (for Battery Park City) (1976)

Another natural discovery from the Battery Park landfill, this film features synchronized audio of stones being tossed against the reinforcement bars of a retaining wall to create musical notes.

Ron and Chuck in Disneyland Discovery (1969)

Boy meets boy on Main Street in the Magic Kingdom in this audacious queer courtship narrative covertly filmed in Disneyland, guerilla-style, by pioneer filmmaker Pat Rocco. Equal parts love story, travelogue, and pointed activist statement. From the Outfest Legacy Collection, UCLA Film & Television Archive.

Oddball Film + Video finale

San Franciscan entrepreneurial archivist Stephen Parr assembles one of his signature mind-bending ironical short programs of film + video surprises.

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

Celebrating Orphan Films:

Screenings & Discussions

presented by

David Bordwell on orphan films, a movement, a cult movie

noreply@blogger.com (Dan Streible) — Mon, 09 May 2011 03:56:00 +0000

The generous and esteemed scholar David Bordwell keeps a blog. A rich one. Today he gives a kind shout-out to the Orphan Film movement. And Madison News Reel has been recognized for the cult film it deserves to be.

http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2011/05/08/time-for-a-quick-one-a-miscellany-from-friends/
says:

If you’re in Los Angeles this week, why not visit the celebration of Orphan Films playing at UCLA 13 and 14 May? While I was in New York in February, I met NYU’s Dan Streible, moving spirit of the Orphan Films movement. Dan and his colleagues work with archives, collectors, and filmmakers to save films that fall through the cracks, digging up everything from home movies to news clips and experimental cinema. Dan curated a program of orphans at our local festival earlier this spring. At UCLA he will be a guest for screenings and discussions of many orphan titles, including the mysterious Madison Newsreel (Madison, Maine alas, not Wisconsin). Go here for Sean Savage’s discussion of the orphan oddity that has become a cult movie, and here for background on Northeast Historic Film, which found the footage.

“World’s Youngest Acrobat” (Hearst Metrotone/ Fox Movietone 1929). From the DVD Orphans 7: A Film Symposium.

* * * *

Eight-month-old Clyde John Ruhland, hoisted by his father, at home in Buffalo, New York.
MVTN 4-171A World’s Youngest Acrobat (Nov. 8, 1929) 2 mins.
MVTN 4-171B World’s Youngest Acrobat, outtakes 5 mins.
University of South Carolina, Moving Image Research Collection, Fox Movietone News Collection.

Celebrating Orphan Films – MAY 13 and 14

noreply@blogger.com (Ashley R.) — Sat, 07 May 2011 03:40:00 +0000

Less than ONE WEEK until Celebrating Orphan Films commences at UCLA’s Billy Wilder Theater.

Don’t miss this rare opportunity to see nearly 50 unique orphan film treasures presented by 30 archivists, preservation experts, filmmakers and scholars.

Highlights will include:

FRIDAY, May 13 - The Augustas (1930s-1950s)

This 16-minute, 16mm silent compilation edits together footage taken of no fewer than 36 places called Augusta extant in the U.S. during the years of amateur filmmaker Scott Nixon’s travels in and out of Georgia. Featuring road signs and other markers naming “Augusta,” it celebrates the expressive potential of keyword labels. In this way, Nixon’s film offers a cinematic example of what have become familiar concerns in the context of recent social-networking communities: location awareness, self-documentation, and information retrieval.

_______________________________

Media arts professor Heidi Rae Cooley (University of South Carolina) performs her talk/commentary/travel lecture in synchrony with the moving image projected at 18 frames per second. Visit her very cool multimediated website at Hydrae.org and be sure to check out a piece that she curated for in media res, entitled “Placing ‘Augusta’: Index, Tags & Findability.”

SATURDAY, May 14 - Patient 411: A Progress Report (ca. 1965)

A faux case study of a male hustler, produced by the "California Institute of Neuropsychiatry." The film’s onscreen credits for "technical staff" include "J. Morrison," which refers to then UCLA film student Jim Morrison, soon to gain fame as lead singer of The Doors. Morrison was the cinematographer for this film and also provided creative input.

Patient 411: A Progress Report will be presented by the filmmaker, Ronald Raley, who teaches screenwriting at the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program.

SATURDAY, MAY 14

The final presentation: Oddball Film + Video

San Franciscan entrepreneurial archivist Stephen Parr assembles one of his signature mind-bending ironical short programs of film + video surprises that recontextualize both humorous and creepily serious commercials, home movies, food and science films through the lens of history.

Celebrating the Orphan cover

noreply@blogger.com (Dan Streible) — Thu, 05 May 2011 04:55:00 +0000

Would you NOT pay $10 to see these 50 orphan films?

noreply@blogger.com (Dan Streible) — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 03:02:00 +0000

Celebrating Orphan Films:
Screenings & Discussions

May 13-14, 2011

UCLA Billy Wilder Theater

www.cinema.ucla.edu/events/2011-05-13/celebrating-orphan-films

One ten-dollar pass gets you into everything. It's true.

Friday, May 13

7:30 pm

Progress, Indeed (2010)

Madison News Reel (ca. 1932)

The Augustas (1930s-1950s)

The “Iron Horse” in Hollywood (1925)

Brother and Sister Motorcycle Act (1931)

On a back road in Hollywood, Putt and Dessie Mossman perform stunts for the Fox Movietone newsreel camera and microphone. Source: USC MIRC Fox Movietone News Collection.

Light Cavalry Girl (1980)

Lillian Schwartz: two films by the pioneering computer artist

Introduced by Bill Brand (BB Optics) and presented for the first time in 3-D. Thanks to the filmmaker and to Walter Forsberg (NYU Libraries). Source: Ohio State University Libraries.

UFOs (1971)

Galaxies' 16mm mag track. Thanks to Walter Forsberg for leading the way.

Galaxies (1974)

Robert Abel promo reel (1970s)

And Then They Forgot God (1971)

James Campanella in And Then They Forgot God

Muzak (1972)

Saturday, May 14

10:15 am Introductions
Dan Streible (NYU Orphan Film Symposium) and Mark Quigley (UCLA ARSC)

Designed by Saul Bass: The Alcoa Account
Presented by Jan-Christopher Horak, Director, UCLA Film & Television Archive.

+ Animated TV station indentification reel (early 1960s)

10:45 am 100 Years of Home Movies: 1905-2005

[Francena Feeding the Chickens] (1905)

A home movie from 1905? Yes! CHM guided it to LOC.

Projecting 28mm: [New Hampshire home movie] (ca. 1920)

Marie Dickerson Coker home movies (1930s-1950s)

Helen Hill’s home movies (2003-05)

Orphans 2006: Bill Brand advises Helen Hill on saving her Katrina-damaged films.

"What if you eat watermelon seeds?"

+ Fast Fax (1997-98)

12 noon Latterday Newsreels

NYC Street Scenes and Noises (1929)

New York Street Scenes (1960)

Hearst News of the Day newsreels (1963-1967)

Lunch break

2:00 pm Tele-visions

+ Meadow Gold TV spots (mid-1950s)

Charming animation from TV Graphics, Inc., featuring characters from Mary Blair’s award-winning Little Golden Book, I Can Fly (1951). Source: UCLA Film & Television Archive.

The American Archive sizzle reel (2011)

KTLA-TV newsfilm of the 1970s

Help Thy Neighbor (1952)

3:45 pm break

4 pm Experimental Out-takes

Outfest Legacy Project x2

UCLA preservationist Ross Lipman presents a pair recently preserved rarities.

Epilogue / Siam (1969)

Tom Chomont's Siam

A Fire in My Belly (1986-87)

The Word Made Flesh?

Unresolved Thoughts on the Unchecked Curatorial Power of Archivists

Mark Toscano (Academy Film Archive) presents

S.W. L.A. (1971)

Rob Thompson shot this short experimental film in Southwestern Los Angeles.

Snail Film (1972)
A mysterious and perhaps legendary piece made by animator Chris Casady while a student at CalArts.

5:30 pm College Collage: a Trio of Student Films

Kinky (ca. 1966)

Patient 411: A Progress Report (ca. 1965)

Five Situations for Camera, Recorder and People (1965)

6:00 pm Dinner break

Saturday (cont'd)

7:30 pm Closing screenings, closing remarks

The Transgressor (1918) excerpt

The Passaic Textile Strike (1926) reel 5

The Unshod Maiden (1932)

Color (1955)

Black and White Movie (1968-69)

Sunday (1961)

Daydream Therapy (1980)

Three Super 8 films by Andrea Callard

Introduced by Bill Brand (BB Optics). Source: NYU Fales Library & Special Collections.

11 thru 12 (1977)

Lost Shoe Blues (1976)

Flora Funera (for Battery Park City) (1976)

Another natural discovery from the Battery Park landfill, this film features synchronized audio of stones being tossed against the reinforcement bars of a retaining wall to create musical notes.

Ron and Chuck in Disneyland Discovery (1969)

Oddball Film + Video finale

San Franciscan entrepreneurial archivist Stephen Parr assembles one of his signature mind-bending ironical short programs of film + video surprises.

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

Celebrating Orphan Films:

Screenings & Discussions

presented by

with

Stamp & Brand; Savage film

noreply@blogger.com (Dan Streible) — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 02:16:00 +0000

Among the cinematic arcana on display May 13 and 14 at “Celebrating Orphan Films” are these.

Friday, May 13 – Sean Savage on Madison News Reel (ca. 1932)

Archivist Sean Savage will introduce Madison News Reel, a curious

and even mysterious found film. This 200 feet of nitrate film, found in a barn in Bristol, Maine, was nearly overlooked amid a pile of empty reels. No one knows who made this uncanny collage, which references citizens of Madison, Maine. We’ll be showing the 35mm print from Northeast Historic Film, where Savage formerly worked, and where he researched his NYU MIAP thesis, The Eye Beholds: Silent Era Industrial Films and the Bureau of Commercial Economics (2006).

Saturday, May 14 – Shelley Stamp on The Unshod Maiden (1932)

Shelly Stamp, Professor of Film & Digital Media at UC-Santa Cruz and expert on the work of Lois Weber, will present The Unshod Maiden, Universal’s sound-era parody of Weber’s 1916 film Shoes, also a Universal production. The film uses a male voiceover commentary to mock a re-edited and condensed version of Weber’s earnest plea for women’s

wage equity. Part of a wave of similar parodies, The Unshod Maiden also demonstrates Hollywood’s rapid disregard for silent cinema in the wake of recorded sound, and a broader disregard for Weber’s vision of politically-engaged popular cinema. We'll screen the 35mm print from the Library of Congress, which was essential to the restoration of Shoes, just completed by EYE Netherlands Film Institute.

From The Unshod Maiden

Saturday, May 14 – Bill Brand on A Fire in My Belly (1986-87)

Preservationist Bill Brand of the award-winning BB Optics will

present a screening of this much discussed film, which he preserved for NYU's Fales Library. While the infamous four-minute video condensation of this title (recently created and then censored by the Smithsonian) has now been widely seen, Brand will present the longer, rarely screened 16mm preservation print of David Wojnarowicz’s Super 8 work-in-progress that reveals a film far more subtle and complex in its meaning and texture.

There’s only TWO WEEKS LEFT until “Celebrating Orphan Films” commences at UCLA's Billy Wilder Theater. Don’t miss this rare opportunity to see an eclectic selection of unique and innovative films presented by experts in archiving, preservation and film scholarship.

40 films, 30 speakers, only 10 BUCKS!

Order tickets at www.tft.ucla.edu/calendar/screening/celebratingorphanfilm1.

Mr. Mojo Risin' at Celebrating Orphan Films

noreply@blogger.com (Mark Quigley) — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 23:00:00 +0000

A trio of unique 1960s-era UCLA student films are on-tap for Celebrating Orphan Films, May 13-14 at the Billy Wilder Theater: Kinky (ca. 1966), Patient 411 (ca. 1965) and Five Situations for Camera, Recorder and People (ca. 1965). The original production crew for the latter two of these films included then-UCLA film student Jim Morrison, who would later rise to fame as lead singer of the seminal Los Angeles-based rock band, The Doors.

Alexander Prisadsky, director of Five Situations for Camera, Recorder and People, has shared his recollections of the making of his student film, and his collaboration with classmate Jim Morrison. Mr. Prisadsky’s generous and insightful personal notes provide a fascinating glimpse into the history of UCLA's famed film school in the 1960s, perfectly setting the stage for the upcoming screening of these rare archival treasures.

Read Alexander Prisadsky's extensive notes at:
http://www.cinema.ucla.edu/education/recollections.html

the Orphan Film Symposium

transition from 7 to 8: 83 days

Two 2012 Orphan Symposia Run Simultaneously

a new Sam Fuller film to premiere

Third draft of the 2012 Orphan Film Symposium lineup

UPDATE: ∆ • Perceptions of the Heider-Simmel Film • ∆

Second draft of the 2012 Orphan Film Symposium lineup

Listen to Walter Forsberg show home movies on the radio

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Columbia University Colloquium on Helen Hill films

first draft of the 2012 Orphan Film Symposium

El Primer Encuentro Archivo Memoria, organizado en conjunto con el Orphan Film Project

Lillian Schwartz’s Computer Animations Slated for Preservation (thanks to Walter Forsberg)

Proposals are still being accepted for . . . .

San Francisco Silent Film Festival & Orphan Films

Orphan Film DVD awarded special prize for "Most Original Contribution to Film History."

What happened at Celebrating Orphan Films? Part 2 -- Saturday

What happened at Celebrating Orphan Films?

Almost show time

Celebrating Orphan Films program guide now online!

posting this one more time!

David Bordwell on orphan films, a movement, a cult movie

Celebrating Orphan Films – MAY 13 and 14

Celebrating the Orphan cover

Would you NOT pay $10 to see these 50 orphan films?

Stamp & Brand; Savage film

Mr. Mojo Risin' at Celebrating Orphan Films