Jan 30, 2014

Full program announced for Orphans 9: The Future of Obsolescence

Here's the penultimate draft of the program for Orphans 9, The Future of Obsolescence, at EYE in Amsterdam, March 30 - April 2, 2014. It's a co-production between EYE and New York University (specifically NYU Tisch School of the Arts and its Department of Cinema Studies).

Register online now. Click here.


Sunday, 30 March an Evening Film Concert  
Greetings: Sandra den Hamer and Giovanna Fossati (EYE), Marijke de Valck (UvA), and Dan Streible (NYU)
Simona Monizza (EYE) abstract animated films by Maarten Visser, accompanist Marcel Worms (with additional music by NYU Film Scoring students)
Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi (EYE) introduces the premiere of the new restoration East Is West (1922) accompanist Stephen Horne

Monday, 31 March
9:45 am Orphans Orientation  
Josephine Baker Visit Volendam (Fox Movietone, 1928)  
About the Orphan Film Symposium Dan Streible  
About the Future of Obsolescence Giovanna Fossati   
Dan Streible A New Look at an Old Sneeze: Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze (W. K. L. Dickson, 1894)  

10:45am Thomas Elsaesser (UvA) On Obsolescence  

11:15am break

11:30 am Transmitting Archival Knowledge   
Giovanna Fossati (EYE / UvA) Restoring the Colors of Early Cinema  
Julia Noordegraaf (UvA) & Simona Monizza (EYE) Hacking the Bart Vegter Collection 
Eef Masson (UvA) moderates a roundtable with Howard Besser and Bill Brand (NYU MIAP), Snowden Becker (UCLA MIAS), and Martin Koerber (DIF)   

1 pm LUNCH provided

2pm  Media Archaeology   
Susan Aasman  (U of Groningen) Staging the Amateur Dispositif, a performance with Andreas Fickers (U of Luxembourg), Tom Slootweg (U of Groningen), Tim van der Heijden and Jo Wachelder (U of Maastricht)   
Alexandra Schneider and Wanda Strauven  (UvA) Children as Media Archaeologists   
Monika Supruniuk (Academy of Fine Arts, Warsaw) Kazimierz Prószyński and OKO: The first Polish amateur movie camera (1914) 

3:45pm  BREAK 

4:15pm  Reassemblage
Matt Soar (Concordia U, Montreal) Lost Leaders Project   
Benedict Olgado (NFA Philippines) & Bill Brand (BB Optics) Restoring the Fragments of On My Way to India Consciousness, I Reached China (Henry Francia, 1968)   
Walter Forsberg & John Klacsmann (Anthology Film Archives) Technicolor NG (16mm print, 20’)   

6:15 pm DINNER provided

8:15 pm  Helen Hill Award screening
Bill Morrison premieres a new work 
Doug Goodwin (Cal Arts) On Illusion, Magic, and Ted Serios  
             a preview of Serios (Rebecca Baron, 2014)  
Becky Lewis (Columbia, South Carolina) confers the Helen Hill Award on Werner Nekes
Start (Nekes, 1966) newly restored by Deutsche Kinemathek with EYE
Franziska Latell (Berlin U of the Arts) introduces Werner Nekes  
Werner Nekes talk/presentation on his collection of optical devices 

Tuesday, 1 April
9:45 am  introductory remarks & trailer   

10am  New Research Networks for Obsolete Media   
Mark G. Cooper (U of South Carolina) Metadata and the Future of the Humanities
Karen Cariani (WGBH Archive) Working with Scholars to Improve Access to Media Archives
Mark J. Williams (Dartmouth College) The Media Ecology Project: More and Better Scholarly Access to Historical Media
Scott Curtis (Northwestern U in Qatar) chair

11:30am  BREAK

11:45am  Digital Decay and Remobilization
Egyptian (Whirling Dervishes) Dancers (Fox Movietone News, 1928) 
Evan Meaney (U of South Carolina) de_ca/sia.py: Archival Encryption, Encoding, and Error as Narrative  
Heidi Rae Cooley  (U of South Carolina) Finding Augusta in a Digital World: The App.
            The Other Augustas (Scott Nixon, 195?) and [Augusta, Sicily] (19??)

LUNCH provided

2pm When Workers Leave the Factory: Amateur Films in the Eastern Bloc, 1960s-1980s   
Chris Wahl (HFF Potsdam) work from Betriebsfilmstudio GDR
            Stadt des Morgen / City of Tomorrow (EKO Eisenhüttenstadt, 1965)  
            Der Minister kommt / The Minister Comes (Frank Dietrich, Amateur Film Studio Senftenberg, 1984)  
            FKK – Mahlzeit / Nudism – Enjoy Your Meal, (EKO Eisenhüttenstadt, 1973)  
Ralf Forster (Filmmuseum Potsdam)  East German amateur films
            Milchig-Trübe / Milky Fishy (Amateur Film Studio, Potsdam, 1983)  
            Der Favorit / The Favorite, (Angelika and Horst Butter, Berlin, 1982)  
            Sonntagsfahrer / Sunday Driver (Amateur Film Studio STATIV Dresden, 1981) 
Jiří Horníček (Czech National Film Archive) Czech amateur auteurs
            Mašinerie / Machinery (Pavel Bárta and Zdeněk Lorenz, 1985)  
                      X + Y (TIGR (Koplík-Groz-Tichý, 1963)
Maria Vinogradova 
(NYU) Amateur film in the Soviet Union
            Na odnoi zemle / On the Same Earth (People’s Film Studio at DK Proftekhobrazovania, Leningrad, 1976)  

3:30pm  BREAK  

4pm Transportation Technologies
May Haduong (Academy Film Archive) Aloha Wanderwell: Car and Camera Around the World, 1922-1950  
Yvonne Zimmermann (Philipps-Universität Marburg) Hans Richter’s Die Eroberung des Himmels (Conquest of the Sky) (1938) 
Reto Kromer (reto.ch) In-flight Entertainment: Kodak two-audio track film prints for airlines; and Apollo 11 test film for Kern lenses (1969)  
Paul Spehr (The Man Who Made Movies: W.K.L. Dickson) & Mark-Paul Meyer (EYE) Mutoscope and Biograph 68mm films (1897-1902)  

6pm  "dinner on your own" 

8pm  Silent Night
Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi (EYE) and Jeff Lambert (NFPF) with film repatriation news  
Ned Thanhouser introduces the newly preserved Clarence Cheats at Croquet (Thanhouser, 1915)
Ron Magliozzi & Peter Williamson (Museum of Modern Art, New York) present rediscovered rushes from the unreleased  Darktown Troubles (Biograph, ca. 1914) music by Stephen Horne
Jacqueline Stewart (U of Chicago) segues to the newly restored A Frontier Post (Fox, US, 1925) 12’  A day-in-the-life documentary about the “buffalo soldiers” of the U.S. Army’s 10th Cavalry, Fort Huachuca, Arizona. 35mm from Moving Image Research Collections, University of South Carolina

Wednesday, 2 April
9:45am  introductory remarks and short video TBA

10am Detritus
Antonia Lant (NYU) on Teclópolis (2009, Can Can Club, Argentina)  
Charles Musser (Yale U) on Industry’s Disinherited (Unions Films, 1949)  
Grover Crisp (Sony Pictures Entertainment) How Death of a Salesman (1951) Became an Orphan Work  
+ the never-released Career of a Salesman (Columbia Pictures, 1951) 

FORWARD: The EU Directive for a Registry of Audiovisual Orphan Works 
Nicola Mazzanti (Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique) introduction  
Géraldine Vooren (EYE)  
Thomas Christensen (Danish Film Institute)  
Q&A  
Howard Besser (NYU) moderator

11:45am  break

12:00  Restorations
Rob Byrne (SFSFF) Restoring The Last Edition (1925) 
Martin Koerber (Deutsche Kinemathek) and Andrea Krämer (Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft, Berlin) Digital Restoration of 1930s Gasparcolor Films  
            with Gasparcolor screenings  

1:15 pm LUNCH

2:15pm Latin American Archives  
Juana Suárez (Fundación Patrimonio Fílmico Colombiano) Outtakes from Gloria Triana’s  Yuruparí (FOCINE-Audiovisuales, 1983-86) documenting Colombia’s Afrodescendant and indigenous cultures  
Andrés Levinson & Paula Félix-Didier (Museo del Cine, Buenos Aires)  
            Caperucita Roja (Little Red Riding Hood, Jorge Mendez Delfino, 1933)  
            Caperucita Roja Inesita (Inés Mendez Delfino, 1960)  
            Perros en paracaidas (Dogs Parachute into Antarctica, 1963) 

4:15pm  break

4:45pm  Eastern European Archives
Elvira Diamanti, Eriona Vyshka, & Andi Lubonja (Albanian Film Archive) with Thomas Logoreci (Marubi Academy of Film) The Albanian Cinema Project  
            KF-16 [Albanian dances] (Ramazan Bogdani, 1972)  
            + excerpts from new restorations, including Nëntori i dytë (The Second November) (1982) and Tomka and His Friends (1977)
Elżbieta Wysocka (Filmoteka Narodowa) Man without a Movie Camera: Restoring the Cameraless Films of Julian Józef Antonisz  
• Ostry film “zaangażowany”: non camera (A Hard-Core Engaged Film. Non-Camera, 1979)  
• Światło w tunelu (A Light in the Tunnel, 1985)  
• Polska Kronika Non Camerowa nr.-1 (The Polish Non-Camera Newsreel no. 1, 1981) 

6:30 pm  DINNER provided

8:30 pm  American Independents 
Jeff Lambert (NFPF) introduces the launch of the DVD set Treasures 6: Next Wave Avant-garde, and a 35mm screening of Chicago Loop (James Benning, 1976) 9’; restoration by Academy Film Archive and Austrian Film Museum
Frank Scheffer and Paul Cohen introduce the premiere of their new work Zoetrope People (1980/2014) 
Dennis Doros (Milestone Films) and Mary Huelsbeck (Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research) The ‘Lost’ Films of Shirley Clarke   



Jan 7, 2014

p.s. Great Songs About The Great Flood, on WNYC's Soundcheck

A nice post script to yesterday post about the film The Great Flood.


John Schaefer interviewed filmmaker Bill Morrison today.
WNYC-FM, Podcast for Tuesday, January 7, 2014.



Soundcheck is "WNYC’s on-air and online destination for new music, live performances, and engaging conversations with artists, critics, and tastemakers." Hosted by John Schaefer every weeknight at 9 p.m. on 93.9 FM and WNYC.org.

Jan 6, 2014

A Great Flood of Film: Theatrical Premiere Jan 8-16

The year 2013 concluded with, among other things, Bill Morrison's film Decasia (2002) being named to the National Film Registry. Now 2014 begins with another achievement in archival film artistry.  The Great Flood is Bill Morrison's latest feature-length compilation of extraordinary strips of celluloid, scored with an original engaging music track by guitarist genius Bill Frisell. The film has its theatrical premiere and a week-long run at NYC's IFC Center, January 8 through 16, with four screenings daily (at 11am, 12:45, 4:20, & 8pm).

Go to the evening shows on Thursday, Friday, or Saturday to see/hear the filmmaker speak about this look at the historic Mississippi River floods of 1927.

Judging from the sneak preview clip we saw at NYU Cinema Studies on December 4, 2013, The Great Flood is another visually stunning work. The footage scanned from the original 35mm newsfilm in the University of South Carolina's Moving Image Research Collections is particularly glorious in its resolution. Not all of the scenes are from USC MIRC films, but those that are stand out from the others.  Better originals; better digital copying from the Carolina keepers of the Fox newsreel outtakes.

As ever, Mr. Morrison will also be revealing new work [yet untitled] at the 2014 Orphan Film Symposium in Amsterdam (March 30-April 2). So the OFS is happy to point you to this new theatrical run.

Here's the trailer from "friend of the show," Icarus Films (frequent provider of swell doorprizes at symposia past).



from Icarus Films.

(Icarus:  Love their unabashed motto: "Serious documentaries are good for you.")


Find the IFC Center at 323 Sixth Avenue at West Third Street
Box office: (212) 924-7771

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