Oct 17, 2015

Preliminary program: the 10th Orphan Film Symposium

Orphans X, the 10th Orphan Film Symposium, takes place April 6 - 9, 2016, at the Library of Congress Packard Campus for Audio-Visual Conservation, in Culpeper, Virigina (on Mount Pony). Evening screenings and performances unfold down on Main Street in the historic State Theatre.  Registration is open

Much more to add, soon, but for now, among the planned presentations are 

Hilde D'haeyere (University College Ghent, Belgium) "Cannibals of the Deep”: Mack Sennett's The Trail of the Swordfish (1931)

Stephen Bottomore (independent) The Selsior System Dance Films: [Ernest Belcher/Dorothy Edwards dancing] (Boris Sagal, 1913-14)

Margaret A. Compton 
(U of Georgia) A Mute Talkie Meets the Digital Humanities: A Lost Film Found, 
Wedding on the Volga (Mark Schweid, 1929)

Anke Mebold (Deutsches Filminstitut) Tonbilder from the DIF Neumayer Collection, ca. 1908-09: Synchronizing Shellac Discs and Films from Deutsche Bioscop and Alfred Duskes Kinematographen Fabrik. A program of arias and songs.

Céline Ruivo (Cinémathèque française) Restoration of the optical sound film Premier nocturne en fa dièse majeur de Chopin (Gaumont-Petersen-Poulsen, 1928) with pianist Victor Gille


Smithsonian American Art Museum, Nam June Paik Archive
Gregory Zinman (Georgia Tech) The Archival Silences of Nam June Paik’s Etude 1 (1967-68), "one of the earliest digital artworks ever created by an artist who was not first trained as a computer engineer." + a screening of Paik's Electronic Opera #1 (1969)


Viviana García Besné, Paulina Suárez-Hesketh, & Michael Ramos Araizaga (Permanencia Voluntaria) Morelos Mezcla: The collective of Permanencia Voluntaria Archivo Cinematográfico in Tepoztlán presents sound and picture tracks from fragments (1930s-70s) of Mexican cinema assembled from across Mexico, the U.S., and Spain


Sound and Color: Parallels and Intersections, Technology and Aesthetics

  • Joshua Yumibe (Michigan State U) Color Film and the Coming of Sound
  • Ulrich Ruedel (U of Applied Sciences, Berlin) Film Sound and Color since 1929
  • Heather Heckman (U of South Carolina) Continuous Monochrome: The Problem of the Soundtrack in Chromogenic Color Printing







Preserving Radio History
  • Josh Shepperd (Catholic University)
  • Shawn VanCour (New York University)
  • Jenny Doctor (Syracuse University)
  • Brian DeShazor and Joseph Gallucci (Pacifica Radio Archives)
  • Alan Gevinson (LOC American Archive of Public Broadcasting)
  • Stephanie Sapienza (Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities)





Dan Einstein & Mark Quigley (UCLA Film & Television Archive) Preserving (presumably lost episodes of) The Goldbergs: 600 original vinyl transcription disks, including the episode "Sammy Goes to the Army" (1942) 



Nico de KlerkJoachim Schätz, Katalin Teller (Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for History and Society, Vienna) Travel Lecture Films of Colin Ross ‘mit ohne Sound’. Screenings to include Achtung Australien! Achtung Asien! Das Doppelkontinent des Ostens (Attention Australia! Attention Asia! The Twin Continents of the East, 1930)

Genevieve Havemeyer-King (Wildlife Conservation Society, NDSR) and Pamela Vizner Oyarce (Second Run Media Preservation) Audio Reconstruction for Andrea Callard's Super 8 Film Some Food May Be Found In The Desert  (1977)

Bill Brand (BB Optics) Preserving Reflections (Madeline Tourtelot, 1955; music by Ed Bland) A project of the Robert Flaherty Film Seminar, Chicago Film Archvies, and the NYU MIAP Program


Erick Hawkins and Victor_Kraft in Venus and Adonis
Blake McDowell (Smithsonian NMAAHC) Paul Bowles Film Scores; and a rediscovered amateur-surrealist sound film, Venus and Adonis (Harry Dunham and Jules V. D. Bucher, 1935), restoration by the Library of Congress with the Museum of Modern Art


Jeff Martin (indy) Recorded Voice of Lt. Edward W. Stewart (1943): Recording Short-Wave Broadcasts from Japanese POW Camps



Matt Barton (LOC) U.S. Marine Corps Combat Recordings, 1943-1945

Walter Forsberg (Smithsonian National Museum for African American History and Culture) & Charles Musser (Yale U) Music, the Henry Wallace Campaign of ’48 and Union Films.  Screening: Count Us In (aka Young People’s Convention, aka The Young People Meet, 1948) rediscovered in the Pearl Bowser Collection

David Gibson (LOC) Video Game Preservation 

Rick Prelinger (UC Santa Cruz) Silences within Moving Image Archival Practice 



Josephine McRobbie (NCSU) and musicians, with Andy Uhrich (Indiana University) New Sounds for Old Films about Sound, live music performance and video remix of educational films about sound, such as Hearing and Noise (Oregon State Board of Health, 1972), Fundamentals of Acoustics (Encyclopedia Britannica, 1950), Ultra Sounds (Paul F. Moss, 1952), Sound Waves and Their Sources (ERPI, 1933), and Sound and Story (Jam Handy, 1956). 


+ a report on the state of and stakes in Orphan Works legislation and copyright reform.





Register now for the symposium in Culpeper, Virginia, April 6 - 9, 2016. 




NYU Tisch School of the Arts, Department of Cinema Studies, and its Moving Image Archiving and Preservation Program thank our partners at the Library of Congress Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation, Gregory Lukow, Mike Mashon, Rob Stone, George Willeman, Gene Deanna, Matt Barton, and others. 

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