Feb 16, 2009

Orphans Take Manhattan


"The Orphan Film Symposium biannually reminds attendees of the vast, unexplored range of moving images that transcend the commercial, aesthetic, or philosophical categories that have defined film studies for several decades."

So says Devin Orgeron, at the beginning of his hot-off-the-presses report "Orphans Take Manhattan: The 6th Biannual Orphan Film Symposium, March 26–29, 2008, New York City," in Cinema Journal 48, No. 2, Winter 2009): 114-18. 

I'll happily take the "Take Manhattan" part, whether that's an allusion to Rogers & Hart's song "Manhattan" (1925), Oz & Henson's movie The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984), or lonesome Leonard Cohen's drolly sung "First We'll Take Manhattan (Then We'll Take Berlin)" (1988).  

Thanks to both orphanista Orgeron and Cinema Journal.



p.s.

Is the Lorenz Hart of 1925 really all that far from Leonard Cohen's comeback?   

Compare

"I'll go to Greenwich, where modern men itch to be free." (Hart '25)
 
to 

"They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom, for trying to change the system from within." (Cohen '88)


hindsightƒ