Celebrating Orphan Films – MAY 13 and 14

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.

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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.