At the ninth Orphan Film Symposium, NYU’s Department of Cinema Studies, the Film and Media Studies Program at the University of South Carolina, and the Nickelodeon Theatre of Columbia, SC will honor Werner Nekes with the Helen Hill Award. Helen’s mother, Becky Lewis, and Jodie Mack, a previous recipient, will present the award to Nekes at EYE (Netherlands Film Institute) in Amsterdam. Kodak contributes a $1,000 film prize.
The ceremony is part of the symposium’s special evening of screenings on March 31, featuring a new digital incarnation of Nekes’ 1966 film, Start, prepared for the occasion with the technical experitse of Deutsche Kinemathek and EYE. Nekes will also demonstrate rare optical devices from his unmatched peronal collection. Franziska Latell, who is writing a dissertation about the artist and his collection, will introduce him.
The Helen Hill Award recognizes exceptional, innovative independent filmmakers whose work befits Hill’s legacy, celebrating creativity, animation, collaboration, and all things made by hand. An experimental filmmaker of international renown, Werner Nekes has been making films, teaching, and collaborating in Germany for nearly fifty years. An avid collector of optical toys who brings pre-cinematic devices of the 19th century and their ways of seeing into conversation with our own in the 21st, Nekes and his work embody the spirit of the Helen Hill Award and offer unique ways to think about the theme of Orphans 9, “The Future of Obsolescence.”
To begin to explore Nekes and his work,visit his website:: <http://wernernekes.de >.
Enhancing the spirit of the evening are two world premieres. Bill Morrison will introduce his La Trochita (Narrow Gauge), assembled from portions of his personal Super 8 films that survived the flooding caused by Hurriance Sandy in 2012. Douglas Goodwin follows with an experimental documentary he made with Rebecca Baron, Detour de Force, which examines the curious career of Ted Serios’s “thoughtographic” photography.
The Orphan Film Symposium runs March 30 through April 2, a co-presentation of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and EYE. www.nyu.edu/orphanfilms
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