Call for Presentations
The 10th Orphan Film Symposium
Packard Campus for Audio-Visual Conservation
Culpeper, Virginia
April 6-9, 2016
Orphans X :|| Sound
NYU & LOC presentThe 10th Orphan Film Symposium
Packard Campus for Audio-Visual Conservation
Culpeper, Virginia
April 6-9, 2016
New York University Cinema Studies joins with the Library of Congress National Audio-Visual Conservation Center for the tenth international gathering of archivists, scholars, curators, preservationists, and artists devoted to screening and discussing orphan films (i.e., an eclectic variety of neglected moving images). Film, video, audio, and digital works from around the world will be showcased in the Library’s jewel-box Packard Theater, each presented with context provided by expert speakers and creative accompanists. Evening screenings will be at the historic and renovated State Theatre.
The theme of “Orphans X” is SOUND, broadly conceived. We invite proposals for presentations on the history, use, and preservation of recorded sound (with or without moving images). The symposium will consider technological, aesthetic, social, industrial, and cultural issues. How have audio and audiovisual media recorded and deployed sounds -- music, voices, effects, noise . . . silence? What neglected cinema artifacts or orphaned media should we review, re-hear, and reconsider in order to better understand the world? What orphan works document significant events or creative acts? How are media makers, researchers, and institutions using, reviving, and transforming remaindered audiovisual material?
Throughout the three days and four nights of the symposium, selected speakers will lead presentations, screenings, and discussions. Proposals that include the screening (or playback) of rare, rediscovered, or recently preserved works are encouraged. New media productions using archival or orphaned material are also sought, as are technical presentations on audiovisual archiving and preservation.
E-mail proposals to orphanfilmsymposium@gmail.com. Proposals should: summarize (in 500 words or fewer) the argument or rationale; identify AV materials to be presented (and their format/s); include a title; and be e-mailed as a file attachment (.docx or .rtf, not .pdf). Include your surname in the file name (e.g, OFS2016_Name.docx). Questions to dan.streible@nyu.edu.
First round of proposal review begins July 10, 2015.
Save the dates: April 6 - 9, 2016. The symposium kicks off on Wednesday evening, followed by three full days and nights of screenings, talks, food, and beverage. Early arrivers may sign up to tour the Library’s astounding technical facilities, where LOC collections -- 1.5 million moving image items, 3 million sound recordings, and digital objects by the petabyte -- are being preserved, conserved, and digitized.
