Love ahead!

This just went out to everyone registered to attend the Orphan Film Symposium on Love. 

 
Gentle colleagues:
A first greeting and informational note to everyone registered for the NYU Orphan Film Symposium at Museum of the Moving Image, April 11-14. An exciting week of Love ahead! The dates and times on the Orphans 11 booklet (attached) match what is published at NYU.edu/orphanfilm.

Enter MoMI at  36-01 35 Ave. (at 37 Street) in Astoria, Queens.

All symposium events are in the museum, with the exception of Thursday’s catered dinner (6pm at nearby Zenon Taverna). You will also get a separate email about visiting the new Kodak film lab, a short walk from the museum, on Wednesday before the symposium’s opening reception (7pm at MoMI). You can sign up to schedule your visit individually.

Registration: Pick up name badge & stuff at the Registration table (left of the lobby as you enter). Please wear your Orphans name badge to ease access to the events, including the meals. Register whenever you first arrive, regardless of the day or time.

Wednesday:
7:00 pm MoMI Reception (wine & hors d’oeuvres; thanks, Kodak!)
8:00 pm Opening screening (early Jim Henson, two never-seen films of Einstein, Girl Scouts in 1926, home movies from the inventor of Kodachrome!

Thursday, Friday, & Saturday: 9:30 am start time, with screenings at 8:00pm nightly. Dinner breaks 6pm. We cater dinner Thursday (Zenon) and Saturday (MoMI). Friday is “dinner on your own.” We’ll have a printed list of restaurants within walking distance to assure you have time to get back for the 8pm screening. The museum’s “Where to Eat in Astoria” is here.
            Coffee/tea will be available all day near the registration table, with light nosh before 9:30am. Catered lunches in the museum each day. (For other food and drinks on your own, the museum’s café is open all afternoon.)

Getting to MoMI: The nearest (and most reliable) subway stop is called STEINWAY, with the M & R trains stopping there (Steinway St. & 34th Avenue in Queens). The E train connects to M & R. Less than 5 minutes to walk from STEINWAY to the museum.
           Less reliable but near MoMI is the BROADWAY station (Broadway & 31st Street, Queens) on the N & W trains. (The W stops there only on weekdays.) To verify service changes check The Weekender site.
          Although car service can be expensive from Manhattan, it is quite affordable from other subway stations, such as Queensboro Plaza. Smart phone apps are generally reliable guides, even with recent subway changes. The MoMI Travel Directions are detailed for all modes and routes.

There is no central symposium hotel, although many of you are staying at The Paper Factory Hotel. Here's the Orphans guide to Hotels near Museum of the Moving Image.

See you soon!

Dan Streible
NYU Orphan Film Symposium director (917) 754-1401

Lichtspiel • Ernst • 17.5

When Brigitte Paulowitz of Lichtspiel / Kinemathek (Bern, Switzerland) films from the Richard Ernst Collection of 17.5mm and 35mm Family Films, 1914-1932, we'll see thirty minutes of sophisticated home movies.  And one show-at-home film the grandfather bought, a French travelogue of the Philippines. 


She tells us that the English translation of the intertitles in Aux îles Philippines (Pathé, 1914) are: 

  T1:The ferryman
  T2: Banks of the river Pasig
  T3: Return from the market
  T4: Hemp being the principal industry in the Philippines, the ropemakers are numerous
  T5: Laundry
  T6: Bathing children



Although we won't get to take advantage of the meticulously produced High Frame Rate DCP the Kinemathek has produced, we'll see some handsome scans of these unique films, re-creating what a home movie program might've looked like in the Ernst home three generations ago. 

Honeymoon trip to the Soviet Union in 1932, as well as a purchased reel (ca. 1921) that has a shot of Trotsky!













Leningrad 1932

Honoring Mrs. Alice B. Russell Micheaux, April 11, in Rye, New York

The Orphan Film Symposium begins Wednesday evening, April 11. During that same morning Terri Francis and Lina Accurso have organized this significant event in nearby Rye, New York.  They will also talk about the Alice B. Russell Micheaux project on Saturday, April 14, 9:30am, as part of the Orphan Film Symposium at Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens, NYC.  They will be joined by film historian Charlene Regester of the University of North Carolina.

Terri shares the news below and invites you to this special event.

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Honoring Mrs. Alice B. Russell Micheaux
from the website of Indiana University Black Film Center / Archive

Through the efforts of BFC/A director Terri Francis, independent silent film historian Lina Accurso, and a generous community of individual donors, arrangements are in place to set a memorial headstone at the unmarked grave of Mrs. Alice B. Russell Micheaux in 2018.

Mrs. Micheaux was a pioneering film actress and film producer, as well as the second wife of renowned African American filmmaker, Oscar Micheaux. Alice Micheaux performed in The Broken Violin (1927), and in Oscar’s films including Murder in Harlem (1935), God’s Step Children (1938) and The Betrayal (1948). She collaborated with her husband as script supervisor and casting associate on Lying Lips (1939) and miscellaneous crew on Swing! (1938), Murder in Harlem (1935), Ten Minutes to Live (1932) and The Girl from Chicago (1932).

Mrs. Micheaux spent her final years as a ward of the state suffering from dementia, and was buried in 1985 in an unmarked pauper’s grave at the Greenwood Union Cemetery in Rye, New York.

On April 11, 2018, at 11:00 am, we invite you to gather at the site in Greenwood Union Cemetery, Rye, NY, for a meaningful remembrance of Mrs. Micheaux’s life and her vital contributions to early African American cinema as a producer, actress, script supervisor, and spouse to Oscar Micheaux. We plan to honor Mrs. Micheaux with a floral arrangement, music from Jasmine Muhammad, and a blessing from Rev. Martha Cruz, a member of St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, local to Rye. Please join us and share the event information linked here.

Due to the long New York winter, we unfortunately will not be able to pour the foundation for the rose quartz marker on this occasion, but it will be in place by the anniversary of Mrs. Micheaux’s birth on June 30.


About BFC/A
The Black Film Center/Archive at Indiana University was established in 1981 as the first archival repository dedicated to collecting, preserving, and making available historically and culturally significant films by and about black people. The BFC/A's primary objectives are to promote scholarship on black film and to serve as an open resource for scholars, researchers, students, and the general public; to encourage creative film activity by independent black filmmakers; and to undertake and support research on the history, impact, theory, and aesthetics of black film traditions.


Symposium info at www.nyu.edu/orphanfilm.