Oct 12, 2018

“Orphans of New York” at Film Forum

Ephraim Horowitz in his amateur film, 1979  &  What's Happening in Harlem? (CPUSA,  1949)












Orphans of New York.” That's what Bruce Goldstein, Director of Repertory Programming at New York's influential* nonprofit indie moviehouse Film Forum, entitles our show of 22 entertaining but previously neglected films shot around the city from 1899 to 1979.

 Join us on Sunday or Monday.

Tickets are available online at filmforum.org or at the box office.
Film Forum, 209 W. Houston St.
Sunday, Oct. 14, 3:10 pm
repeats Monday, Oct. 15, 7:00 pm

Introductions by Bruce Goldstein (Film Forum) & Dan Streible (NYU Cinema Studies) + special guests
Piano accompaniment for silent films by Steve Sterner

Library of Congress Paper Print Collection, new scans and other early cinema:
* Across Brooklyn Bridge (1899) American Mutoscope Co.
* New Brooklyn to New York Via Brooklyn Bridge no. 1 (1899) Edison Co.
* What Happened on Twenty-third Street, New York City (1901) Edison
Panorama of Flatiron Building (1903) AM&B
Opening Ceremonies, New York Subway, Oct. 27, 1904 (1904) Edison 
* The Deceived Slumming Party (1908) Biograph
* Actors' Fund Field Day, at the Polo Grounds, New York City, August 19, 1910 (1910) Vitagraph Co. of America, with Bert Williams and Annie Oakley

Dawson City Collection newsreel fragments, Library and Archives Canada, selected by Bill Morrison (maker of the acclaimed Dawson City: Frozen Time.)
* The “Uplift” of the Horse (Universal Animated Weekly, 1917)
* Negroes’ Protest a Silent Parade (Universal Animated Weekly, 1917)
* Anarchists Bomb Wall Street (British Canadian Pathé, 1920)

* [Elsa and Albert Einstein at Warner Bros. – First National Studio 1931] a never-ever-released, charming-as-all-get-out document with the Einsteins enjoying a flying motor trip around the world. Becca Bender found the nitrate reel in a family collection long stored at the archive of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.

* a new 35mm print of the storied NYC Street Scenes and Noises outtakes (1929) Fox Movietone News, University of South Carolina Moving Image Research Collections

* Broadway by Day (1932) Magic Carpet of Movietone, 16mm

* New York University (ca. 1952-65?) Willard Van Dyke, for the NYU Alumni Association, reel 3 of 3 of an otherwise lost film.

* The Making of Pelham One Two Three (1974) featurette narrated by NYPD detective-turned-actor Carmine Foresta. 16mm print from the Academy Film Archive.

Young Filmmakers Foundation, 16mm prints
* Black Faces (1970) Studio Museum, Harlem
* Life in New York (1969) Alfonso Pagan & Luis Vale
* Ellis Island (1975) Steve Siegel & Phil Buehler
Sunday intro by Elena Rossi-Snook (New York Public Library for the Performing Arts)

* What’s Happening in Harlem? (1949) Communist Party USA. A hard-hitting political short about the exploitation of and violence against African American and Puerto Rican residents of Harlem.

* Venus and Adonis (1935) Harry Dunham &  J. V. D. Bucher's amateur surrealist film. Music by Paul Bowles.

* EPH 4/27/16 (1979) Ephraim Horowitz's masterful amateur film memoir.
Monday intro by Kimberly Tarr (NYU Libraries). (Read about its preservation in time for the centennial of Eph's birth.)

* Three American Beauties (1906) A stencil-colored Edison beauty with the complete original ending recently restored by the National Library of Norway.


SOURCES (It takes a village.)
Academy Film Archive
Albert Einstein Archives, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Craig Baldwin / Other Cinema Archives
estate of Ephraim Horowitz (via Fandor.com)
Library and Archives Canada (via Bill Morrison)
Library of Congress
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
Museum of Modern Art
National Library of Norway
New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
New York University Libraries
Prelinger Archives
Richard Scheckman
University of Iowa Libraries (via Andrew Sherburne, Tommy Haines, Saving Brinton)
University of South Carolina Moving Image Research Collections

Thanks to the film whisperers and NYU alumni of the Moving Image Archiving and Preservation Program whose research led to some of these discoveries: Becca Bender, Genevieve Havemeyer-King, and Blake McDowell.



* See Sara Aridi, "How Influential Is Film Forum? Christopher Nolan and Others Explain," New York Times, July 31, 2018,



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