Material Connection: IU + NYU = Orphan Film|Video|Digital

The program for NYU’s 2012 Orphan Film Symposium noted the biennial gathering had morphed into a “collaborative year-round research and preservation initiative,” and hinted: “Plans are afoot for the Midwest and Europe.” When Rachael Stoeltje, representing Indiana University Libraries Film Archive, stepped forward at the final screening to introduce Chucky Lou: Story of a Woodchuck (IU Audio-Visual Center, 1948) she also announced what we had confirmed with Jon Vickers at Indiana University Cinema and Greg Waller, IU professor in Department of Communication and Culture’s Film and Media Studies Program: Bloomington would host a special alternate-year version of the symposia in 2013. This being the first Orphan Film event not held on the East or West Coast, the nickname “Orphans Midwest” stuck. Our theme, materiality, emerged when we gathered on campus with four more orphanistas. Archivist Brian Graney, a veteran of several symposiums, was now at IU’s Black Film Center/Archive. IU PhD students Andy Uhrich, Noelle Griffis, and Russell Sheaffer were co-producers of the 2010 Orphan Film Symposium while earning master’s degrees at NYU Cinema Studies.

Materiality has become a keyword for the study and use of moving images. The physical characteristics of film, magnetic tape, and digital files help define our movie experiences. The logistics of media migration, preservation, projection, storage, and retrieval require us to understand moving images as objects, not just expressive works. Watching Chucky Lou at last year’s Orphan Film Symposium reminded us of this fact. When the last replacement bulb in the 16mm projector gave up the ghost midway through the show, we quickly switched to IU Libraries streaming video to enjoy the storied rodent. Both the old print and the new file were available only because the university has made a commitment to preserving its legacy materials.

Chucky Lou

Submit poster designs for Orphans Midwest: Materiality and the Moving Imag

Poster contest! (Win free registration to the symposium.)

The IU Cinema, IU Libraries Film Archive, and the Orphan Film Symposium invite aesthetically-minded fans of the moving image to submit poster designs for Orphans Midwest: Materiality and the Moving Image. This three-day symposium hosts an impressive gathering of scholars, archivists, and media artists, screening dozens of cinema rarities and rediscoveries, as well as new productions, music performances, and curated presentations. “Orphan films” are all manner of neglected and ephemeral cinematic artifacts, ranging from home movies to outtakes to educational movies to newsreels. More information:

Design Details:

All information below must be included in the poster

● Size: 12in x 18in
● Title: Orphans Midwest: Materiality and the Moving Image
● Dates: September 26-28, 2013
● IU Cinema website: http://www.cinema.indiana.edu/
● Additional Information number: 812-856-2503
● IU Cinema logo: Download versions here.
● Sponsors (can be in small print if needed): Presented by IU Libraries Film Archive, Indiana University Cinema and NYU Cinema Studies. This project is supported by Indiana University’s New Frontiers in the Arts & Humanities Program and the College of Arts and Humanities Institute (CAHI). Other partners include IU’s Department of Communication and Culture’s Film and Media Studies Program, Black Film Center/Archive, The Kinsey Institute, Lilly Library, and the Media Preservation Initiative.

NOTE: Design contest winners may need to make minor edits to design prior to printing

Winning Design

● Will be printed and distributed around campus and community, and will be included in promotional materials online and at conference
● Designer will receive their choice of a framed copy of the poster or a pass to the 2013 Orphan Film Symposium

Submission Deadline and Technical Specifications

● Design submissions are due by August 12, 2013
● Design must not include copyrighted images, characters, or clip art
● Submissions should be in the form of a high resolution (150 dpi minimum) .pdf file
● Submissions can be sent to orphansmidwest@gmail.com.
● If submissions are too large to email, submissions can be in the form of a downloadable file, with a link provided

Midnight Mishkin Midwest

As Friday night, September 27, 2013, becomes the 28th, the Orphan Film Symposium at Indiana University will enjoy a bonus screening.

A one-sheet for sale at movieposters.ha.com.

Courtesy of the IU Kinsey Institute film collection, the Indiana University Cinema will project the feature film The Orgy at Lil's Place (William Mishkin Motion Pictures, Inc., 1963). It's reputed to be like nothing -- but nothing -- you've seen before - EVER!

The screening is open to all. It falls two-thirds of the way through the symposium "Materiality and the Moving Image" aka Orphans Midwest. Since exploitation film scholar (yes, you heard me) Eric Schaefer (author of Bold! Daring! Shocking! True: A History of Exploitation Films, 1919-1959) will be part of the daytime session on sexploitation films, I have a feeling we won't be able to stop him from introducing the midnight show (even if we wanted to, which we don't).  Also on hand for the Kinsey session at Orphans Midwest will be Joseph Slade (Pornography and Sexual Representation: A Reference Guide, vol. 1-3), filmmaker-scholar Russell Sheaffer, and Liana Zhou (Director of Collections, Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction).

SEE the "ART" Class! 

The name to noted here is distributor William Mishkin. His company handled dozens of burlesque and exploitation films in the 1950s and 60s.  The AFI Catalog online edition lists 40 feature films credited to Mishkin. However, Orgy is not one of them.

(For reasons unknown, but perhaps easily inferred, the American Film Institute deleted numerous sexploitation films from its otherwise invaluable catalog when it migrated from the print edition to the online edition most us currently use. This according to Michael Bowen, an expert on the genre. See, for example, mooninthegutter.blogspot.com/2010, and Stefan Elnabli's profile of Michael Raso in alternativecinema.blogspot.com/2010, which, by the way, Elnabli published the same week he was co-producing the 2010 Orphan Film Symposium and its award-winning DVD -- and defending his NYU master's thesis, "Lowbrow Longevity: An Examination of Commercial Video Distribution's Unique Role in the Preservation of Independent Exploitation Horror Film." Whew!)

The Internet Movie Database credits Mishkin's company with distributing 75 works of art. Most are titles bearing the classic rhetoric of the age, such as Naked in the Wind (1954), Skin Game (1962), or Caught in the Act! (1966). The seventies saw the addition of horror and more violent flicks to the Mishkin catalog, including eleven directed by Andy Milligan (Bloodthirsty Butchers, Torture Dungeon, et al.). William Mishkin Motion Pictures also hyped European pictures in the U.S., including the outlier Bob le Flambeur (1956), directed by Jean Pierre Melville!

It's fair to say that Orgy, like several of the Andy Milligan features, was a "thought lost" movie. In his essay "Issues in Preservation of Exploitation Films" (2011), Casey Scott says specifically: "Titles like Orgy at Lil’s Place (1963), Wild Is My Love (1963), and Caught in the Act (1966) remain elusive, their posters and pressbooks the only tantalizing tastes left of these films."