More than 60 presenters at IU's Orphan Film Symposium (Orphans Midwest)

Registration is open for the Orphan Film Symposium at Indiana University Bloomington

Orphans Midwest:  Materiality and the Moving Image, September 26-28, 2013

More than 60 presenters!  Filmmakers, archivists, scholars, curators, technology experts, librarians, preservationists, collectors, media artists, programmers, producers, distributors, museologists, students, educators, fellows, musicians, DJs, composers, projectionists, enthusiasts, researchers, historians, digital humanists. . . . 

Join us.

Slated presenters:

Albert Steg (Center for Home Movies)   

Alex Kupfer (NYU) 

Allyson Nadia Field (UCLA)

Amy Beste (School of the Art Institute of Chicago) 

Anaïs Nony (U of Minnesota)

Andrea J. Kelley (IU)

Andrew Beckman (Studebaker National Museum)

Andy Uhrich (IU)

Anne Wells (Chicago Film Archives)

Ashley Blewer (U of South Carolina)

Ashley R. Smith (Northwestern U) 

Ben Strassfeld (U of Michigan)

Bill Morrison (Hypnotic Pictures)

Bradley Reeves (Tennessee Archive of Moving Image and Sound)

Brian Graney (IU Black Film Center/Archive) 

Brian Real (U of Maryland) 

Carolyn Faber (Kartemquin Films) 

Craig Kridel (U of South Carolina Museum of Education) 

Dan Streible (NYU Orphan Film Symposium)

Dave Sagehorn (Northwestern U) 

Donald Crafton (U of Notre Dame)

Eric Schaefer (Emerson College)  

Gabriel Gutierrez Arellano (composer)

Garden Gates (Josephine McRobbie, et al.)

Greg Pierce (Orgone Archive)

Greg Wilsbacher (U of South Carolina)

Gregory A. Waller (IU) 

Heddi Vaughan Siebel (media artist) 

Jacqueline Stewart (U of Chicago)

Jake Austen (Roctober Productions)

James Paasche (IU)  

Jane Gillooly (School of Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

Jeff Martin (Independent Media Arts Preservation) 

Jen Hughes  (U of Minnesota)

Jennifer Reeves (Cooper Union)

Jon Vickers (IU Cinema)

Joseph Slade (Ohio U)

Kelli Hix  (Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum)

Kit Hughes (U of Wisconsin - Madison) 

Liana Zhou (IU Kinsey Institute)  

Liz Coffey (Harvard Film Archive)

Luke Stadel (Northwestern U)   

Lylas (Kyle Hamlett, et al., Nashville, Tennessee)

Marsha Gordon (North Carolina State U)

Martin Johnson (Catholic U)

Matt Levine (U of Minnesota)

Maya Beiser (Opus 3 artist)

Mike Casey (IU Media Preservation Services)  

Mike Mashon (Library of Congress)

Mona Jimenez (NYU)

Nadia Ghasedi (Washington U)

Natasha Ritsma (Kenyon College) 

Nate Brennan (NYU)

Noelle Griffis (IU) 

Rachael Stoeltje (IU Libraries Film Archive)

Rachel Schaff (U of Minnesota)

Russell Sheaffer (IU)

S. Torriano Berry (Howard U) 

Sara Chapman (Media Burn)

Skip Elsheimer (A/V Geeks)

Stefan Elnabli (Northwestern U Library) 

Tom Gunning (U of Chicago)

Travis Wagner (U of South Carolina)  

Second draft of the 2012 Orphan Film Symposium lineup

Symposium registration is open and online. Seats sell quickly, so register for the April 2012 Orphan Film Symposium before 2011 is over. 

 *  *  *  *

•  Michael Aronson & Elizabeth Peterson (U of Oregon) "You Are Getting Sleepy/Hungry/Horny...": The Life and Times of Lester Beck, Filmmaking Psychologist; with screenings of the newly-preserved, pioneering sex education film Human Growth (Sy Wexler, 1948), and the sole Kodachrome print of Adaptive Behavior of Golden-Mantled Ground Squirrels (Beck, 1942)
• Yvonne Zimmermann (U of Zurich / NYU) Sponsored Films by Hans Richter: Die Börse als Barometer der Wirtschaftslage [The Stock Market] (Swiss Exchange Zurich, 1939) restored by la Cinémathèque suisse
• Making Films at AT&T/Bell Labs, 1967-1974: filmmakers Lillian Schwartz, Nell Cox, and Bill Brand screening newly preserved 16mm works: including Schwartz's UFOs, Galaxies, Pixillation, Enigma, and Googolplex, Brand’s Touch Tone Phone Film (1973), as well as Cox and Leacock's Operator (1969)

 • Other Orphans: Fugitives, Bastards, and Test-Tube Babies
            * Anna McCarthy (The Citizen Machine), Pushing on the Analogy
            * Tina Campt (Columbia U) Orphan Photos, Fugitive Images: Family Photography and the African Diaspora in Europe
          * Hadi Gharabhagi (NYU) The Bastard Files: State "Terrorism" and the Press in the USIS's News of Iran (1954)
         
• Sunniva O’Flynn (Irish Film Archive) curates a program from the IFA collections
• David Schwartz (Museum of the Moving Image) The Living Room Candidate: Presidential Campaign ads
• Anke Mebold (Deutsches Filminstitut) newly restored feature: Die Hochbahnkatastrophe, aka Elevated Train Catastrophe: 16th Sensational Adventure of Master Detective Harry Hill (Germany, 1921), introduced by Tom Gunning (U of Chicago)
• Jon Gartenberg & Jeff Capp (GME) Tassilo Adam: Moving Image Adventures in Indonesia

 
• Karl Heider mini-tribute: [Experimental Study of Apparent Behavior: The Moving Film] (1943, Fritz Heider and Marianne Simmel), with remakes of the Heider-Simmel film by University of South Carolina students of Simon Tarr (in digital video) and by Dartmouth College students of Jodie Mack (in color 16mm)


• Julia Noordegraaf (U of Amsterdam) on Joop Geesink’s Dollywood Advertising Films
• Mona Jimenez (APEX Ghana) and Manthia Diawara (NYU) on finding Hamile: The Tongo Hamlet (1964, Ghana Film Industry Corporation) 
• Susan Courtney (U of South Carolina) on how orphan films impact media scholarship
• Nico de Klerk on The Hands of a Stranger (Richard Heffron, 1965) documentary about a hospital in South Vietnam; appropriated by Friends of Vietnam (Belgium)
• Yongli Li (Beijing Film Academy & U of South Carolina) introduces Light Cavalry Girl (Jie Shen, Central Newsreel and Documentary Film Studio, Beijing, 1980)  

Light Cavalry Girl (1980), Chinese Film Collection, USC Moving Image Research Collections

• Ivan von Sauer (BBC Worldwide) and Craig Kridel (U of South Carolina) on School: A Film about Progressive Education (1939, Lee Dick)
• Dan Friedlaender (Temple U) & Adrianne Finelli (U Mich) Men and Dust (1940, Lee Dick) labor advocacy film about diseases plaguing zinc and lead miners
• Sergei Kapterev (Moscow Research Institute of Film Art) Soviet space films, including Flight to a Thousand Suns (1963)
• Alice Lovejoy (University of Minnesota) Czechoslovak Army Films and Excess of Persuasion, with filmmaker Vojtěch Jasný
       * Opportunity (Vojtěch Jasný, 1957) agitational drama warning soldiers about infidelity
       * Crooked Mirror (Karel Kachyňa, 1958) on proper military dress
       * Army Newsreel 3/65 (Karel Vachek, 1965) liberation of Ostrava
       * Metrum (Ivan Balad’a, 1967) transportation in Moscow
• Mark G. Cooper (U of South Carolina MIRC) Roman Vishniac microcinematography
• Mark J. Williams (Dartmouth) television newsfilm from KTLA, et al.
• Mark Quigley (UCLA) One Friday (Rolf Forsberg, 1973) classroom discussion film imagines an all-out race war in the U.S.

One Friday (1973) courtesy of Rolf Forsberg and UCLA Film and Television Archives

• Allyson Nadia Field (UCLA) and Jacqueline Stewart (Northwestern) The L.A. Rebellion Project: Daydream Therapy (Bernard Nicolas, 1980)
• Walter Forsberg (NYU Libraries) A Second Date: Let’s All Go to the Lobby (195?) and Snipe History
• Jaime Partsch (Universidad del Este, Puerto Rico) Films by Governor Jesús T. Piñero <archiveswiki.historians.org/Piñero_Collection>

• Martin L. Johnson (U of North Carolina) Booster films and the Paragon Feature Film Company: The Lumberjack (Wausau, 1914), Past and Present in the Cradle of Dixie (Montgomery, 1914), and The Blissveldt Romance (Grand Rapids, 1915)
• Catherine Jurca (CalTech) The “Motion Pictures’ Greatest Year” Campaign: The World Is Ours (MPPDA, 1938)
• Irene Lusztig (UC Santa Cruz) The Motherhood Archives (work in progress) documentary essay film on the construction of motherhood and an archival history of maternal education films

from Best-Fed Baby (U.S. Children's Bureau, 1925)

• Jennifer Horne (Catholic U) Welcome to the Nanny State: Carlyle Ellis and the U.S. Children’s Bureau, 1919-1926. Screening Best-Fed Baby (1925) neo-natal health hygiene

 
• Larry A. Jones (Seattle Disability Law; the Arc of Washington State) Children Limited (1951, Children's Benevolent League) advocacy film about children with developmental disabilities and their families; rediscovered in 2011 at the Library of Congress


+
• Helen Hill Media Education Center fundraising video (Whispering Statues, 2011)
• Jeanne Burkhardt and Snowden Becker (Center for Home Movies) [Francena Feeding the Chickens] (Charles Camp, 1905) and Muggins the Cow Horse (Colorado roundup footage, 1904)

"What happens if you eat watermelon seeds?"  (Helen Hill, 1997)

• James Bittl (HBO) introduces “Fast Facts” and "Gross Facts,” Helen Hill’s interstitial animations for Street Sense (1997-98, CBC-TV)
• Helen Hill Award recipient films, TBA
• The Florestine Collection (2011) a film by Helen Hill, completed by Paul Gailiunas

and more . . . .

Screening May 13 and 14 at “Celebrating Orphan Films”

Highlights from the two-day program will include the following:

Friday, May 13 – Opening Night includes

LIGHT CAVALRY GIRL (Jie Shen, 1980)

Produced by the Central Newsreel and Documentary Film Studio in China, Light Cavalry Girl pays homage to the motorcycle stylings of the military's top female riders. Director Jie Shen, now retired, was one of China’s most prolific documentary filmmakers.

Presented by Yongli Li of the Beijing Film Academy and University of South Carolina Moving Image Research Collections. USC MIRC houses a Chinese Film Collection (中国电影收藏) of some 900 film prints and 1,000 DVDs.

Saturday, May 14 - Closing screening includes


Three Newly Preserved Super 8 Short Films by Andrea Callard

LOST SHOE BLUES (Andrea Callard, 1976)

West of the newly completed World Trade Center, the yet to be developed Battery Park City landfill had emerged as an undeclared natural preserve. Andrea Callard found unexpected riches of clover that she surveys with her Super 8 camera. Her vocal rendition of "Lost Shoe Blues" adds to the ironic discovery of a complex sentiment of regret.

FLORA FUNERA (FOR BATTERY PARK CITY) (Andrea Callard, 1976)

Another natural discovery from the Battery Park landfill, this film features synchronized audio of stones being tossed against the reinforcement bars of a retaining wall to create musical notes.

11 THRU 12 (1977)

A “No Wave” masterpiece that uses the structure of the I Ching to explore the absurdity of explanation and the limits of the measuring mind. Bill Brand (BB Optics) preserved these films for NYU’s Fales Library & Special Collections, which houses the Andrea Callard Collection.

Andrea Callard in 11 thru 12; (center) detail of same; (right) Callard in 2010.

** ** ** ** **

There’s only three weeks left until the "Celebrating Orphan Films" symposium commences at UCLA. Don’t miss this rare opportunity to see an eclectic selection of unique and innovative films presented by numerous luminaries in the fields of archiving, preservation and film scholarship.

For more information and to purchase event passes or tickets for select screenings visit: http://www.cinema.ucla.edu/events/2011-05-13/celebrating-orphan-films.

-- posted by Ashley Smith (NYU Cinema Studies)

Paul Strand, newsreel stringer

Postscript to the OFS blog's May 31 posting about the film Boxing Form (1924) and the 1923 Dempsey-Firpo fight pictures.

Walking Off the Big Apple (friend of the show) reported (off-line) that one of the cinematographers filming the Dempsey-Firpo fight at the Polo Grounds in New York was acclaimed photographer Paul Strand. (Source: the Aperture monograph Paul Strand: Sixty Years of Photographs, 1976.)

In 1923, when the fight took place, Strand had already made his innovative experimental film Manhatta (1921, with Charles Sheeler). For more than a decade, Strand the still photographer /artist helped pay his bills by shooting newsfilm for several of the major newsreel services. (Manhatta, once the most rented film in the Museum of Modern Art's circulating collection, will presently be restored by MoMANY. Maybe then we'll have a better idea of its running time; I've read scholarly essays and reference books listing its duration variously as 6, 7, 8, 10, and 11 minutes. Don't believe everything you read in the newspaper.)

I've not been able to determine which company promoter Tex Rickard hired to film the Dempsey-Firpo fight. The movie that was released (mostly in violation of federal law) extended the 4-minute bout into nearly 10 minutes by showing preliminary training scenes and slow-motion replays. It also included a brief shot of the movie camera stand.

One of the YouTube versions of the 1923 fight, posted by elgrandecaudillo, contains this shot (as well as newly added Korean subtitles). Tough to spot Paul Strand among the 6 or 7 cameramen seen in this low-low resolution rendition of what was once a 35mm nitrate film. (That's assuming of course that this cutaway shot is from that event and not a stock footage insert -- as they so often are in these things.) There were also other cameras and operators placed closer to the ring during the bout.

I also recently learned that the animator Quirino Cristiani, who made the world's first feature-length animated films, in Argentina, also made an animated version of the famous fight in 1923, simply titled Firpo-Dempsey. Presumably lost, the movie would have been in the mode of an animated newsfilm, a hybrid form rarely discussed. A prior example of this was the lost Der Große Boxkampf Dempsey – Carpentier (Germany, 1921) done by animator Leopold Blonder and released commercially by Arnold Fanck’s Berg- und Sportfilm GmbH.

Come to think of it, the maker of the actual documentary -- The World's Heavyweight Championship Contest Between Jack Dempsey and Georges Carpentier (1921) -- was Fred Quimby. And he went on to a long career as executive producer of MGM cartoons.



(The Academy gave 8 Oscars to a guy whose best work was the "Tom & Jerry" series??)

8mm Red Balloon

It's been six days since the end of Orphans Six, so I thought I would continue to unwind by going to see what I will call a "movie," rather than an orphan film. The IFC Center (which was so good to Orphans in February) is showing Le Voyage du ballon rouge, director Hou Hsiao-hsien's French-language film (movie) shot in Paris.

The film-within-a-film trope went beyond the references to Albert Lamorisse's 1956 children's classic, The Red Balloon (which I'm sure I saw only on a black-and-white TV set when Kukla, Fran and Ollie introduced it on the CBS Children's Film Festival on a Saturday afternoon in 1967). Midway through Hou's movie, the mother of our boy-with-balloon protagonist gives his au pair, Song, several 8mm film reels and boxes. Song, a former student at the Beijing Film Academy, is taking film (read: video) production classes, so she is able to have the mother's home movies transferred to a DVD.

In a thoughtful move by Hou, we see the 8mm images only as the boy sees them. He watches them on a DVD player -- on the dashboard of his mother's car. She describes some scenes to him, while others she narrates in the voices of characters reminiscent of those at her puppet theater. The boy comments that he can not hear the soundtrack. His mother explains that 8mm films are silent. "What's an 8mm film?" he asks.

Also to Hou's credit, these home movies are not depicted as full of scratches and jump-inducing splices. They look handsome. This jibes with the narrative, which suggests that mother shot this footage in the late 1990s, using a friend's 8mm movie camera.

Lord knows where she got it processed. (Switzerland perhaps.)

Final note: the publicity still of the rouge ballon and the Eiffel Tower reminds me, sadly, that I will not be having April in Paris as I had hoped. The International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) is convening its annual congress and symposium at the Cinémathèque française, April 17-26, thanks to the organizers at the CNC (Centre National de la Cinématographie).

Since the theme of the symposium is "the legal protection of film works," I am even more bummed that my one-track mind (orphan films, orphan films, orphan films...) will not be in Paris this month.

-- dan