Archivists on a Mission to Save Orphan Films at the Museo del Cine, Buenos Aires

Text from an NYU press release describing what the Orphan Film Project will be up to for the next two weeks.  May 23-29 also includes attending the International Federal of Film Archives (FIAF) events in Buenos Aires.

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temporary location of the Museo del Cine collections. 

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A team of film archivists from the United States under the direction of New York University’s Dan Streible, associate professor in the Department of Cinema Studies at the Tisch School of the Arts and associate director of the Moving Image Archiving and Preservation Program (MIAP), will travel to Buenos Aires this month to help the Museo del Cine preserve its orphan films.  A small, under-funded city institution, the Museo holds a large and important collection of rare motion pictures, many in urgent need of preservation.

The all-volunteer team of 12 includes preservationists from the Museum of Modern Art, Harvard Film Archive, the University of Chicago, BB Optics film lab, as well as NYU faculty, staff, and students.  Co-organizers of the project are NYU alumnae Paula Félix-Didier (MIAP ’06), director of the Museo del Cine, and Natalia Fidelholtz (MIAP ’06).

The Museo del Cine collection is vast and comprises more than 65,000 reels of 16mm film alone.  The films come from all over the Americas and Europe, produced as early as 1910 and as late as the 1960s. In 2008, Félix-Didier made international headlines when she uncovered a silent-era masterpiece long presumed lost—the "director’s cut" of the German film Metropolis (1927).  She and her staff are finding other “lost” films from early Hollywood and elsewhere as the collection gets inspected. 

“We’re on an archivists-without-borders mission and our group is a kind of dream team for a film archive,” said Streible.  The team will spend two weeks (May 17-30) in Buenos Aires and devote its time to the meticulous work of archiving. Films will be inventoried, inspected, repaired, identified, catalogued, and rehoused, with the most valuable finds prepared for laboratory preservation. All work will be done in collaboration with the museum’s staff of five, who will also receive training with supplies and equipment they have previously lacked.

The Buenos Aires project is part of NYU’s Audio-Visual Preservation Exchange (APEX), which was established by Mona Jimenez, associate arts professor in the Department of Cinema Studies and associate director of MIAP, in 2008 to conduct a similar outreach in Accra, Ghana.  Jimenez is currently in Accra again, conducting archival training workshops for local broadcasters, filmmakers, and cultural organizations.  Joining her are Kara Van Malssen (NYU Libraries / MIAP '06), Ishumael Zinyengere (audiovisual archivist for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Tanzania), Jennifer Blaylock (MIAP '10), and Mick Newnham (senior researcher at the National Film and Sound Archive, Australia).

The results of both the Ghana and Argentina initiatives to preserve neglected but significant moving image works will be  showcased at the 7th Orphan Film Symposium, April 7-10, 2010, at the Library of Congress, National Audio-Visual Conservation Center.

Streible organizes this international gathering of orphanistas (archivists, artists, and academics), all of whom work to save, screen, and study a wide variety of at-risk films.  Any film that has suffered neglect and falls outside of the commercial mainstream can be designated an “orphan.” For more on the symposium visit www.nyu.edu/orphans.

The Buenos Aires project has received generous support from Kodak, Urbanski Film, Tuscan Corp., Colorlab, Cineric, as well as NYU Libraries, Harvard Film Archive, University of Chicago Film Study Center, the John Anson Kittredge Educational Fund, and professional archivists donating their time, labor, and expertise.

 

NYU participants 

Dan Streible, Orphan Film Symposium Director

Howard Besser, professor in Cinema Studies; MIAP Director

Bill Brand, adjunct professor in Cinema Studies; owner of BB Optics

Alice Moscoso, audio-visual preservationist, NYU Libraries

Kimberly Tarr, MIAP ’09

 

NYU alumni participants

Daniela Bajar, Cinema Studies M.A. ’08

Sarah Resnick, MIAP ’07

Natalia Fidelholtz, MIAP ’06

Paula Félix-Didier, Museo del Cine, Directora, and MIAP ’06

 

Other participants

Liz Coffey, Harvard Film Archive, Conservator

Katie Trainor, Museum of Modern Art, Film Collections Manager

Carolyn Faber, Chicago archivist/consultant

Julia Gibbs, University of Chicago Film Study Center

Katy Martin, visual artist/curator

 

Consulting on-site

Haden Guest, Harvard Film Archive, Director 

Paolo Cherchi Usai, Haghefilm Foundation

Stefan Drößler, Munich Film Museum, Director

Mark Toscano, Academy Film Archive, Preservationist

 

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Deadline for proposals

Q:  When is the deadline for submitting proposals for the 2010 Orphan Film Symposium?

A:  While there is no absolute drop-dead deadline, June 15, 2009 is the date when review of proposals begins.  Proposals received after June 15 will certainly get due consideration; but your odds improve if you submit early.  

Send 1-page proposals to dan.streible@nyu.edu.

The 7th Orphan Film Symposium 

"Moving Pictures Around the World"

April 7-10, 2010 

at the 

Library of Congress 

National Audio-Visual Conservation Center

Culpeper, Virginia

Following on the internationalism evident at the 2008 Orphan Film Symposium (at which 18 nations were represented), Orphans 7 will focus on transnational and global issues. How have moving images circulated across national and other boundaries? How are neglected archival materials accessed and used across and within borders?

We seek proposals for presentations on topics including: film repatriation; regional and transnational cinemas (e.g., the Global South, the West, Bollywood, Nollywood, Middle Eastern, Southeast Asian); issues of migration, mobility, and global/local dynamics; international co-productions; intellectual property and copyright debates; foreign markets and multi-language releases; heritage, cultural property, and developing nations; diasporic cinemas; border cultures; World-Wide Web as de facto archive; DVD regions; film festivals; the World Cinema Foundation; the work of international associations in media preservation and access; and any neglected historical or archival material that sheds light on globalism or the transnational aspects of history and archiving. 

New works by media artists using archival material are also sought.

Orphans West: That's a Wrap.

Adam Hyman, director of Filmforum, welcomed Angelino orphanistas.

So, thanks to the Los Angeles Filmforum and the Cinefamily at the Silent Movie Theatre, the Orphan Film Symposium had a West Coast premiere, or sneak preview.  "Orphans West" we called it.  It was a delightful interregnum in this odd-numbered year, between Orphans 6 and 7.

The folks photographed here selected films from each of the past six symposiums [symposia? you tell me].



Stephanie Sapienza, also of L.A. Filmforum, put the show together.  (John Marlow, left, came from the San Francisco Cinematheque.)

Hadrian Belove, don of the Cinefamily, presided during the weekend. Seen here outside the Silent Movie Theatre. 

Go Orphans West

Click here to gO West:  www.LAFilmforum.org/OrphansWest.

Los Angeles Filmforum and Cinefamily bring the Orphan Film Symposium to Los Angeles


Where: The Silent Movie Theatre, 611 N. Fairfax Ave., Los Angeles

When: Saturday, May 2 &  Sunday, May 3, 2009


Los Angeles Filmforum, Cinefamily at the Silent Movie Theatre and NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts will present a retrospective of the Orphan Film Symposium to the historic Silent Movie Theatre on May 2 and 3.

The Orphan Film Symposium has had six incarnations since its start in 1999 at the University of South Carolina. Founder Dan Streible has since developed the symposium into a favorite of AMIA members, filmmakers, and historians. The event is now organized at and by NYU as a project of its Moving Image Archiving and Preservation program. The biennial draws sold out crowds from around the world (18 nations were represented at the 2008 symposium).

For the uninitiated, “orphan” works are those which are outside of the mainstream and often have no known origin or copyright, or were at one point considered “lost” and without a formal repository to preserve them. These include home movies, amateur and educational films, industrial and sponsored films, experimental films, and newsreels. Presenters at the symposium speak about restoration and research projects, their processes of discovery for these films and videos, followed by screenings of the works.

Undoubtedly, newcomers to the Orphans phenomenon are curious as to what stories and treasures the early incarnations of the symposium uncovered. For those curious parties, Los Angeles organizations LA Filmforum and Cinefamily worked with NYU and Dan Streible to coordinate a two-day retrospective event on May 2 and 3 at the historic Silent Movie Theatre at 611 N. Fairfax. The event will feature five shows, each with selected presentations and screenings from all six previous symposia. Orphans founder Dan Streible will be present along with an amazing lineup of presenters and films.

Admission is $13 per show. For $65, patrons will receive a pass to all five shows in the symposium, free soda and popcorn AND a dinner and wine reception on Saturday night between the first and second shows.

To view the full lineup of shows, presenters and films, visit the Orphans West page at www.lafilmforum.org/OrphansWest/Program/Program.html.

Show Lineup (visit the program page for full descriptions):

Saturday May 2, 6:00pm
Selections from Orphans 1: Saving Orphan Films in the Digital Age
and Orphans 2: Documenting the 20th Century

Saturday May 2, 2009, 8:00 pm
Dinner and wine in the courtyard of the Silent Movie Theatre!
** For symposium pass holders only **

Saturday May 2, 9:30pm
Selections from Orphans 3: Listening to Orphan Films; Sound, Music, Voice

Sunday May 3, 2:00pm
Selections from Orphans 4: On Location: Place and Region in Forgotten Films

Sunday May 3, 4:30pm
Selections from Orphans 5: Science, Industry and Education

Sunday May 3, 8:00pm
Selections from Orphans 6: The State

About Los Angeles Filmforum: LA Filmforum was incorporated in 1975. Its mission is to promote a greater understanding of film as an art form and the filmmaker as an artist by providing a forum for independently produced, experimental films, which have little opportunity of reaching the general public through normal channels of commercial distribution. It showcases alternative media that aims to inspire, enlighten, and empower, as well as to entertain. By featuring the underrepresented voices and visions of truly independent filmmakers, Filmforum exposes audiences to the full range of artistic expression, cultural perspectives, and critical inquiry. For more information, visit our website at www.lafilmforum.org, or contact us at lafilmforum@yahoo.com.


CONTACT: Stephanie Sapienza, Los Angeles FIlmforum
PHONE: 626-676-6451
E-MAIL: stephanie@lafilmforum.org
or
Adam Hyman at adam@lafilmforum.org.

Sexto Simposio de Cine Huérfano

Even if you don't read Spanish, take a look at the report on Orphans 6 at the web site of the Fundación Patrimonio Fílmico Colombiano. Juana Suárez and Ramiro Arbeláez, who presented the foundation's restoration of the Colombian feature film Garras de oro (1926), wrote this report after taking part in the symposium last spring.

Endearing is the phrase defining the concept of an orphan film:

"material de dominio público, películas caseras, producciones con propósito educativo, documentales independientes, películas etnográficas, noticieros, trabajos experimentales, películas mudas y muchas, muchas más que aparecen descritas en lengua de Shakespeare en este enlace: www.sc.edu/filmsymposium/orphanfilm.html."

The authors' essay about Garras de oro will appear in the Spring 2009 issue of The Moving Image, journal of the Association of Moving Image Archivists.

New Yorker Films and Theatre

New Yorkers are abuzz, but blue, about the sudden news that the venerable distributor New Yorker Films is no more.  After 44 years. 

Dan Talbot took on the distribution of art-house movies in 1965, having taken management of the New Yorker Theatre in 1960.  The Upper West Side repertory cinema was at 88th & Broadway, where its 900 seats were filled for such screenings as the double-bill of Triumph of the Will (1935) and Night and Fog (1955).  That audacious 1960 program had been preceded that year by the first commercial run of Pull My Daisy (1959) -- seen billed here with the noir classic Murder My Sweet (1944) and the first-run British import Our Man in Havana. 

The New Yorker was renovated for two screens in 1979, reopening as the New Yorker 1 & 2 Twin Theaters, but razed in 1985.  

Yet New Yorker Films went on, still the leading art film and nontheatrical distributor when the theater was no more.  I recall throughout the 1980s looking forward to each new New Yorker catalog, which came to film programmers in handsomely illustrated glossy format. 

Now all those film prints and such will be going up for auction.

As recently as this past year, the Orphan Film Symposium was still benefiting from the great work of New Yorker Films.  The company provided many swell door prizes, donating choice DVD and video releases.  

Thank you.  Thanks to Dan Talbot, José Lopez, Cindi Rowell, and other NYers. 

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p.s.  One degree of separation:  

On Saturday night, I saw the closing screening of Anthology Film Archives's Alfred Leslie retrospective.  Alfred (friend of the show since Orphans 2) continues to make movies, 50 years after making Pull My Daisy and 60 years after shooting his first films (lost in the infamous fire of October 1966).  New Alfred Leslie video works wrapped up the Anthology program.  The musical, animated, computer- and video-generated works were a pleasure.  

The sweetest moment came last.  New Yorker Alfred Leslie's newest work is a documentary (another first!) about his own film career, entitled A Stranger Calls at Midnight (A Self-Interview, of Sorts).  It's worth seeing for several reasons, but let me just mention the best moment.  

At the very end, an intertitle tell us that just one year ago, a previously unknown outtake from Pull My Daisy turned up in Alfred's refrigerator, where he had long ago stashed film remnants of the '66 fire that destroyed his studio.  There, for less than a minute, we see a battered fragment of film showing Alfred and co-director Robert Frank improvising a bit of dance and shtick for the camera, which was rolling on the set. 

Things die, but they also resurrect.  

Orphans Take Manhattan

"The Orphan Film Symposium biannually reminds attendees of the vast, unexplored range of moving images that transcend the commercial, aesthetic, or philosophical categories that have defined film studies for several decades."

So says Devin Orgeron, at the beginning of his hot-off-the-presses report "Orphans Take Manhattan: The 6th Biannual Orphan Film Symposium, March 26–29, 2008, New York City," in Cinema Journal 48, No. 2, Winter 2009): 114-18. 

I'll happily take the "Take Manhattan" part, whether that's an allusion to Rogers & Hart's song "Manhattan" (1925), Oz & Henson's movie The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984), or lonesome Leonard Cohen's drolly sung "First We'll Take Manhattan (Then We'll Take Berlin)" (1988).  

Thanks to both orphanista Orgeron and Cinema Journal.

p.s.

Is the Lorenz Hart of 1925 really all that far from Leonard Cohen's comeback?   

Compare

"I'll go to Greenwich, where modern men itch to be free." (Hart '25)
 

to 

"They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom, for trying to change the system from within." (Cohen '88)