Orphans in Hollywood: a teaser

In May 2009, the Los Angeles Filmforum hosted "Orphans West" at the Silent Movie Theater. We featured highlights of past NYU Orphan Film Symposium screenings and talks.

www.cinema.ucla.edu

May 13-14, 2011: LA Filmforum again instigates an Orphan Film event, this time, thanks to the generosity of the UCLA Film and Television Archive, you are invited to convene in the Billy Wilder Theater (in the Hammer Museum). Evening screenings Friday and Saturday; afternoon sessions on Saturday.

www.lafilmforum.org

Much more metadata about this event forthcoming, but now that dates and venue are official, the good news couldn't wait. NYU thanks UCLA. MIAP meets MIAS. Win win. Los Angeles Filmforum. Win win win. Thanks to Jan Christopher Horak, Shannon Kelley, and Mark Quigley at UCLA, and to Adam Hyman and Stephanie Sapienza at the Filmforum.

The programming will include an eclectic group of neglected films and other moving images, mostly short, most rediscovered and preserved in recent years. Unique materials from the UCLA Film and Television Archive will anchor the screenings, joined by Bill Brand's BB Optics and its recent preservation work on experimental and small-gauge films. Expect something special from the University of South Carolina's Moving Image Research Collections too.

More about this as the spring approaches.

As always, the Orphan Film Symposium's year-round work is made possible by NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and its Department of Cinema Studies and MIAP,  the Moving Image Archiving and Preservation master's degree program.

Rediscovery: Grimm finds earliest known use of "orphan film" (1949!)

FROM: Buckey Grimm
February 6, 2011

Found this poking around instead of doing stuff I should be doing:

Many filmers take these orphan film scenes and make them up into a sort of newsreel or oddity film. You might name yours "Cook's Oddities of 1949," if your name were mine and you had enough footage to make up a reel for that year. 

         Color Movie Making for Everybody by Canfield Cook, 1949

---------

Dan Streible email reply to Buckey Grimm
February 6, 2011

Buckey,
You win the research prize (again), this time for earliest known mention of the term "orphan film," nosing out Rick Prelinger and Alex Thimons' rediscovery of this ad in Industrial Marketing  (Oct. 1950).

Here's to color movie / found footage making for everybody!

"Examine it free for 10 days."

Home movies, Orphan films, Anthology films

Sixteen thumbs up for Dwight Swanon's new film Amateur Night: Home Movies from American Archives. The illicit but promotional cell phone snap shots below were taken during the premiere screening, 1/22/11, at Anthology Film Archives in New York. The 16 short films were originally shot on amateur smal-gauge film stock: 8mm, Super 8, 9.5mm, 28mm, and 16mm. But Amateur Night is a 35mm blow-up of all these, done (pro bono!) with remarkable fidelity and consistency by Cineric film lab, also in NYC. 

 

Read more and better text about the Center for Home Movies production here:

http://centerforhomemovies.org/amateurnight.

An 8mm film by pharmacist Arthur Howe (Crawford, Nebraska)

Last Great Gathering of the Sioux Nation (1934) 

From the Tennessee Archive of Moving Image and Sound

The Coker Avenue Gang (1930, C. C. Minnich)  16mm

From a 16mm travel film with recorded narration.

Innsbruck (1953) Morris Margolin's Austrian vacation

Rural families in Ocean County, New Jersey.

Meet the Neighbors (1948, Mortimer Goldman)  8mm

Las Vegas signs en route to A-bomb test, Yucca Flats.

Atom Bomb (1953, Louis C. Harris, Sr.) 16mm

Margie Compton showed this at Orphans 5 (2006).
Listen to Margie discuss the film (intro by Dwight!).

A narrative sound film with Chicago Populuxe.

Fairy Princess (1955, Margaret Conneely) 16mm

Smokey Bear (1950, Homer C. Pickens) 16mm

 Rescued from fire, Smokey flown to Santa Fe's veterinarian.

Two months after Katrina, a New Orleans family returns.

Lower 9th Ward (2005, Helen Hill) Super 8mm

Paul Gailiunas with his son Francis Pop

Helen Hill Collection, Harvard Film Archive

Screen shots from AMATEUR NIGHT (© 2010 Center for Home Movies). Photos by anonymous.

Orphan films, Home movies, Anthology films

Friday night!

Saturday night!

Saturday

d

Orphans Redux, Anthology Film Archives, 1.21.11

The Orphan Film Project presents . . . a special one-off screening.

Join us at Anthology Film Archives (2nd St. @ 2nd Ave., NYC)

where the

Calendar for Friday, January 21 says:

7:30 PM

Orphans Redux

The Orphan Film Symposium is a multi-day marathon where artists, academics, and archivists share their common love for abandoned, unseen, and unheralded moving images. April 2010 saw the seventh edition of this crucial biennial gathering, and tonight we present a few of the most intriguing works from among the 80 titles screened. Artists, scholars, and Orphan Film Symposium organizer Dan Streible will be on hand for introductions and insights. This is an incredible opportunity to see films that have been far too hard to view until now.

Russell Sheaffer and Jim Bittl

Trailer for Orphans 7: PROGRESS, INDEED

2010, 1 min., DigiBeta, color.

Danielle Ash
PICKLES FOR NICKELS
2009, 8 min., HD, color.
A stop-motion cardboard world where monkeys steal pickles and neighborhoods change overnight.  Presented by Danielle Ash (recipient of the 2010 Helen Hill Award).

Fox Movietone News (crew: Orient No. 3, "Newsreel Wong" Hai Sheng and Gottlieb)
CHINESE MOTION PICTURE STUDIO
1934, 6 min., 35mm, b/w.  Preserved by Colorlab for the University of South Carolina Moving Image Research Collections.
Outtakes from a January 23, 1934, newsreel shot in Shanghai, demonstrating “how motion pictures are filmed in China.”  Presented by Mark G. Cooper (University of South Carolina, Moving Image Research Collections).

Max Glandbard
THE INVESTIGATORS
1948, 11 min., 16mm on HDCAM, b/w.  From the Max Glandbard Collection, Yale Film Study Center, digital transfer by the Library of Congress.
THE INVESTIGATORS is a remarkable one-reel musical satire used to support Progressive Party candidates in the 1948 elections. The Union Films production lampoons the House Un-American Activities Committee.  Presented by Charles Musser (Yale University).

Henri Cartier-Bresson with Herbert Kline
WITH THE ABRAHAM LINCOLN BRIGADE IN SPAIN
1938, 20 min., 35mm, b/w, silent; additional photography by Jacques Lemare, Robert Capa. From the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archive and NYU Tamiment Library. Preserved and blown up to 35mm for the Orphan Film Symposium by Cineric.
A documentary shot during the Spanish Civil War to raise funds for bringing American volunteers -- who had fought against fascism in defense of the Spanish Republic -- back home. Presented by Juan Salas (NYU).

Scott Nixon
THE AUGUSTAS
ca. 1930-1950s, 16 min., b/w and color, silent.  Preserved by the University of South Carolina Moving Image Research Collections with support from the National Film Preservation Foundation.
An intriguing compilation film made by traveling salesman and amateur filmmaker Scott Nixon, THE AUGUSTAS records no fewer than 36 places in the U.S. named Augusta.  Presented by Heidi Rae Cooley (University of South Carolina, Film & Media Studies Program; www.hydrae.org).

Miles Bros.  

A TRIP DOWN MARKET STREET BEFORE THE FIRE
1906, 12 min., 35mm, b/w; soundtrack (2010) by Agatha Kasprzyk and Rafael Leloup. Preserved by Prelinger Archives.
A highly unusual, lyrical and even structural single-take film documenting San Francisco's main thoroughfare from the front window of a moving cable car, just days before the 1906 earthquake and fire.  Presented by Agatha Kasprzyk and Rafael Leloup.

Ed Emshwiller
MARCH ON WASHINGTON
1963, 9 min., 16mm. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives.
A colorful home movie by filmmaker Ed Emshwiller of the day after the 1963 March on Washington, at which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have A Dream” speech. Presented by Andrew Lampert.

Lidia García Milan

COLOR

1955, 3 min., 16mm. Preserved by the NYU Orphan Film Project and BB Optics (with Colorlab and Trackwise), for the Fundación de Arte Contemporáneo (Montevideo) and the filmmaker. 

This abstract animation, made by a young woman, is deemed the first color experimental film made in Uruguay. Music by the house band of the Hot Club de Montevideo. Presented by Bill Brand.

frame from Lidia García Milan's 16mm film Color (1955)

 

авангард. . . . . кино . . . . . TMI! SUBMIT! . . . . . Отправить! TMI!

The Moving Image (2012)

Special Themed Issue: 
Experimental / Avant-Garde / The Archive

The editors of The Moving Image seek proposals or completed essays for consideration in a special themed issue on experimental/avant-garde moving images and the archive, which will be published in 2012. One page proposals are due no later than Dec. 31, 2010. Essays are due no later than Apr. 1, 2011. The forum section of the journal is not peer-reviewed and is designed to feature shorter, less traditionally scholarly work, such as interviews with artists, think pieces on the challenges of working with experimental moving image materials, or profiles of archival collections. Essays in the “main” section of the journal are double-blind peer reviewed.

Topics for ARTICLES might include but are by no means limited to:

• Examinations of individual archival collections/holdings
• Archivally-inflected scholarship focused on a particular maker
• Archivally-oriented close readings of films/videos/installations/performances
• Scholarship on a filmmaker’s papers or films/videos
• Discussions of preservation and restoration
• Explorations of distribution and access

Because the journal features a FORUM section, we also welcome and encourage:
• Interviews (with filmmakers, video artists, archivists, distributors, collectors)
• Short “notes from the field” essays
• Manifestos
• Roundtable discussions (albeit virtual)
• “State of the field” observations

 


The Moving Image is the journal of the Association of Moving Image Archivists.

For more information, visit our website:
www.upress.umn.edu/journals/movingimage/default.html




 

Please e-mail proposals (one page in length), essays, or queries to Devin Orgeron, editor in chief, at devin_orgeron[at]ncsu.edu. 

(above, not Devin Orgeron, but Willie Ritchie)

--------------------------  
* Images appropriated from Alexander Rodchenko (Lilya Brik poster, 1924); Robert Beavers, Diminished Frame (1970/2001); Leslie Thornton, Chimp for Normal Short (1999); Man Ray; Bill Morrison, Decasia (2002), appropriation of Boxing: [Willie] Ritchie Trains (1923, Fox News; USC MIRC).
--------------------------

DOC NYC Festival of Storytelling: Orphans of NYC

DOC NYC | Orphan Film Symposium  |  IFC Center

November 7, 2010  | 4pm

Orphans  of  NYC

Prelude:  [Ramona & Jose Torres wedding film]  (1961)  silent, 14’

Source:  Anthology Film Archives; the Torres family (BluRay by Colorlab)

            lost film found, reunited with owners

Progress Indeed (2010, Russell Sheaffer and Jim Bittl)  1’  

Source:  NYU Tisch School of the Arts, Dept. of Cinema Studies

            trailer for the 7th Orphan Film Symposium

Grandfather (2008, James Kinder) 3’

Source:  James Kinder (Portland, OR)

            a student film from the New School, found-footage, direct animation

NYC Street Scenes and Noises (1929, Fox Movietone News) 4’

Source:  University of South Carolina, Moving Image Research Collections (Cinetech)

            early synchronous sound recording, from nitrate original, never-released outtakes

[Wallace Kelly’s New York] (1930) silent, 6’  introduced by Martha Kelly

Source:  Library of Congress, Center for Home Movies Collection (Colorlab)

            home movies, amateur film, experimental

[John Shaw Billings’ New York] (1940-49) silent, 10’

Source:  University of South Carolina, Moving Image Research Collections

            amateur film, home movies, Kodachrome

11 thru 12 (1977, Andrea Callard) 11’ introduced by Andrea Callard

Source:  NYU Fales Library & Special Collections (BB Optics and Colorlab)

            Super 8 sound, experimental, artist’s film

Sunday (1961, Dan Drasin) 35mm, 17’ 

Source:  NYU Film Study Center; UCLA Film and Television Archive; the Film Foundation

            teenage filmmaker’s independent documentary, copyright limbo

People’s Congressman (1948, Union Films) 12’ introduced by Charles Musser

Source:   NYU Tamiment Library (video transfer by AlphaCine.com)

            rediscovered, campaign film, advertisement, blacklisted

French Lunch (1967, Nell Cox) 15’ introduced by Nell Cox

Source:  Nell Cox (New York, NY)

            independent documentary, not yet preserved

www.nyu.edu/orphanfilm