a box of Super 8 films, Hurricane Sandy, and a new work by Bill Morrison

On March 31, 2014, filmmaker Bill Morrison premieres a new work made for unveiling at the 9th Orphan Film Symposium in Amsterdam. 

October 29, 2012, Hurricane Sandy pushed 12ft (4m) of saltwater into the basement and ground floor of Bill Morrison's home on East 10th St in the East Village, NYC. Much of his film archive was determined to be unsalvageable. However a box of Super 8 footage that he had shot in the 1980s and 1990s was saved and transferred to HD. Forgoing his typical use of archival films shot by others and edited to music, Morrison delves into an archive of original material - moments taken, and salvaged, from his own life as a young adult.  

Title and running time TBA. 


The new Bill Morrison film opens the Helen Hill Award evening and will be followed by another new work, Serios, Rebecca Baron's examination of the films and photographs said by some to have been created by Theodore Judd (Ted) Serios using "thoughtographic" methods (i.e., that he used psychic powers to make images appear on unexposed film stock).   

Petals #12 (1966) 
from the UMBC collection at http://cdm16629.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/search/collection/Eisenbud

Douglas Goodwin (CalArts) will talk about the phenomenon in relation to cinema, human perception, and the history of illusionist performances. 

The 2014 Helen Hill Award will be conferred on Werner Nekes, who will speak about his collection of optical devices and about his newly restored film Start (1966), which will be screened thanks to the efforts of the Deutsche Kinemathek and EYE. Becky Lewis and previous Helen Hill Award recipient Jodie Mack will confer the award, which including $1,000 film prize from Kodak. 

#orphans9

Academy Film Archive and outtakes from Aloha Wanderwell Baker

There's a person called Aloha Wanderwell?  Excellent!

Thanks to the Academy Film Archive's presence at the 9th Orphan Film Symposium, we'll get to see some unseen footage of and by this imminently rediscoverable filmmaker.

As presenter May Haduong reports: Aloha Wanderwell Baker (1906-1996) was an adventurer and filmmaker who visited dozens of countries on the road in a Model Ford T. During the 1920s and 30s, movies of her team’s expeditions served as fundraising tools for their further travels. Later in her long life Baker placed elements from her films in several repositories. The Academy Film Archive holds outtakes to one of her later films. Produced over the span of 1935-1937 with her husband Walter Baker, To See the World by Car chronicles their travels to remote (and not so remote) areas of the globe.

Aloha (if I may) has some people actively looking after her legacy, and they know about film preservation.  At the foot of the home page www.alohawanderwell.com is this:

    We are looking to preserve the Wanderwell Expedition's Nitrate Films. Please contact us. All the films are in nitrate with a couple in 16mm. All films need to be transferred to HD immediately. Please help us to save these historical films.
Contact: AlohaWanderwell@cox.net (888) 921-4242

There's a swell new e-book version of Aloha Baker's 1939 memoir Call to Adventure! 

The Nile Baker Estate has a documentary in progress: Aloha Wanderwell's Driving Passion,  with the notice "This video, utilizing the surviving nitrate films from Aloha's collection, was directed and edited by Alan Boyd for the Boyd Production Group, narrated by Tracy Landecker, with music by Maria Newman."

___________________________________________________________

As May says, Aloha's films are in more than one place, including the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian. The Detroit Public Library has her papers though 1932. The University of Wyoming has those of her second husband Walter Nicholas Baker. The university's American Heritage Cener digitized the film they made together, Explorers of the Purple Sage (1945).  Silent, color, 16mm, 2 reels, 34 mins.

Curiously, the filmography on the official AW website says nothing about her film River of Death. But here's a notice from Film Daily, March 28, 1934.

page downloaded from the great Lantern
http://lantern.mediahist.org

#orphans9 

Registereth. 

Antonisz • Orphans 9 • Register

Register to attend. THE FUTURE OF OBSOLESCENCE. http://t.co/CGb63Js6xJ Films by Antonisz. pic.twitter.com/k1csONTORL

— Orphan Film Project (@Orphan_Films) February 11, 2014

Discounted registration rate through February 15.

Could this be the Orphans @ EYE logo?

Here's a post script to yesterday's post, Lost leaders and found footage at Orphans 9.

Noting the conspicuous letter O in one of the frames from Matt Soar's Lost Leaders series, some of us see T-shirt potential. 

Hearing this, Matt generously offered some new designs for possible Orphans 9 Ts or posters. 

Of course a good symposium T-shirt should also recognize the partners and the event name.
These are not real; just hasty mockups.

Better ones forthcoming.

Lost leaders and found footage at Orphans 9

Among the presenters at the 9th Orphan Film Symposium will be Concordia University associate professor of communications studies Matt Soar, who will talk about and demonstrate his Lost Leaders project.

His media-rich website officially calls the project "Lost Leaders: Found Footage and the Metadata of Film (2011 - )." It's both scholarly research and artistic creation (and funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada). 

The site's précis makes it clear why this is an ideal thing for both the Orphan Film Project in general and the 2014 symposium, The Future of Obsolescence, in particular. 

Lost Leaders is an ongoing creative and critical exploration of commercial film leaders and found footage. It treats leaders as informational arcana; aesthetically rich 'paratextual' elements in/of the medium of film, akin in some ways to the metadata of digital photographs and moving images. Through various processes of recombination -- lightbox collages, microscopic stopmotion animation, microscopic video meanderings -- Matt Soar scrutinizes the various markings (logos, lab notes, handwriting, type, projection cues) that are doubly 'lost' due to their routine invisibility from the audience, and their impending obsolescence. [Emphasis added.]

Soar's integration of deep research and artistic production is as good an example as any of how the Canadian academy facilitates the blend of the two, recognizing that knowledge and research can be found in creative work (a documentary, a film, a website, a DVD) as well as traditional books. The term at Concordia is "research-creation." The great experimental documentarian (and longtime Orphan Film Symposiast) Caroline Martel, for example, is a "research-creation PhD candidate" in Soar's department. Et voilà -- one can get a PhD without writing a dissertation of the sort required by, say, NYU Cinema Studies. 

To see how this plays out beyond the Lost Leaders example, go to ARC: Adventures in Research/Creation, which Soar co-directs: www.A-R-C.ca. There you will notice another key collaborator is Phil Hoffman, long known within the  experimental film world for "Phil's Film Farm," a summer artists' retreat where filmmakers shoot and hand-process the films they make on-site. The late Carolinian-Canadian media artist Helen Hill made films there in 1999, 2000, and 2002, when she was emerging as a quietly influential filmmaker. Super 8 maestro John Porter has written about her time there. Worth noting here: the first Orphan Film Symposium in New York (Orphans 6, in 2008), began with an evening-long tribute to Helen, which included Porter's short Phil's Film Farm (2002, with an on-screen dedication to her). It also was the occasion for the awarding of the first Helen Hill Awards.

Here's a look at Soar's Lost Leaders #1 (2011-12), which he said in his Orphans 9 proposal "began as an experiment in hand-weaving together strands of 16mm found footage."

There's a lot to be learned about the history of film by closely examining the hundreds of different components found on leaders.

www.lostleaders.ca

Full program announced for Orphans 9: The Future of Obsolescence

Here's the penultimate draft of the program for Orphans 9, The Future of Obsolescence, at EYE in Amsterdam, March 30 - April 2, 2014. It's a co-production between EYE and New York University (specifically NYU Tisch School of the Arts and its Department of Cinema Studies).

Register online now. Click here.

Sunday, 30 March an Evening Film Concert  

Greetings: Sandra den Hamer and Giovanna Fossati (EYE), Marijke de Valck (UvA), and Dan Streible (NYU)

Simona Monizza (EYE) abstract animated films by Maarten Visser, accompanist Marcel Worms (with additional music by NYU Film Scoring students)

Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi (EYE) introduces the premiere of the new restoration East Is West (1922) accompanist Stephen Horne

Monday, 31 March

9:45 am Orphans Orientation  

Josephine Baker Visit Volendam (Fox Movietone, 1928)  

About the Orphan Film Symposium Dan Streible  

About the Future of Obsolescence Giovanna Fossati   

Dan Streible A New Look at an Old Sneeze: Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze (W. K. L. Dickson, 1894)  

10:45am Thomas Elsaesser (UvA) On Obsolescence  

11:15am break

11:30 am Transmitting Archival Knowledge   

Giovanna Fossati (EYE / UvA) Restoring the Colors of Early Cinema  

Julia Noordegraaf (UvA) & Simona Monizza (EYE) Hacking the Bart Vegter Collection 

Eef Masson (UvA) moderates a roundtable with Howard Besser and Bill Brand (NYU MIAP), Snowden Becker (UCLA MIAS), and Martin Koerber (DIF)   

1 pm LUNCH provided

2pm  Media Archaeology   

Susan Aasman  (U of Groningen) Staging the Amateur Dispositif, a performance with Andreas Fickers (U of Luxembourg), Tom Slootweg (U of Groningen), Tim van der Heijden and Jo Wachelder (U of Maastricht)   

Alexandra Schneider and Wanda Strauven  (UvA) Children as Media Archaeologists   

Monika Supruniuk (Academy of Fine Arts, Warsaw) Kazimierz Prószyński and OKO: The first Polish amateur movie camera (1914) 

3:45pm  BREAK 

4:15pm  Reassemblage

Matt Soar (Concordia U, Montreal) Lost Leaders Project   

Benedict Olgado (NFA Philippines) & Bill Brand (BB Optics) Restoring the Fragments of On My Way to India Consciousness, I Reached China (Henry Francia, 1968)   

Walter Forsberg & John Klacsmann (Anthology Film Archives) Technicolor NG (16mm print, 20’)   

6:15 pm DINNER provided

8:15 pm  Helen Hill Award screening

Bill Morrison premieres a new work 

Doug Goodwin (Cal Arts) On Illusion, Magic, and Ted Serios  

            +  a preview of Serios (Rebecca Baron, 2014)  

Becky Lewis (Columbia, South Carolina) confers the Helen Hill Award on Werner Nekes

Start (Nekes, 1966) newly restored by Deutsche Kinemathek with EYE

Franziska Latell (Berlin U of the Arts) introduces Werner Nekes  

Werner Nekes talk/presentation on his collection of optical devices 

Tuesday, 1 April

9:45 am  introductory remarks & trailer   

10am  New Research Networks for Obsolete Media   

Mark G. Cooper (U of South Carolina) Metadata and the Future of the Humanities

Karen Cariani (WGBH Archive) Working with Scholars to Improve Access to Media Archives

Mark J. Williams (Dartmouth College) The Media Ecology Project: More and Better Scholarly Access to Historical Media

Scott Curtis (Northwestern U in Qatar) chair

11:30am  BREAK

11:45am  Digital Decay and Remobilization

Egyptian (Whirling Dervishes) Dancers (Fox Movietone News, 1928) 

Evan Meaney (U of South Carolina) de_ca/sia.py: Archival Encryption, Encoding, and Error as Narrative  

Heidi Rae Cooley  (U of South Carolina) Finding Augusta in a Digital World: The App.

            The Other Augustas (Scott Nixon, 195?) and [Augusta, Sicily] (19??)

LUNCH provided

2pm When Workers Leave the Factory: Amateur Films in the Eastern Bloc, 1960s-1980s   

Chris Wahl (HFF Potsdam) work from Betriebsfilmstudio GDR

            Stadt des Morgen / City of Tomorrow (EKO Eisenhüttenstadt, 1965)  

            Der Minister kommt / The Minister Comes (Frank Dietrich, Amateur Film Studio Senftenberg, 1984)  

            FKK – Mahlzeit / Nudism – Enjoy Your Meal, (EKO Eisenhüttenstadt, 1973)  

Ralf Forster (Filmmuseum Potsdam)  East German amateur films

            Milchig-Trübe / Milky Fishy (Amateur Film Studio, Potsdam, 1983)  

            Der Favorit / The Favorite, (Angelika and Horst Butter, Berlin, 1982)  

            Sonntagsfahrer / Sunday Driver (Amateur Film Studio STATIV Dresden, 1981) 

Jiří Horníček (Czech National Film Archive) Czech amateur auteurs

            Mašinerie / Machinery (Pavel Bárta and Zdeněk Lorenz, 1985)  

                      X + Y (TIGR (Koplík-Groz-Tichý, 1963)
Maria Vinogradova (NYU) Amateur film in the Soviet Union

            Na odnoi zemle / On the Same Earth (People’s Film Studio at DK Proftekhobrazovania, Leningrad, 1976)  

3:30pm  BREAK  

4pm Transportation Technologies

May Haduong (Academy Film Archive) Aloha Wanderwell: Car and Camera Around the World, 1922-1950  

Yvonne Zimmermann (Philipps-Universität Marburg) Hans Richter’s Die Eroberung des Himmels (Conquest of the Sky) (1938) 

Reto Kromer (reto.ch) In-flight Entertainment: Kodak two-audio track film prints for airlines; and Apollo 11 test film for Kern lenses (1969)  

Paul Spehr (The Man Who Made Movies: W.K.L. Dickson) & Mark-Paul Meyer (EYE) Mutoscope and Biograph 68mm films (1897-1902)  

6pm  "dinner on your own" 

8pm  Silent Night

Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi (EYE) and Jeff Lambert (NFPF) with film repatriation news  

Ned Thanhouser introduces the newly preserved Clarence Cheats at Croquet (Thanhouser, 1915)

Ron Magliozzi & Peter Williamson (Museum of Modern Art, New York) present rediscovered rushes from the unreleased  Darktown Troubles (Biograph, ca. 1914) music by Stephen Horne

Jacqueline Stewart (U of Chicago) segues to the newly restored A Frontier Post (Fox, US, 1925) 12’  A day-in-the-life documentary about the “buffalo soldiers” of the U.S. Army’s 10th Cavalry, Fort Huachuca, Arizona. 35mm from Moving Image Research Collections, University of South Carolina

Wednesday, 2 April

9:45am  introductory remarks and short video TBA

10am Detritus

Antonia Lant (NYU) on Teclópolis (2009, Can Can Club, Argentina)  

Charles Musser (Yale U) on Industry’s Disinherited (Unions Films, 1949)  

Grover Crisp (Sony Pictures Entertainment) How Death of a Salesman (1951) Became an Orphan Work  

+ the never-released Career of a Salesman (Columbia Pictures, 1951) 

FORWARD: The EU Directive for a Registry of Audiovisual Orphan Works 

Nicola Mazzanti (Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique) introduction  

Géraldine Vooren (EYE)  
Thomas Christensen (Danish Film Institute)  
Q&A  
Howard Besser (NYU) moderator

11:45am  break

12:00  Restorations

Rob Byrne (SFSFF) Restoring The Last Edition (1925) 

Martin Koerber (Deutsche Kinemathek) and Andrea Krämer (Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft, Berlin) Digital Restoration of 1930s Gasparcolor Films  

            with Gasparcolor screenings  

1:15 pm LUNCH

2:15pm Latin American Archives  

Juana Suárez (Fundación Patrimonio Fílmico Colombiano) Outtakes from Gloria Triana’s  Yuruparí (FOCINE-Audiovisuales, 1983-86) documenting Colombia’s Afrodescendant and indigenous cultures  

Andrés Levinson & Paula Félix-Didier (Museo del Cine, Buenos Aires)  

            Caperucita Roja (Little Red Riding Hood, Jorge Mendez Delfino, 1933)  

            Caperucita Roja Inesita (Inés Mendez Delfino, 1960)  

            Perros en paracaidas (Dogs Parachute into Antarctica, 1963) 

4:15pm  break

4:45pm  Eastern European Archives

Elvira Diamanti, Eriona Vyshka, & Andi Lubonja (Albanian Film Archive) with Thomas Logoreci (Marubi Academy of Film) The Albanian Cinema Project  

            KF-16 [Albanian dances] (Ramazan Bogdani, 1972)  

            + excerpts from new restorations, including Nëntori i dytë (The Second November) (1982) and Tomka and His Friends (1977)

Elżbieta Wysocka (Filmoteka Narodowa) Man without a Movie Camera: Restoring the Cameraless Films of Julian Józef Antonisz  

• Ostry film “zaangażowany”: non camera (A Hard-Core Engaged Film. Non-Camera, 1979)  

• Światło w tunelu (A Light in the Tunnel, 1985)  

• Polska Kronika Non Camerowa nr.-1 (The Polish Non-Camera Newsreel no. 1, 1981) 

6:30 pm  DINNER provided

8:30 pm  American Independents 
Jeff Lambert (NFPF) introduces the launch of the DVD set Treasures 6: Next Wave Avant-garde, and a 35mm screening of Chicago Loop (James Benning, 1976) 9’; restoration by Academy Film Archive and Austrian Film Museum

Frank Scheffer and Paul Cohen introduce the premiere of their new work Zoetrope People (1980/2014) 

Dennis Doros (Milestone Films) and Mary Huelsbeck (Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research) The ‘Lost’ Films of Shirley Clarke