digiday:DAILY - If I Ran The Google

Kudos to Kenny McDougal and Ken Horowitz for the poem "If I Ran The Google."

Here's an excerpt:

With Google Books fixed, I could say “This is groovy,”

Then move on the way, to start scanning a movie?

The studios would squawk, as all Googlers should know,

This time ask permission ere you enter the show.

But lots of films out there are orphans, you know,

Abandoned by owners whom nobody knows.

They’re sitting in archives, these stories on reels,

Preserved for the future, but making no deals.

Jon Stewart made fun, on his show, of the archives[ii],

Dissing good folks making sure film survives.

Read the whole poem at DigiDayDaily.com.

Close Read on the National Film Registry (and Gigli)

Close Look: Helen Hill

Here's a nice piece from NewYorker.com about Helen Hill's Scratch and Crow being named to the National Film Registry.

Feel the love.

Fwd: CRY OF JAZZ screening

Below is a swell report from Andy Uhrich (NYU MIAP '10) on the screening and discussion of Edward O. Bland's film THE CRY OF JAZZ (1959), which took place at the Maysles Cinema in Harlem on January 7.  This showing was from a DVD of the film.

The 2010 Orphan Film Symposium will debut a restored film version, with discussion by director/composer Ed Bland, scholars Jacqueline Stewart and Anna McCarthy, and others. (Did you know that the landmark "First Statement of the New American Cinema Group" begins

       In the course of the past three years [1959-1961] we have been witnessing the spontaneous growth of a new generation of film makers -- the Free Cinema in England, the Nouvelle Vague in France, the young movements in Poland, Italy and Russia and, in this country, the work of Lionel Rogosin, John Cassavetes, Alfred Leslie, Robert Frank, Edward Bland, Bert Stern and the Sanders brothers.

-- and that Bland was a signer of this manifesto?)

Anthology Film Archives is currently preserving the film, with sound restoration by BluWave Audio, lab work by Colorlab, some advocacy from the Orphan Film Symposium, consultation with Ed Bland, and the organizational genius of Andrew Lampert.  Andy Uhrich also researched and helped write a Film Foundation grant during his summer 2009 Anthology internship.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Andy Uhrich <auhrich@nyu.edu>
Date: Fri, Jan 8, 2010
Subject: CRY OF JAZZ screening
To: Dan Streible <streible@gmail.com>, Jacqueline Stewart <jacqueline@northwestern.edu>, anna.mccarthy@nyu.edu


Greetings all,

The screening last night was really great. Thanks to the press [in the NEW YORKER] and Mr. [Armond] White's presence the screening sold out the 60 or so seat room. Mr. [Albert] Maysles was there in the front row videotaping the proceedings. While the audience skewed older, the audience was a diverse mix of age and ethnicity.

The audience was clearly engrossed in the film and laughed at the scene of the poodle clipping as an embodiment of privileged white life.

Mr. White is clearly an ardent fan of the film. He started the discussion by talking about the film as a "lost" film due to its provocative indictment of racism. So while he didn't use the term orphan that idea is the way he framed the contextualization of the film. He also talked about the film as an aesthetic work, noting its blending of documentary and fiction. He made a comparison to Eisensteinian montage in the editing of the film's depiction of African American life, which isn't too far off the mark as the film's editor [Howard Alk] was a huge fan of Eisenstein.

Mr. White also talked about the film in relation the new waves of the time mentioning BREATHLESS but mostly talking about it in comparison to PULL MY DAISY and SHADOWS. It goes without saying that he finds CRY better than all of those films. While he did not talk about Mekas and the New American Cinema he did talk about CRY in relation to what he called beat and bohemian films. He described the film as an African American response to Norman Mailer's WHITE NEGRO [1957]. He compared it favorably to Richard Wright's 12 MILLION BLACK VOICES [1941] as an evocation of the reality of the African American experience of racism (which, from talking from Bland's daughter after the screening, I understand was exactly the previous generation of Black intellectuals and activists that Bland et al. were reacting against). Mr. White also proved true to form as a partisan for Steven Spielberg when he compared CRY to THE TERMINAL, though he made the comparison fit by point out that Tom Hanks's character is an Eastern European jazz fan.

The question-and-answer session was one of the better public discussions I've ever been to. People were intrigued by the film but not afraid to question its conclusions. People asked about the film's reception at the time, commented on the interracial romance in the film, and talked about the idea that jazz is dead. Mr. White was a great moderator and -- in response to the fact that there are no black women in the film and that the portrayal of white women is perhaps less than flattering -- talked about the tendency of otherwise progressive groups to often be quite sexist (the Panthers, for example). It was actually rather amazing how the film still touched a nerve and made people want to talk about the issues it raises.

Oh, and Mr. Bland's daughter mentioned that the new preserved film would be screening at Orphans.

Cheers,

Andy

MedicalFilmSymposium.com

A symposium co-sponsoring a symposium?
You bet.

The Medical Film Symposium
Curated by Joanna Poses & Dwight Swanson
January 20-23, 2010
Philadelphia, PA

presented by Community Screen and the Greater Philadelphia Film Office

Co-sponsors
* National Library of Medicine
* Pennsylvania Humanities Council,
* Mutter Museum and the Francis C. Wood Institute of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia
* University of Pennsylvania (Cinema Studies; History and Sociology of Science)
* International House of Philadelphia
* the Orphan Film Symposium.


The Medical Film Symposium will examine -- through screenings, presentations and papers --the relationship between moving images and medical science. Medical films comprised one of the earliest film genres, but the vast majority of these films are unseen and unknown today. The symposium will examine various categories of medical films: actualities and documentations of medical procedures, training films for health professionals, hygiene tutorials and contemporary medical imaging.

Symposium Schedule
January 20-23, 2010

* Wednesday, 7:00pm: Screening of A Man to Remember at International House (presented by Nico de Klerk of the Nederlands Filmmuseum)
Preceded by opening of Radiologic Images exhibit (begins at 6:00pm)
* Thursday, 7:00pm: Screening at International House (curated by Barbara Hammer)
* Friday, 7:00pm: Screenings at the historic Pennsylvania Hospital (curated by Andrew Lampert and Greg Pierce, open to symposium attendees only)
* Saturday, 9 to 5: Presentations at The College of Physicians of Philadelphia
* Saturday, 8pm: Screening at Moore College of Art (curated by Skip Elsheimer and Jay Schwartz)


SPEAKERS
Michael Sappol (National Library of Medicine)
Scott Curtis (Northwestern U)
Mara Mills (U of Penn)
Oliver Gaycken (Temple U)

Kirsten Ostherr (Rice U)
Devin Orgeron (North Carolina State U)
Dr. Nick Bryan (Hospital of the University of Penn)
Timothy Wisniewski (Chesney Medical Archives, Johns Hopkins University)
Patti Doyen (George Eastman House)


Registration fee: $80; $50 for students. (includes admission to screenings and presentations + breakfast & lunch Saturday). Payments to “Community Screen."

Community Screen
7035 Greene Street
Philadelphia, PA 19119

E-mail: info@medicalfilmsymposium.com

a nice Phil Nugent shout-out

Excerpt from The Phil Nugent Experience blog, December 30, 2009:


Helen Hill Books into the Library of Congress

. . . Every year the Library of Congress selects twenty-five films deemed to be of "artistic, cultural, or historical interest" for permanent preservation, and this year's bounty includes Scratch and Crow, a 1995 student film by the late, great Helen Hill, who was a friend of mine and the best person I have ever known who I did not address as "Grandmother." 

. . . This is a happy day for everyone who's had something to do with keeping Helen's name and work alive, among them Helen's dashing brother Jake, her widower Paul Gailiunas, our invaluable mututal friend Jenny Davidson, Dan Streible and the sainted orphan film movement [!], and Peripheral Produce, which has made a DVD compilation of Helen's work, including Scratch and Crow and her masterpiece, Mouseholes, available. It may seem that the preservation of the creative work of someone who was taken from us too cruelly soon is an odd thing to clutch onto as a hopeful sign for the year to come, but at this point, I'll take what I can get.

Happy New Year!

NPR asks (again) "What is an orphan film?"

NPR's "On the Media," interviewed Daniel Egan about the National Film Registry -- and asks "What is an orphan film?"



Compare to seven years earlier.
NPR's "All Things Considered" item, "Orphan Film Fest."

a Banner Year for Orphan Films on the National Film Registry

Or, as Variety headlined it:
"Hip Mix of Pix Get Library Cards."

The announcement of the 2009 edition of the National Film Registry features one of the most interesting lists to come out of Washington in a long time.

Here's a biased sample of 10 of the 25 titles the Librarian of Congress identified as culturally significant.

The Exiles (1961) restored by UCLA Film and Television Archives, released by Milestone Films. www.exilesfilm.com

Heroes All (1920) The Red Cross made more than one hundred films between 1917 and 1921 -- now invaluable recordings of the era with footage from World War I and its aftermath. Wounded veterans at Walter Reed Hospital.

The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957)

       The universe, worlds beyond number, God's silver tapestry spread across the night. And in that moment, I knew the answer to the riddle of the infinite. I had thought in terms of man's own limited dimension. I had presumed upon nature. That existence begins and ends in man's conception, not nature's. And I felt my body dwindling, melting, becoming nothing. My fears melted away. And in their place came acceptance. All this vast majesty of creation, it had to mean something. And then I meant something, too. Yes, smaller than the smallest, I meant something, too. To God, there is no zero. . . . I still exist!

The Jungle (1967) With the guidance of Harold Haskins, a group of African American teenage boys in Philadelphia made this hybrid documentary dramatization of their lives in the 12th and Oxford Street gang. Shot in an original, naïve style, this 22-minute film was recognized with festival awards, but never theatrically released. In 1968, Churchill Films distributed The Jungle for the 16mm educational market. The production led some of the gang members to complete their high school and college educations. A community-based 12thand Oxford Film Makers Corporation followed. (It's on YouTube -- at the moment.)

Quasi at the Quackadero (1975) Sally Cruikshank’s wildly imaginative tale of odd creatures visiting a psychedelic amusement park careens creatively from strange to wacky. A popular midnight movie during the 70s, it's a trippy "head film" of the same vintage as El Topo, Eraserhead, and Sesame Street. Available on DVD-R from Sally herself at FunOnMars.com.

The Revenge of Pancho Villa (1930-36) This extraordinary compilation film was made by itinerant border exhibitors. The El Paso-based Padilla family saved dozens of silent films – fact and fiction, American and other – related to Pancho Villa, then stitched them together with original bilingual intertitles. As they revised the print over several years they also added their own filming of an amateur cast recreating the assassination of Villa. Evidence of a vital film legacy in the Mexican-American community during the 1910s-30s, this film from the University of Texas El Paso collection, was restored by the (late) AFI with the Cineteca di Bologna.

There's also an in-depth Orphan Film Symposium success story here, much of it narrativized brilliantly in Gregorio Rocha's documentary The Lost Reels of Pancho Villa (2003).

Scratch and Crow (1995) Helen Hill's CalArts MFA thesis film. Consistent with the short films she made from age 11 until her death at 36, this animated short work is filled with vivid color and a deft sense of humor. Yet it also touches the sublime, a poetic, spiritual homage to animals and the human soul. The apotheosis of chickens.

If I knew, / I would assure you we are all / Finally good chickens / And will rise together, / A noisy flock of round, / Dusty angels.

Available on the recent DVD compilation, The House of Sweet Magic: Films by Helen Hill, distributed by PeripheralProduce.com.

Stark Love (1927) Filmed on location in North Carolina's Smoky Mountains, director Karl Brown used local amateur actors. Bradley Reeves of the Tennessee Archive of Moving Image and Sound reports the movie has played to full houses when revived in Knoxville and vicinity in recent years.

A Study in Reds (1932) An amateur film comedy by Miriam Bennett (daughter of photographer H. H. Bennett) shot in Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin. She spoofs women’s clubs and the Soviet menace. Listening to a tedious lecture, members of the Tuesday Club fall asleep and dream themselves laboring in an all-women collective.

Thriller (1983) A music "video" shot on film. You know the rest.