Apr 9, 2011
50th Anniversary of Dan Drasin's film entitled SUNDAY
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| Washington Square Park, April 9, 1961. Frame from Sunday courtesy of Dan Drasin |
Happy April 9th!
It's the 50th anniversary of teenager Dan Drasin shooting his documentary film of a protest in Washington Square Park (Greenwich Village), at which a few hundred folksingers and civil libertarians gathered to demonstrate against New York City's ban on . . . wait for it . . . singing folk songs in the park!
NPR's "Morning Edition" today broadcast a piece about the event and interviewed Dan Drasin.
LISTEN: http://www.npr.org/2011/04/09/135240040/how-the-beatnik-riot-helped-kick-off-the-60s
On the webpage there's a link to Drasin's own page, where he generously allows us to watch his 17-minute movie.
Sunday was originally distributed by Emile de Antonio, who then took Warhol to see it, which got Andy interested in making films himself. Sunday was preserved by the UCLA FilmTV Archive's Ross Lipman, with funding from The Film Foundation. The 16mm original was also blown up to 35mm, a print of which premiered at the 2008 Orphan Film Symposium at NYU.
See Sunday in 35mm at "Celebrating Orphan Films," May 13-14, 2011, at UCLA's Billy Wilder Theater (in the Hammer Museum). The celebrations are co-presented by the UCLA Film & Television Archive, New York University's Orphan Film Symposium (see also NYU Tisch School of the Arts and Department of Cinema Studies, Moving Image Archiving and Preservation program), along with Los Angeles Filmforum.
Apr 8, 2011
una archivera Joven reports from Mexico City
(not to be confused with Filmoteca UNAM)
An official announcement is expected in June, but advanced word is that la Cineteca Nacional México will be launching a national film preservation project for home movies and the like, officially designating it: Los Archivos Huérfanos.
Un anuncio oficial se presenta en junio, sin embargo las noticias avanzadas es que la Cineteca Nacional de México iniciará un proyecto de cine nacional, para la preservación de las home movies. ¿El nombre? The Orphan Archives
Apr 4, 2011
Walter Forsberg reports from the Midwest
Salutations, Orphan Peoples!
As a heads-up to you nice folks out there, I write to tell that the Orphan Film Project screening on April 2nd (at the 13th edition of the Wisconsin Film Festival) was a success. Obvs, Dan Streible assembled nothing short of a crackerjack line-up of some of the best stuff from past symposia and Orphans-related screenings.
I was particularly pumped about the inclusion of several Wisconsin-related Orphan-y works, and a 16mm print of the newly-preserved Lillian Schwartz work from 1974, Galaxies (thank you, once again, Colorlab).
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| Leon Russell, Mickey Raphael (harmonica), Paul English, with Willie Nelson. |
Also, I can report a treat to the citizens of Chicago: The Nightingale Theatre sponsored a prematurely-festive screening of the not-orphaned 1979 concert film, Willie Nelson's Fourth of July Celebration last night at James Bond's Cinema Borealis. Special thanks to Christy LeMaster, who is 'specially super sweet, for arranging this event. Full deets: http://nightingaletheatre.org/
-- Walter Forsberg
Apr 2, 2011
Time Travel and Dreams of a Better Life (in Wisconsin)
April 2, 2011
(Madison, Wisconsin)
Today moviegoers at the sold-out University of Wisconsin Cinematheque screening of orphan films also read the following notes.
The Orphan Film Project is an ongoing, international, collaborative endeavor to save, study, and screen neglected moving images. Media archivists, artists, scholars, technical experts, lab owners, curators, collectors, students, and other self-identified orphanistas contribute to the project, gathering for the biennial Orphan Film Symposium now adopted by the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University (and formerly by the University of South Carolina, 1999-2006). NYU Cinema Studies and its Moving Image Archiving and Preservation master’s program integrate the concept and practice into coursework.
The Wisconsin Film Festival presents a program of films curated by symposium organizer Dan Streible (NYU associate professor of cinema studies) and emceed by Walter Forsberg (NYU MIAP alum, independent documentarian, NY Libraries Research Fellow, snipe collector, and co-founder of l’Atelier-National du Manitoba).
The newly preserved film prints, selected from ten archives, range in time from A Trip Down Market Street Before the Fire (1906) to Helen Hill’s dreamlike Scratch and Crow (1995) -- both recently added to the National Film Registry. Other travels include a newsreel camera van’s drive down Manhattan’s Radio Row in NYC Street Scenes and Noises (1929), the imaginative USIA propaganda short A Letter from Colombia (1963) and its previously unseen contemporary, Ed Emshwiller’s March on Washington (1963). The enigmatic, anonymous found-film Madison News Reel (ca. 1932), the intuitive verité Sunday (1961) by teenager Dan Drasin, and the I Ching-inspired 11 thru 12 (Andrea Callard, 1977) make for unconventional time travel -- as will the premiere restoration screening of Galaxies (1974), a mindbender by pioneering computer artist Lillian Schwartz.
* * * *
UW Cinematheque
April 2, 2011, 1:30pm
[pre-show 35mm snipes reel courtesy of Walter Forsberg]
April 2, 2011, 1:30pm
[pre-show 35mm snipes reel courtesy of Walter Forsberg]
Orphan Films:
Time Travel and Dreams of a Better Life
Presenter: Walter Forsberg (NYU Libraries)
Beyond the Images in This Dark Box (Russell Sheaffer and Jim Bittl, 2010)
Trailer for the 7th Orphan Film Symposium.
National Film Registry
Scratch and Crow (Helen Hill, 1995) 16mm, 4ʼ
Source: Harvard Film Archive. Preserved by Colorlab.
National Film Registry
A Study in Reds (Miriam Bennett, 1933) 16mm, b/w, silent, 24’ (DVD excerpt)
Source: Wisconsin Historical Society
Campus Smiles (1920) 35mm, b/w, silent, 5’
Source: Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research
Madison News Reel (unknown, ca. 1932) 35mm, b/w, silent, 3’
Source: Northeast Historic Film (Bucksport, Maine)
National Film Registry
A Trip Down Market Street Before the Fire (Miles Bros., 1906) 35mm, b/w, 12’
Score by Agatha Kasprzyk and Rafael Leloup (NYU Film Scoring Program, 2010)
Source: Prelinger Archives
NYC Street Scenes and Noises (Fox Movietone News, 1929) 35mm, b/w, 12’
Source: Univ. of South Carolina, Moving Image Research Collections. Preserved by Cinetech.
Sunday (Dan Drasin, 1961) 16mm to 35mm, b/w, 17’
Source: UCLA Film and Television Archive.
Preserved for the Orphan Film Symposium with funding from The Film Foundation.
March on Washington (Ed Emshwiller, 1963) 16mm, silent, 9’
Source: Anthology Film Archives. Preserved by Cineric.
A Letter from Colombia (James Blue, USIA, 1963) 35mm, b/w, 10’
Source: National Archives and Records Administration
first-ever screening of the newly preserved
Galaxies (Lillian Schwartz, 1974) 16mm, 5’
Source: Ohio State University Rare Books and Manuscripts Library (thanks to Lisa Iacobellis). Preserved by BB Optics and Colorlab.
11 thru 12 (Andrea Callard, 1977) original Super 8 (mag. sd.) to 16mm (opt. sd.), 11’
Source: NYU Fales Library and Special Collections
+
Unannounced finale
[Andy Warhol EPI at RISC] (WJAR-TV, April 1, 1967) 2'
Source: Oddball Film + Video (Stephen Parr).
+
Unannounced finale
[Andy Warhol EPI at RISC] (WJAR-TV, April 1, 1967) 2'
Source: Oddball Film + Video (Stephen Parr).
FYI:
The next Orphan Film Symposium -- "Made to Persuade" -- happens next year, April 11-14, 2012, at the renovated and expanded Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens, New York.
Feb 12, 2011
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.
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| www.cinema.ucla.edu |
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| www.lafilmforum.org |
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.
Feb 6, 2011
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:
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
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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."
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