Listen to Walter Forsberg show home movies on the radio

Listen:

www.wnyc.org/shows/lopate/2011/oct/14/ninth-annual-home-movie-day  
Walter Forsberg tells Leonard Lopate about the wonders of the Ninth Annual Home Movie Day, this one observed at the Queens Museum on Saturday, October 15. 

 

 

Columbia University Colloquium on Helen Hill films

From: Columbia University Cultural Memory Colloquium <cumemory@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Sep 20, 2011 at 12:55 PM

Dear friends,

Join us in our continuing conversations about cultural and collective memory in our contemporary world.  Our first event is to take place on Monday September 26th when we will welcome Professor Jenny Davidson from English and Comparative Literature who will be presenting on the work of filmmaker Helen Hill. Please find a further description below.  We will meet at 6PM in 754 Schermerhorn Extension.

Helen Hill, experimental animator and handmade film advocate, was shot and killed in her home in New Orleans in January 2007.  Her last film, completed posthumously by her husband Paul Gailiunas, is 'The Florestine Collection.' One Mardi Gras Day in New Orleans some years earlier, Hill found more than a hundred handmade dresses in trash bags on the curb; she set out to restore them and recover the story of the woman who had made them, a recently deceased African-American seamstress named Florestine Kinchen.  Both the dresses and the footage were seriously damaged by Katrina; the completed film includes Helen's original silhouette, cut-out, and puppet animation, as well as flood-damaged and restored home movies. Three of Hill's films will be screened - 'Madame Winger Makes a Film' (9:29), 'Mouseholes' (7:40) and 'The Florestine Collection' (31:00) - followed by a discussion by Professor Jenny Davidson that will touch on questions about memorialization and the materiality of film, the persistence and contingency of archives and the imperatives of preservation in the wake of catastrophe.

first draft of the 2012 Orphan Film Symposium

Symposium registration is open. Register online. Seats sell quickly, so we recommend registrating for the Orphan Film Symposium before 2011 is over. 

Here are some of the expected screenings and speakers for Orphans. Others will be announced in November 2011.

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• Yvonne Zimmermann (U of Zurich / NYU) Sponsored Films by Hans Richter: Die Börse als Barometer der Wirtschaftslage [The Stockmarket] (Swiss Exchange Zurich, 1939) restored by la Cinémathèque suisse (Swiss Film Archive).
• Making Films at AT&T/Bell Labs, 1967-1974: filmmakers Lillian Schwartz, Nell Cox, and Bill Brand screening newly preserved 16mm works: including Schwartz's UFOs, Galaxies, Pixillation, Enigma, and Googolplex, Brand’s Touch Tone Phone Film (1973), as well as Cox and Leacock's Operator (1969)
• Sunniva O’Flynn (Irish Film Archive) curates a program from the IFA collections
• David Schwartz (Museum of the Moving Image) The Living Room Candidate: Presidential Campaign ads
• Anke Mebold (Deutsches Filminstitut - DIF) newly restored feature: Die Hochbahnkatastrophe, aka Elevated Train Catastrophe: 16th Sensational Adventure of Master Detective Harry Hill (Germany, 1921), introduced by Tom Gunning (U of Chicago) with live musical accompaniment
• Julia Noordegraaf (U of Amsterdam) and Giovanna Fossati (EYE Netherlands Film Institute), Joop Geesink’s Dollywood Advertising Films
• Mona Jimenez (APEX Ghana) and Manthia Diawara (NYU) on finding Hamile: The Tongo Hamlet (1964, Ghana Film Industry Corporation) 
• Susan Courtney (U of South Carolina) on how orphan films impact media scholarship
• Nico de Klerk (EYE) The Hands of a Stranger (Richard Heffron, 1965) documentary about a hospital in South Vietnam; appropriated by Friends of Vietnam (Belgium)
• Jon Gartenberg & Jeff Capp (GME) Tassilo Adam: Moving Image Adventures in Indonesia
• Karl Heider mini-tribute: [Experimental Study of Apparent Behavior: The Moving Film] (1943, Fritz Heider and Marianne Simmel) 
• Jodie Mack (Dartmouth) and Simon Tarr (USC) remakes of the Heider-Simmel Apparent Behavior film, in 16mm and digital video
• Yongli Li (Beijing Film Academy & U of South Carolina) introduces Light Cavalry Girl (Jie Shen, Central Newsreel and Documentary Film Studio, Beijing, 1980)  

Light Cavalry Girl (1980) U of South Carolina Moving Image Research Collections, Chinese Film Collection

• Craig Kridel (U of South Carolina) and Ivan von Sauer (BBC Worldwide) School: A Film about Progressive Education (1939, Lee Dick)
• Dan Friedlaender (Temple U) & Adrianne Finelli (U Mich) Men and Dust (1940, Lee Dick) labor advocacy film about diseases plaguing zinc and lead miners
• Sergei Kapterev (Moscow Research Institute of Film Art) Soviet space films
• Alice Lovejoy (University of Minnesota) Czechoslovak Army Films and Excess of Persuasion, with filmmaker Vojtěch Jasný
       * Opportunity (Vojtěch Jasný, 1957) agitational drama warning soldiers about infidelity
       * Crooked Mirror (Karel Kachyňa, 1958) on proper military dress
       * Army Newsreel 3/65 (Karel Vachek, 1965) liberation of Ostrava
       * Metrum (Ivan Balad’a, 1967) transportation in Moscow
• Mark G. Cooper (U of South Carolina MIRC) Roman Vishniac microcinematography
• Mark J. Williams (Dartmouth) television newsfilm from KTLA, et al.
• Mark Quigley (UCLA) One Friday (Rolf Forsberg, 1973) classroom discussion film imagines an all-out race war in the US

One Friday (1973) courtesy of UCLA Film and Television Archives

• Allyson Nadia Field (UCLA) and Jacqueline Stewart (Northwestern U) the L.A. Rebellion project: Daydream Therapy (Bernard Nicolas, 1980)
• Walter Forsberg (NYU Libraries) A Second Date: Let’s All Go to the Lobby and Snipe History
• Jaime Partsch (Universidad del Este, Puerto Rico) Films by Governor Jesús T. Piñero <archiveswiki.historians.org/Piñero_Collection>

• Martin L. Johnson (U of North Carolina) Booster films and the Paragon Feature Film Company: The Lumberjack (Wausau, 1914), Past and Present in the Cradle of Dixie (Montgomery, 1914), and The Blissveldt Romance (Grand Rapids, 1915)
• Catherine Jurca (CalTech) The “Motion Pictures’ Greatest Year” Campaign: The World Is Ours (MPPDA, 1938) two-reel comedy includes Charley Grapewin watching The Great Train Robbery (1903) and visits to Monogram, other studios
• Irene Lusztig (UC Santa Cruz) The Motherhood Archives (work in progress) documentary essay film on the construction of motherhood and an archival history of maternal education films

frames from Best-Fed Baby (US Children's Bureau, 1925)

• Jennifer Horne (Catholic U) Welcome to the Nanny State: Carlyle Ellis and the US Children’s Bureau, 1919-1926. Screening Best-Fed Baby (1925) neo-natal health hygiene 
• Larry A. Jones (Seattle Disability Law; the Arc of Washington State) Children Limited (1951, Children's Benevolent League) advocacy film about children with developmental disabilities and their families; rediscovered in 2011 at the Library of Congress
+
• Helen Hill Media Education Center fundraising video (Whispering Statues, 2011)
• Snowden Becker (Center for Home Movies) [Francena Feeding the Chickens] (Charles Camp, 1905) and Muggins the Cow Horse (Colorado roundup footage, 1904)

"What happens if you eat watermelon seeds?"  (Helen Hill, 1997)

• James Bittl (HBO) introduces “Fast Facts” and "Gross Facts,” Helen Hill’s interstitial animations for Street Sense (1997-98, CBC-TV)
• Helen Hill Award recipient films, TBA
• The Florestine Collection (2011) a film by Helen Hill, completed by Paul Gailiunas

El Primer Encuentro Archivo Memoria, organizado en conjunto con el Orphan Film Project

CINETECA NACIONAL INICIA PROYECTO

DE RESCATE FÍLMICO DE LA SOCIEDAD

• Iniciativa impulsada por la Cineteca Nacional que busca el rescate fílmico de la memoria social del país

• Además de la conservación y preservación, Archivo Memoria tiene como objetivo gestar nuevos proyectos creativos de cineastas y artistas contemporáneos a partir del material rescatado

• El Primer Encuentro Archivo Memoria, organizado en conjunto con el Orphan Film Project, es una primera muestra de la importancia de este proyecto

Conaculta Cine, a través de la Cineteca Nacional, presenta Archivo Memoria, innovador proyecto que busca rescatar archivos fílmicos “olvidados”, que algunos historiadores del cine en la actualidad denominan como orphan film o cine huérfano. Materiales surgidos de la sociedad cuyo carácter amateur les brinda una honestidad como testimonio histórico de su momento y cuyo valor antropológico se acrecienta con el tiempo. Por tal motivo su preservación se hace necesaria como un primer paso para su difusión hacia nuevos públicos, misión fundamental para la presente administración de la Cineteca, fijada desde sus primeros días en el 2010.

Archivo Memoria se propone emprender la búsqueda de estos registros en imagen, de aquello “no visto” que también forma parte de la historia fílmica de nuestra nación: películas de eventos familiares ─bautizos, bodas, cumpleaños─, noticieros, cine turístico, películas industriales, material censurado, cine educacional, obra experimental, pruebas de cámara, grabaciones bélicas, material de archivo, animaciones, pietaje antropológico y otros fragmentos efímeros.

Registros que dejan ver el contexto en el que fueron creados, y que en conjunto reflejan los cambios por los que ha transitado la sociedad mexicana.  Material que a primera vista podría parecer intrascendente pero que, de alguna manera, tiene un valor histórico que enriquece el patrimonio cultural de la nación y que, guardado en armarios o bodegas, sin las condiciones técnicas apropiadas para su conservación y preservación, corre el riesgo de desaparecer. Películas no sólo de gran valor para la historia de nuestra cultura, sino con un gran potencial  para reutilizarse y que hoy en día sirve para comprender la historia reciente de México.

Además de rescatar, conservar y preservar estos registros históricos, Archivo Memoria también busca que el contenido de dicho material pueda ser reutilizado creativamente por los cineastas y artistas mexicanos contemporáneos, quienes podrán hacer uso de él de acuerdo a intereses artísticos determinados y bajo estricto consentimiento de los propietarios del material. A largo plazo, el proyecto podría ser una forma de inaugurar, promover y posteriormente profesionalizar el cuidado y la reutilización de este tipo de estos registros audiovisuales en México. Los ejemplos de cineastas que trabajan con material de archivo son innumerables: Ken Jacobs, Gustav Deutsch, Craig Baldwin, Jesse Lener, Gregorio Rocha, Angela Ricci Lucchi y Yervant Gianikian, sólo por mencionar algunos artistas visionarios que han sabido apreciar en su justo valor el material fílmico como memoria, no sólo de una persona o familia en particular, sino como el retrato de un momento histórico determinado, con todo el peso sociocultural que ello conlleva y que está plasmado como un marco referencial irrepetible.

Es por este motivo y en búsqueda de la preservación de archivos fílmicos no sólo provenientes de la industria cinematográfica, sino también de aquellos que proceden de las inquietudes personales y familiares, reconociendo y respetando así su valor como memoria de nuestra cultura y nación, que hacemos un atento llamado a las personas que posean este tipo de materiales a que se sumen a este esfuerzo de la Cineteca Nacional por el rescate y reutilización de material que podría marcar un descubrimiento trascendental para la historia del país y que sirve como herramienta en la construcción de la identidad.

Como parte de esta iniciativa, la Cineteca Nacional, en colaboración con el Orphan Film Project y Walter Forsberg (y Audrey Young), llevará a cabo, el próximo viernes 26 y sábado 27 de agosto, el Primer Encuentro  Archivo Memoria, el cual mostrará los resultados del Orphan Film Symposium, junto con hallazgos del proyecto Archivo Memoria y los primeros cortometrajes realizados por los artistas e investigadores Kyzza Terrazas e Issa García Ascot.

Ambos programas, titulados La Historia Olvidada y Cine Arte, espectivamente, exhibirán entre otros trabajos: Berlin 1936 Olympics Home Movies [10 min/video/1936], de la Universidad de Nueva York, Carta a un Ingeniero de Kyzza Terrazas [10 min/video/2011], de la Cineteca Nacional, Cine Móvil [13 min/16mm/1976], de la Cineteca Nacional, Selecciones de Archivia Films  [30 min/16mm y DVD], A Trip Down Market Street de the Miles Brothers [12 min/video digital/1906] de los Archivos Prelinger, Muestra de material del archivo Luis Osorno Barona [25 min/video], Un Modo de Decir de Issa García Ascot [7 min/video/2011], de la Cineteca Nacional, y La Segunda Primera Matriz de Alfredo Gurrola [14 min/video/1972].

Cabe mencionar que la historia de los archivos huérfanos, que en su concepción más básica es material fílmico que ha sido abandonado por su dueño, no es reciente, tiene su origen en París, con Henri Langlois, cinéfilo y archivista francés cofundador de la Cinemateca Francesa y la Federación Internacional de Archivos Fílmicos (FIAF). Personaje trascendental en la historia del cine, Langlois trabajó en la preservación de películas históricas y de la posguerra en su propia casa, donde resguardaba material al que más tarde le encontró un lugar: la Cinemateca. Por supuesto que con el paso de los años el proceso para conservar y preservar material fílmico ha sufrido cambios, todos para su beneficio; hoy en día diversas instituciones en el mundo tienen su propio programa de rescate de archivos huérfanos.

  

# # #

Lillian Schwartz’s Computer Animations Slated for Preservation (thanks to Walter Forsberg)

Lillian Schwartz’s Computer Animations Slated for Preservation

2011 AVANT-GARDE MASTERS GRANTS

National Film Preservation Foundation + The Film Foundation

A recent press release with the above title delivered good news for NYU Cinema Studies and its MIAP program. However, the official announcement does not reveal the extensive, unpaid, extramural preservation advocacy work of NYU Libraries Research Fellow Walter Forsberg (MIAP ’10).

Thanks to his efforts, the pioneering computer-generated films created by Lillian Schwartz at Bell Labs in the 1970s will soon be saved through the 2011 Avant-Garde Masters Grants awarded by the two preservation foundations. Schwartz’s films are housed at the Ohio State University Libraries. However Forsberg’s push initiated the partnership with NYU’s Orphan Film Project that led to preservation work.

The press release continued:

“A generation before Toy Story, innovative artists were already making computer-generated films, but they’ve gone mediumly uncelebrated until now,” said Dan Streible, acting director of NYU Cinema Studies’ Moving Image Archiving and Preservation (MIAP) program. “Lillian Schwartz worked alongside AT&T research scientists to create new ways of generating geometric forms, colorful abstractions, and human figures in motion. Her films document the state of computer language in the early seventies, but they also remain delightful to see and hear as works of art. Thanks to this Avant-Garde Masters grant, NYU MIAP students and film preservation professor Bill Brand will work with Ohio State, Forsberg, and Lillian Schwartz herself to save, screen, and study some of her earliest experiments, beginning with the 1970 film Pixillation, her first.” The others are Olympiad (1971), Enigma (1972), Mutations (1972), and Papillons (1973). 

* * * *

An admirer of Schwartz’s work, Walter Forsberg, who is also a filmmaker, met the New York-based artist in 2010 and by year’s end had initiated an ad hoc film preservation partnership with Schwartz and Lisa Iacobellis, curator at Ohio State University Libraries. NYU Libraries media preservation specialist Alice Moscoso helped him inspect the OSU material. In spring 2011, film-to-film preservation began with partners Colorlab and the NYU Orphan Film Project. Schwartz’s short films UFOs (1971) and Galaxies (1974) were preserved pro bono by Colorlab, with Bill Brand’s BB Optics and second-year MIAP students (led by June Oh) also participating.

April: Forsberg introduced the premiere screening of the new 16mm print of Galaxies at the Wisconsin Film Festival’s special Orphan Film Symposium session.

May: Brand introduced the premiere of UFOs at “Celebrating Orphan Films,” a two-day symposium co-presented by NYU Tisch / Cinema Studies and the UCLA Film and Television Archive.

June: Lillian Schwartz joined Forsberg and Brand for a special program of her films at the 57th Robert Flaherty Film Seminar, held at Colgate University and programmed by Dan Streible. Her films had such an impact that, throughout the week, 150 seminarians treated Schwartz like a rock star, roaring with approval each time her work appeared on the screen.

July:  NFPF selects five Schwartz films for the Avant-Garde Masters grant.

July:  NY Women in Film & TV award a preservation grant for Schwartz’s Googolplex (1972).

August:  MIAP alumni Audrey Young (’08) and Forsberg show UFOs and Galaxies at the Cineteca Nacional de México, as part of their two-day curated event entitled “Primer Encuentro Archivo Memoria, en colaboración con el Orphan Film Project.”

September:  Lillian Schwartz will introduce her films at Anthology Film Archives, part of “Sonic Truth: Films from the 2011 Flaherty Seminar,” emceed by Dan Streible. Monday, September 12, 7:30 pm. 

October - May 2012: Three Schwartz films are part of the traveling series “Flaherty on the Road”: Pixillation, UFOs, and a documentary about Lillian Schwartz at work, The Artist and the Computer (1980).

April 11-14, 2012: The 8th Orphan Film Symposium will feature a session on the films produced by artists working at Bell Labs in the late 1960s and 1970s, with a screening of all the newly preserved 16mm films by Lillian Schwartz. Bill Brand, who himself was part of that experience, and Walter Forsberg will be on the panel, along with documentary filmmaker Nell Cox, who made films with Ricky Leacock for AT&T/Bell Labs, including Operator (1969) and French Lunch (1967).

As if that were not enough, Mr. Forsberg is also the lead producer of a second DVD for the Orphan Film Project, along with NYU Libraries and Colorlab. The collection of works on the theme of outer space include Ms. Schwartz’s Galaxies and UFOs.

Posing for a mock publicity photo. In February 2011, the foursome previewed a 16mm print of Lillian Schwartz's UFOs. Walter Forsberg (foreground) drives the Steenbeck; filmmaker and Schwartz fan Jodie Mack (center); media preservation specialist at Bobst Library, Alice Moscoso (right); Orphan Film Symposium director Dan Streible (standing). 

  

Proposals are still being accepted for . . . .

a production of the
NYU Department of Cinema Studies, Tisch School of the Arts

San Francisco Silent Film Festival & Orphan Films

It's been a good week. First Bologna's Cinema Ritrovato recognized the Orphans 7 DVD.

Now this:  http://sfsilentfilmfestival.blogspot.com/2011/07/orphan-films-featured-at-festival.html

http://sfsilentfilmfestival.blogspot.com/2011/07/orphan-films-featured-at-festival.html