Rob Byrne (SF Silent Film Festival) visits the NYU Orphan Film Symposium (2012)

On the eve of the 8th Orphan Film Symposium, NYU Cinema Studies MA student (and now alumna) Daphna Jaglom was testing our new HD camcorder, straight out of the box. When

film preservationist Rob Byrne (also president of the board of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival) stopped by the Film Study Center at 721 Broadway, we asked him to sit for an informal camera test. He graciously agreed and talked about his previous Orphan Film Symposium experience in 2010.


http://archive.org/details/8thOrphanFilmSymposium_april112012_video

Here's a clip downsized to 480p. 

Four minutes of unedited DV, recording a conversation among Dan Streible, Rob Byrne, and (off camera) Cinema Studies student Christopher Insignares.

Note that all of the video shot during the April 11-14, 2012 symposium that followed is available at the Orphan Film Symposium Collection on the Internet Archive.  http://archive.org/details/OrphanFilmSymposium

Getting all the DV files uploaded turned out to be not only labor intensive, but also a learning experience for several of us. At the time, not even the videophiles among us knew that the camera  --   a Canon VIXIA HF R20 -- saved its video files in the .MTS format. And few of the videophiles among us had dealt with MTS before.

What is MTS?  A high-definition MPEG-2 format in AVC (Advanced Video Codec), developed for HD camcorders by Sony and Panasonic. Turns out this Canon model uses it too. The image looks great, especially in this 1920 x 1080 dimension. However, most applications can not process MTS files. They had to be converted, in this case to MP4 files.  NYU MIAP students Jieun An and Kelly Haydon did the conversion, and uploaded several dozen pieces to the site.

Again, all of the "footage" (to use the film-inherited term) is unedited, but also available to download and use (under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial license).

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Gentle colleagues:

Word from EYE Film Institute Netherlands today: it's official. The 2014 Orphan Film Symposium will be in April, dovetailed with the Amsterdam Film Biennale. 

However, we won't know for a few weeks the exact dates in April 2014. I'm guessing first half of the month. 

The theme of Orphans 9 will be announced in mid-October (this year).  But good ideas and pitches for presentations are always welcome.

An Avant-Garde(n) for Children

The image at the bottom of this posting is a screenshot of a Facebook invitation to today's event:  THE FILM-MAKER'S COOPERATIVE &  the 6TH STREET / AVE. B GARDEN present: The 2nd ANNUAL CHILDREN'S FILM FESTIVAL of the AVANT-GARDE(N) FOR CHILDREN OF ALL AGES!   <http://www.facebook.com/events/470413842969867/>

That a Film-makers' Coop event would promote itself with the wonderful Helen Hill-created image from Scratch and Crow (1995) is, well, something of a surprise. And a nice one, to be sure.

"Chickens are good animals...." 

In "Media Artists, Local Activists, and Outsider Archivists: The Case of Helen Hill" (published in the 2010 anthology Old and New Media After Katrina), I drew a distinction between the utopian experimental cinema of Helen Hill and the canonical American avant garde film world. 

  . . . However, there is also a gulf between the influential “essential cinema” of Brakhage’s cohort and the world of Helen Hill. The humor, love, whimsy, sweetness, and accessibility (even to children) of Helen’s films differentiate them from the experimental films usually taken as emblematic of the post-WWII American avant garde. The latter is generally represented by the work of structuralists, contrarians, and male individualists -- Brakhage, Hollis Frampton, Jonas Mekas, Ken Jacobs, Kenneth Anger, et al. This artists’ film culture has historically been characterized as filled with conflict, internecine grudges, denunciations, and darkness. As the New American Cinema Group famously expressed in its 1961 manifesto: “we don’t want rosy films -- we want them the color of blood.”[1] Helen wanted -- and made -- rosy films, figuratively and literally. Flowers were a motif in her work. Throbbing red Valentine hearts were another.  And of course her pet pigs were Rosie and Daisy). Hers was, as Egan puts it, a cinema of optimism. Even when it dealt with death, resurrection followed. Scratch and Crow concludes with the written, biblical-sounding evocation “If I knew,/ I would assure you we are all / Finally good chickens / And will rise together, / A noisy flock of round, / Dusty angels.”

            Certainly Helen’s work also shares traits with the canonical avant garde. Like the Group, she preferred films “rough, unpolished, but alive.” She knew that Mekas, Brakhage, Jerome Hill (no relation), and other cineastes had long valorized the art of amateur cinema. (“I studied home movies as diligently as I studied the aesthetics of Sergei Eisenstein,” said Brakhage.)[2] Helen also taught her students the history of experimental animation, showing work by Lotte Reiniger, Len Lye, Norman McLaren, and other artists who influenced her. These two schools came together briefly when Anthology Film Archives, epicenter of avant garde American cinema, hosted a retrospective, The Life & Films of Helen Hill, in October 2007.

---

[1] “The First Statement of the New American Cinema Group,” Film Culture 22-23 (1961): 131-33.

[2] Bruce Jenkins, “Stan Brakhage: The Art of Seeing” (1999), Walker Art Center, http://filmvideo.walkerart.org. See also, Jan-Christopher Horak, Lovers of Cinema: The First American Film Avant-Garde 1919-1945 (U of Wisconsin Press, 1995), and Jeffrey Ruoff, “Home Movies of the Avant-Garde: Jonas Mekas and the New York Art World,” Cinema Journal 30.3 (1991): 6-28.
__________________________________

Perhaps the distinction is so blurry now as to be obsolete? Of course it is in many ways remarkable that the Film-Makers' Cooperative is still in operation, much less in such active form as it (like its sibling Anthology Film Archives) is. But perhaps no less remarkable than the huge impact that the late Helen Hill, the quintessential DIY filmmaker, continues to make on the world.

   

Additional "Orphans 8" T-shirts now available.

Because we ran out of all the T-shirts created for this year's Orphan Film Symposium, additional Orphans 8 T-shirts are going to be special ordered. 

1 shirt = $15
2 shirts ($25)
3 shirts ($35)
4 shirts ($45)
5 shirts ($55)

Here are the 3 designs:

.

•   khaki w/ ORPHANS 8 block logo
•   purple w/ hanging bat, designed by Jo Dery (Helen Hill Awardee)
•   maroon w/ design by Jeanne Liotta (Helen Hill Award recipient)

By July 1, e-mail your order to orphanfilmsymposium@gmail.com 

Identify the shirt/s you want by 

• design (block logo, Dery, or Liotta) 
• size (2XL, XL, L, M, S, XS)
• fit  (i.e., "Women's" or "Men's/Unisex," as American Apparel calls them AmericanApparel.net/sizing.html) 

Include your shipping address with your order. We will then contact you about how to pay with credit card or check.

First Queens, now Brooklyn.

Having wrapped up "Orphans 8" at Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, the Orphan Film Symposium visits another borough -- courtesy of Brooklyn's Northside Film Festival.

Thursday, June 21

10:40pm

Nitehawk Cinema 

136 Metropolitan Ave. 

Williamsburg, Brooklyn 

See highlights from the 8th Orphan Film Symposium, 

plus additional special selections! 

Filmmaker Jodie Mack et al. talk about the screenings. 

Emcee: Ivria Dubs. 

SUNDAY - (Dan Drasin, 1961) 17min

     A 35mm restoration (thanks to Martin Scorsese and the Film Foundation) documenting a Washington Square Park protest against the city's attempt to ban folksinging [!]

DAYDREAM THERAPY - (Bernard Nicolas, 1977) 8min

with ONE FRIDAY - (Rolf Forsberg, 1973), 9min

     From UCLA Film and Television Archive's acclaimed "L.A. Rebellion" series, Nicolas' student film is one of many rediscovered works made by African American filmmakers active in Los Angeles in the 1970s. Music by Nina Simone.

     In contrast, Forsberg's deliberately provocative classroom film imagines a race war from the point of view of a little white girl.

THE JUNGLE - (12th & Oxford Street Film Makers, 1967) 21min

     Members of an African American gang made this stylistically powerful expression of their life in Philadelphia. Includes their memorable, original score of vocals and percussion. Added to the National Film Registry in 2009. 

UFOS - (Lillian Schwartz with Ken Knowlton,1971) 4min

GALAXIES – (Lillian Schwartz, 1974) 4min 

     Bell Labs hosted the work of computer art pioneers, including Schwartz and her abstract animated films, now newly restored. Music by Emmanuel Ghent and F. Richard Moore. (See lillian.com.)

POSTHASTE PERENNIAL PATTERN - (Jodie Mack, 2010) 3.5min

UNSUBSCRIBE #4: THE SADDEST SONG IN THE WORLD - (Jodie Mack, 2010) 3min

     A film artist in a digital age, animator and songstress Jodie Mack was, in part, inspired by the work of Lillian Schwartz (computer artist in a film era) and DIY animatrice Helen Hill.

SCRATCH AND CROW - (Helen Hill, 1995) 4min

     Helen made this animated short as her thesis film at CalArts; named to the National Film Registry.

LIGHT CAVALRY GIRL - (Jie Shen, 1980) 9min

     A sublime, wordless, balletic documentation of the motorcycle-riding troupe in the People's Republic of China. (From the Chinese Film Collection, University of South Carolina.)

See you there! 

Questions for the Nitehawk Cinema:  (718) 384-3980

For the Northside Festival: Sarah Lerner   sarah.michele.lerner [AT] Gmail 

# # #

Orphan films and social media

Website: www.nyu.edu/orphanfilm

NYU home page for Orphans projects and events. Documentation of symposium including text, audio, images, and video, e.g., Orphans 8 at www.nyu.edu/orphanfilm/orphans8.

Blog: http://orphanfilmsymposium.blogspot.com

"archivists, academics, & artists saving, studying, & screening neglected moving images." You are here. Occasional articles, announcements, and news. Guest bloggers welcome.

Internet Archive: Orphan Film Symposium Collection

http://archive.org/details/OrphanFilmSymposium 
Audio recordings of past symposia talks, interviews with participants (edited and unedited), and verite footage.

E-mail: orphanfilmsymposium@gmail.com

For sending and receiving official OFS communiques and file attachments. Forwards to dan.streible@nyu.edu.

Twitter: Orphan Film Project

@Orphan_Films

 https://twitter.com/#!/Orphan_Films

"saving, screening, studying neglected moving images since 1999."
(Hashtag was #orphans8. Now #orphanfilms.)

Tumblr: orphan_films

www.tumblr.com/blog/orphanista

"Neglected cinema artifacts." A microblog. One picture at a time.

Facebook group: Orphan Film Symposium

www.facebook.com/groups/21030320635

562 members as of today; ask to join.

Flickr group: Orphan Film Symposium
www.flickr.com/groups/orphanfilmsymposium  
686 items, documenting the three NYC symposiums (2008 to present).

Wikipedia: Orphan film
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphan_film 
"a motion picture work that has been abandoned by its owner or copyright holder; also, any film that has suffered neglect...."

"What is an orphan film?" 
 www.sc.edu/filmsymposium/orphanfilm.html 


# # # 

Orphans 8: Thursday Night Event Review

by guest blogger Adrienne Henry

Over the course of the last several months NYU MIAP and Cinema Studies students have been helping to produce the 8^th edition of the biannual Orphan Film Symposium. Orphans 8: Made to Persuade took place at Museum of the Moving Image, April 11 through 14. Although Orphans has begun holding smaller events between symposiums, the biannual event is the highlight of the Orphans organization and brings together activists, archivists, scholars and media artists from around the world for four days of screenings, presentations and good conversation about all forms of neglected media.

The opening night of the symposium was produced by graduating NYU MIAP student Benedict Salazar Olgado, and featured an opening cocktail hour before what was quite possibly the first ever U.S. screening of Valy Arnheim’s Die Hochbahnkatastrophe (The Elevated Train Catastrophe). The 1921 German sensationsfilm was given a wonderful introduction by Tom Gunning who explained its roots in nineteenth century adventure novels, but the real treat was the screening itself. Viewing this ninety-one year old film projected in MOMI’s 261 seat theatre with live narrator Harrison M. Beck and Dennis James accompanying the film on piano was simply a once in a life time experience.

As wonderful as opening night was, it was Thursday's programing that I found most compelling. Thursday morning had some great panels including a history of the MOMI building (once an army film studio creating wartime propaganda) and an advertising panel which was much talked about throughout the rest of the symposium. The advertising panel truly highlighted the symposium's theme of “Made to Persuade” and featured presentations on such persuasive tactics as Afri-Cola’s 1968 appeal to the strangely sensual (via artist Charles Wilp's ad campaign on German television) and Sugar Crisps’ use of the super hip Sugar Bear to appeal to the children.

Thursday afternoon’s programming started strong with Nell Cox’s 1969 AT&T recruiting film Operator, featuring a theme song by the New York Rock and Roll Ensemble, a parade of beautiful young phone operators, and plenty of humorous moments between operators and callers (some real; some staged by actors). The film was so engaging that by the time I’d returned home from the symposium several links to it had popped up on my Facebook newsfeed via my fellow orphanistas. It was hard to believe anything else in the panel would blow me away more than Operator did, but the sequence of Lillian Schwartz films made at Bell Labs in the early 1970s definitely did. Schwartz made these 16mm short films using scientific equations, lots of color and movement, and some of the earliest melding of film and electronic music. Viewing the films was an experience words cannot describe. The dinner that followed was abuzz with discussions of the films and the honor of hearing Lillian discuss them. 

The return from dinner marked the Helen Hill Award portion of Orphans 8, produced by NYU Cinema Studies students Ivria Dubs and myself. The night honored the late DIY filmmaker Helen Hill with films that continue in her animation tradition, starting with a 70mm film by Danielle Ash and Jodie Mack. The duo (who shared Helen Hill Award honors in 2010) described their untitled work as having been made by both “constructive and destructive” methods. The evening continued with a camera test made by Helen herself and preserved by the Center for Home Movies. The test footage Helen filmed of her infant son, cat, and New Orleans home was intimate and heart wrenching. After learning more about Helen’s legacy, Jo Dery and Jeanne Liotta were presented with Orphans 8 Helen Hill Awards. Several of their pieces were showcased. Dery’s animations and mixed-media works often feature animals prominently, as was the case with Echoes of Bats and Men and is whimsical with a touch of melancholy. Liotta’s sequence started with Blue Moon (1988) the first film she ever made. NYU’s MIAP program recently finished restoring the Super 8 film and its audiocassette soundtrack. While it differed greatly from her recent work, which leans heavily towards the scientific it was extremely interesting to see her evolution as a film maker.

The final film of the evening was The Florestine Collection, started by Hill before her passing in 2007 and recently finished by her husband Paul Gailiunas. The film begins as an exploration of a collection of dresses Hill found in the street in New Orleans but evolves into an ode to Helen, the amazing artist and activist. An emotional end to the day's programming.

Overall the symposium presented a chance to see media artifacts that few have the chance to see, projected in a beautiful space surrounded by passionate cinephiles from diverse backgrounds and professions. If you weren’t fortunate enough to attend the event I highly recommend trying to get your hands on the forthcoming Orphans 8 DVD, which will feature several of the titles shown at the symposium. You should also go ahead and book your plane tickets for Orphans 9, but until then you can curve your Orphans cravings by checking out more coverage of the event at the links bellow.

http://amiastudentsnyc.com/splices/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/orphans7/

http://www.chicagofilmarchives.org/news/orphans-8

http://nycmovieboy.blogspot.com/2012/04/few-of-my-favorite-things-at-orphans-8.html

http://thesplitscreen.wordpress.com/2012/04/12/orphans-8-diary-opening-night-screenings/

http://thesplitscreen.wordpress.com/2012/04/14/orphans-8-diary-persuasion-in-all-its-forms/

http://highbrowmagazine.com/1116-film-enthusiasts-address-importance-rescuing-orphan-films