Call for Presentations on Obsolescence and Orphan Films

Orphans 9

The 9th Orphan Film Symposium

March 30 - April 2, 2014
@ EYE 
in Amsterdam

New York University Cinema Studies joins with EYE (Film Institute Netherlands) and the University of Amsterdam for the ninth international gathering of archivists, curators, scholars, preservationists, and artists devoted to screening and discussing  orphan films (i.e., an eclectic variety of neglected moving images). Film, video, and digital works from around the world will be projected in the magnificent EYE building in Amsterdam, all presented with context provided by expert speakers and creative accompanists. 

Call for Presentations: 

The Future of Obsolescence

The theme of “Orphans 9” is obsolescence, broadly conceived. We invite proposals for presentations on the histories and futures of film and other moving image media. The symposium will consider not only technological and format obsolescence, but also the ways that audiovisual media have recorded and deployed ideas, content, representations, genres, narratives, fashions, and ideologies deemed obsolete or outdated. What neglected cinema artifacts or orphaned media should we re-view and reconsider in order to better understand the world? How should preservationists, archivists, historians, curators, and scholars deal with film and obsolete “new media”? What orphan films document these phenomena and issues? What does “media archaeology” teach us? How are artists, producers, and others using, reviving, and transforming remaindered film and video material? How do archives, museums, libraries, schools, cinematheques, and sister institutions participate in the remix culture of recombinant media 2.0? 

Throughout the three days and four nights of the symposium, selected speakers will lead presentations, screenings, and discussions. Proposals that include the screening of rare, rediscovered, or recently preserved works are encouraged. New media productions using archival or abandoned material are sought for the symposium’s screenings as well, as are technical presentations on moving image archiving and preservation. 

E-mail questions and proposals to Dan.Streible@nyu.edu. First round of proposal review begins June 28, 2013. For more information and updates, visit www.nyu.edu/orphans.

NYU | Cinema Studies | MIAP                   UVA Media Studies | P&P

www.nyu.edu/tisch/preservation                 www.student.uva.nl/mpap

The Academy takes a Close Look at Orphan Films (May 10-11, 2013)

Join us!  

30 films in 27 hours! 34 speakers! a lunch! a reception! in Hollywood! all for $20! 

See and hear Dino Everett project motion-picture film  on a 1929 model Bristolphone 16mm sound-on-disk projector

+
premieres of new preservation on films such as

The Bishop of Hollywood (Hollywood Comedies, 1924) rediscovered short 

Exploratorium (Jon Boorstin, 1974) introduced by the director

Mission to Mongo (Jim Hoberman, 1978) from Anthology Film Archives

The Love Charm (1928) two-strip Technicolor; NFPF New Zealand rediscovery

City Harvest (OWI, ca. 1943) "victory gardening" in Chicago's ethnic neighborhoods 

+
varieties including 

A Place to Stand, 70mm multiscreen film for Expo '67

with home movies of Expo 67, assembled by Walter Forsberg 

Transformations (Ralph Sargent for IBM, 1968) introduced by the director

Hey Mama (Vaughn Obern, 1969) UCLA student film about Black Venice

Naked Yoga (Paul Cordsen, 1974) excerpt, Best Documentary Short Subject

Lead In (Thom Eubank and Saundra Sharp, 1981) wraparounds for B.E.T.

speaking. . . .

Academy curators: Cassie Blake, Ed Carter, Tessa Idlewine, Lynne Kirste, Josef Lindner, Heather Linville, Brian Meacham, Sean Savage, and Mark Toscano, with May Randy Haberkamp, Haduong, and Mike Pogorzelski.

Media makers:  Jon Boorstin, Rob Epstein, Robert Fiore, Jeffrey Freidman, Rick Prelinger, Ralph Sargent, S. Pearl Sharp, and Penelope Spheeris.

Archivists/scholars/curators/etc.:   Snowden Becker, Hadrian Belove, Dino Everett, Dennis Doros, Walter Forsberg, Jan-Christopher Horak, Priya Jaikumar, Liz Keim, Jeff Lambert, Kathleen Maguire, Ross Melnick, Mark Quigley, Jacqueline Stewart, Dan Streible, Todd Wiener, and Chuck Wolfe.

US Premiere of "Nëntori i dytë" (The Second November)

Quick: name your favorite Albanian film. . . .  Chances are even dedicated cinephiles have not had the opportunity to see many, if any, movies produced in Albania. Here's an excellent way to start. 

The Orphan Film Symposium is a partner (in a modest way) to the Albanian Cinema Project, which is making a big splash with its first public event in the US -- screening a newly restored feature film!  

Come to this free screening of The Second November, March 27.  But do e-mail your request for a seat, because this screening will certainly fill up. 

*   *   *  *

NYU's Department of Cinema Studies presents

The US Premiere of 
Nëntori i dytë (The Second November)
1982, 93 minutes, dir. Viktor Gjika
Followed by a discussion on the state of Albanian film preservation with Albanian filmmaker Fatmir Koci, Albanian American film producer and screenwriter Thomas Logoreci, Colorlab CEO Russ Suniewick, and Albanian Cinema Project director Regina Longo. 

Wednesday, March 27, 6:15pm
NYU Tisch School of the Arts
Department of Cinema Studies
721 Broadway, 6th Floor, Michelson Theater

*** RSVP to CinemaStudiesEvents@gmail.com***

Most Albanian films made before 1991 were never translated into another language and are rarely screened outside of Albania. The Albanian Cinema Project's (ACP) newly launched preservation initiative is changing this fact, bringing a 'new' national cinema to international screens.

Our digital restoration of Viktor Gjika's 1982 patriotic drama Nëntori i dytë was completed just in time to celebrate 100 years of Albanian Independence from Ottoman rule (1912-2012). It premiered to a packed house at the 13th Festival of Albanian Film in Tirana, on November 3, 2102. And now, for the first time, will play for US audiences in the first ever English language adaption of Gjika's socialist realist epic, restored by Colorlab Corp.

Be part of the first American audience to screen Nëntori i dytë, and to hear firsthand accounts from Albanian filmmaker Fatmir Koci (Tirana Year Zero, 2001; Land of the Eagles, 2007;Time of the Comet, 2008), Albanian American film producer and screenwriter Thomas Logoreci, ACP Director Regina Longo, and Russ Suniewick, CEO of Colorlab Corp, who have formed ACP to help save and restore Albania's film heritage.

The campaign to relocate the collections of the Albanian national film archives to a new, mold-free facility is at the heart of our mission. Working with the support of the Albanian Ministry of Culture, the US Embassy in Tirana, the Association of Moving Image Archivists, the Orphan Film Symposium, the Library of Congress Audiovisual Archives and the Albanian American National Organization, the Albanian Cinema Project is dedicated to preserving, restoring, and promoting Albanian film heritage.

Co-sponsored by Wesleyan University and the Albanian Cinema Project.

Dan Streible |  (917) 754-1401 

Assoc. Professor of Cinema Studies & Director of Graduate Studies

Moving Image Archiving & Preservation Program, Assoc. Director

Orphan Fim Symposium, director, www.nyu.edu/orphanfilm

NYU | Tisch School of the Arts | Department of Cinema Studies

* AMPAS Orphan Film Showcase @ Academy Film Archive, Hollywood, CA, May 10-11, 2013

** Orphans Midwest @ IU Cinema, Bloomington, IN, Sept. 26-28, 2013

*** Orphan 9, The Future of Obsolescence, @ EYE, Amsterdam, March 30 - April 2, 2014

A note for Chicago-areas moviegoers that the Music Box Theatre 70mm Festival wraps tonight with PLAYTIME by Jacques Tati, + this piece of direct animation by Danielle Ash & Jodie Mack. Made fot the 2012 Orphan Film Symposium, this will be its second-ever screening.

Camera/phone video taken inside Museum of the Moving Image:

Melton Barker Foils Film Historiographers and Auteurist Critics

On a very happy note indeed: 

This Sunday's New York Times featured this article on "The Kidnappers Foil" series of movies and their filmmaker Melton Barker. 

The Legacy of a Camera-Toting Huckster 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/movies/the-kidnappers-foil-a-local-talent-national-treasure

Writer Amanda Petrusich presents an exemplary journalistic account of the history and significance of this previously obscure body of motion picture work. (So few journalists get the quotations of their interviewees correct; she does, near as I can tell.)

Congratulations to Caroline Frick (T.A.M.I.) and Dwight Swanson for getting these orphans onto the National Film Registry -- and into the Times. If you've not previously sampled Mr. Barker's oeuvre, please take this opportunity. [See www.meltonbarker.org] 

And if there were any doubt that orphanista Caroline Jane Frick has long been on a mission to immortalize Ennis Melton Barker, consider that her doctoral dissertation specifically holds up Barker as the orphan filmmaker par excellence.  In "Restoration Nation: Motion Picture Archives and 'American' Film Heritage" (University of Texas at Austin, 2005), 245, she writes about the Orphan Film Symposium. 

So-called “orphanistas” gather and lobby for increased attention and, most importantly, funding for a more organic or “real” American film heritage – ephemeral advertising footage, home movies, medical training films, and more. Albeit, armed with an ironic distance and postmodern sensibilities, participants in the orphans film movement hope to place individuals such as Melton Barker, an itinerant Texas filmmaker, next to (or at least, on the same list as) Howard Hawks – and the arbiters of national heritage are doing just that.  [Emphasis not in the original.]

Barker ca. 1930s (Frick Collection)

For more about the man, including this rare photograph, see the article by our now-proven arbiter of national heritage, author of Saving Cinema: The Politics of Preservation (Oxford, 2011), founder of the Texas Archive of the Moving Image, assistant professor of Radio-TV-Film at the University of Texas, Austin, at-large alternate appointee to the National Film Preservation Board, former Curator of Motion Pictures at the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film, and president of the Association of Moving Image Archivists (whew):

Caroline Frick, "Jack Rabbit Genius: Melton Barker, Itinerant Films, and Creating Locality," The Moving Image 10.1 (Spring 2010): 1-22.

 + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

(photo courtesy of Jim Ponder)

And, begging your pardon for this personal dog-loving indulgence, we note that one of the photos of Mr. Barker the Times used includes the nearly-forgotten auteur with his pixelated pup. 

FUND [and] the Albanian Cinema Project

Thanks to the Albanian Film Archive and the Albanian Cinema Project, a new piece of preservation is in the works as part of the Orphan Film Project. At this moment, a 16mm print (with a magnetic soundtrack) is in transit from Tirana to New York. Archivist Eriona Vyshka (head of collections and cataloging) has assigned catalog entry KF-16 the title [Albanian dances from northwest and north regions]. (Perhaps the short title among the preservation team will become North by Northwest??) Throughout the spring 2013 NYU semester, Bill Brand and his MIAP graduate students will preserve this six and half minutes of footage as part of the yearly Film Preservation course. 

video frame grab from KF-16 (Courtesy of the Albanian Film Archive)

The work will take place at the BB Optics laboratory in Tribeca, funded by NYU’s Department of Cinema Studies (home of both MIAP and the Orphan Film Symposium). All preservation and access materials -- the original print, a new preservation negative and sound track, a new print, and digital reference copies TBD -- will return to the archive. An access copy will also be deposited with the NYU Film Study Center for research and classroom use. 

Watch the film (without sound). 

Part 4 of 4

Women from the town of Tropoja dance. 

 (Image: sq.wikipedia.org)

The film itself was part of an “ethno-choreography” series created under the guidance of esteemed ethnomusicologist Ramazan Bogdani, professor emeritus at the University of Tirana’s Folklore Institute. If I understand the Wikipedia entry correctly, Bogdani's output includes 221 ethnographic film recordings totaling approximately 60,000 meters (nearly 200,000 feet) of 16mm film, running some 350 hours, described in a 746-page 3-volume catalog.

The intertitles indicate the dancers were filmed in the towns of Shënkoll (district of Lezhe) and Tropojë (near the Kosovo border). Eriona Vyshka translates the sections of the film as: 

1. Dance of sowing the crops (work rituals) 
2. Wedding song 
3. Dance of “Logue” [?] (lyrical, erotic) 
4. Tropoja women dance (lyrical, epic)

18 December 2012
(Ministry of Defence; www.mod.gov.al)

Born in 1943, Bogdani remains active in publishing his work. In fact, the 100th anniversary of Albanian independence in 2012 saw not only the creation of the Albanian Cinema Project, but official state recognition of Bogdani’s publication of a six-volume series of books on ethno-choreography. Less than a month ago Dr. Bogdani spoke at the federal Centre of Culture, Media and Defence [!] Publications, in cooperation with the Academy of Sciences. His concluding remark about the study of folklore today has resonance with conceptualizing the study of folk dance as recorded on film. Today’s is “the folklore of festivals,” rather than “the traditional folklore of the rhapsode [or rhapsodist, a performer of poetry] by his fireplace in Dukagjin playing the lute, or dancing in a wedding.” One must go to international festivals to see past traditions re-created in performance; or, we might add, watching a film or video recording made in the past. 

For those of us limited to English-language sources, there is at least one book from which to learn: 
Ramazan H. Bogdani, Etnokoreografi kosovare hasjane (Tirana: Globus R, 2005), 323 pages; 150 photographs; English summary of 16 pages. According to Albanian-Folklore.com [yes!] the volume is "complementary to the 1977 publication of Folklori koreografik i Hasit. This book is a further study of the dances of the Has region [Kosovo]. The characteristics are described per village with photographs of the costumes and dances. A further chapter describes the 17 mentioned dances themselves, sometimes using the full description by measure with musical scores...."

Nota bene!

A delightful irony for English-Albanian cross-promotion: 

the final frame of the film. 

Courtesy of the Albanian Film Archive

FUND of course is the Albanian word for "end." But for the purposes of the Albanian Cinema Project and the AQShF, funds are needed to accelerate the preservation of this national film heritage. You can read more about the urgency and cultural value of this effort at the project website. Or write to ACP director Dr. Regina Longo [ regmlongo2 @ gmail  ]. 

For now, simply FUND!

. . . and more Ritchie Training image repurposing, Orphans 3

. . . and there was also this "Orphans 3" repurposing of the USC Newsfilm image. We had a memorable screening of Decasia in the School of Music Recital Hall. James Bond (Full Aperture Systems) somehow got the big 35mm projector into the small projection booth. He also made sure we got the Dolby correct. Bill Morrison said the presentation that night sounded as good as it ever had. Nice and loud too.