Full program announced for Orphans 9: The Future of Obsolescence

Here's the penultimate draft of the program for Orphans 9, The Future of Obsolescence, at EYE in Amsterdam, March 30 - April 2, 2014. It's a co-production between EYE and New York University (specifically NYU Tisch School of the Arts and its Department of Cinema Studies).

Register online now. Click here.

Sunday, 30 March an Evening Film Concert  

Greetings: Sandra den Hamer and Giovanna Fossati (EYE), Marijke de Valck (UvA), and Dan Streible (NYU)

Simona Monizza (EYE) abstract animated films by Maarten Visser, accompanist Marcel Worms (with additional music by NYU Film Scoring students)

Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi (EYE) introduces the premiere of the new restoration East Is West (1922) accompanist Stephen Horne

Monday, 31 March

9:45 am Orphans Orientation  

Josephine Baker Visit Volendam (Fox Movietone, 1928)  

About the Orphan Film Symposium Dan Streible  

About the Future of Obsolescence Giovanna Fossati   

Dan Streible A New Look at an Old Sneeze: Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze (W. K. L. Dickson, 1894)  

10:45am Thomas Elsaesser (UvA) On Obsolescence  

11:15am break

11:30 am Transmitting Archival Knowledge   

Giovanna Fossati (EYE / UvA) Restoring the Colors of Early Cinema  

Julia Noordegraaf (UvA) & Simona Monizza (EYE) Hacking the Bart Vegter Collection 

Eef Masson (UvA) moderates a roundtable with Howard Besser and Bill Brand (NYU MIAP), Snowden Becker (UCLA MIAS), and Martin Koerber (DIF)   

1 pm LUNCH provided

2pm  Media Archaeology   

Susan Aasman  (U of Groningen) Staging the Amateur Dispositif, a performance with Andreas Fickers (U of Luxembourg), Tom Slootweg (U of Groningen), Tim van der Heijden and Jo Wachelder (U of Maastricht)   

Alexandra Schneider and Wanda Strauven  (UvA) Children as Media Archaeologists   

Monika Supruniuk (Academy of Fine Arts, Warsaw) Kazimierz Prószyński and OKO: The first Polish amateur movie camera (1914) 

3:45pm  BREAK 

4:15pm  Reassemblage

Matt Soar (Concordia U, Montreal) Lost Leaders Project   

Benedict Olgado (NFA Philippines) & Bill Brand (BB Optics) Restoring the Fragments of On My Way to India Consciousness, I Reached China (Henry Francia, 1968)   

Walter Forsberg & John Klacsmann (Anthology Film Archives) Technicolor NG (16mm print, 20’)   

6:15 pm DINNER provided

8:15 pm  Helen Hill Award screening

Bill Morrison premieres a new work 

Doug Goodwin (Cal Arts) On Illusion, Magic, and Ted Serios  

            +  a preview of Serios (Rebecca Baron, 2014)  

Becky Lewis (Columbia, South Carolina) confers the Helen Hill Award on Werner Nekes

Start (Nekes, 1966) newly restored by Deutsche Kinemathek with EYE

Franziska Latell (Berlin U of the Arts) introduces Werner Nekes  

Werner Nekes talk/presentation on his collection of optical devices 

Tuesday, 1 April

9:45 am  introductory remarks & trailer   

10am  New Research Networks for Obsolete Media   

Mark G. Cooper (U of South Carolina) Metadata and the Future of the Humanities

Karen Cariani (WGBH Archive) Working with Scholars to Improve Access to Media Archives

Mark J. Williams (Dartmouth College) The Media Ecology Project: More and Better Scholarly Access to Historical Media

Scott Curtis (Northwestern U in Qatar) chair

11:30am  BREAK

11:45am  Digital Decay and Remobilization

Egyptian (Whirling Dervishes) Dancers (Fox Movietone News, 1928) 

Evan Meaney (U of South Carolina) de_ca/sia.py: Archival Encryption, Encoding, and Error as Narrative  

Heidi Rae Cooley  (U of South Carolina) Finding Augusta in a Digital World: The App.

            The Other Augustas (Scott Nixon, 195?) and [Augusta, Sicily] (19??)

LUNCH provided

2pm When Workers Leave the Factory: Amateur Films in the Eastern Bloc, 1960s-1980s   

Chris Wahl (HFF Potsdam) work from Betriebsfilmstudio GDR

            Stadt des Morgen / City of Tomorrow (EKO Eisenhüttenstadt, 1965)  

            Der Minister kommt / The Minister Comes (Frank Dietrich, Amateur Film Studio Senftenberg, 1984)  

            FKK – Mahlzeit / Nudism – Enjoy Your Meal, (EKO Eisenhüttenstadt, 1973)  

Ralf Forster (Filmmuseum Potsdam)  East German amateur films

            Milchig-Trübe / Milky Fishy (Amateur Film Studio, Potsdam, 1983)  

            Der Favorit / The Favorite, (Angelika and Horst Butter, Berlin, 1982)  

            Sonntagsfahrer / Sunday Driver (Amateur Film Studio STATIV Dresden, 1981) 

Jiří Horníček (Czech National Film Archive) Czech amateur auteurs

            Mašinerie / Machinery (Pavel Bárta and Zdeněk Lorenz, 1985)  

                      X + Y (TIGR (Koplík-Groz-Tichý, 1963)
Maria Vinogradova (NYU) Amateur film in the Soviet Union

            Na odnoi zemle / On the Same Earth (People’s Film Studio at DK Proftekhobrazovania, Leningrad, 1976)  

3:30pm  BREAK  

4pm Transportation Technologies

May Haduong (Academy Film Archive) Aloha Wanderwell: Car and Camera Around the World, 1922-1950  

Yvonne Zimmermann (Philipps-Universität Marburg) Hans Richter’s Die Eroberung des Himmels (Conquest of the Sky) (1938) 

Reto Kromer (reto.ch) In-flight Entertainment: Kodak two-audio track film prints for airlines; and Apollo 11 test film for Kern lenses (1969)  

Paul Spehr (The Man Who Made Movies: W.K.L. Dickson) & Mark-Paul Meyer (EYE) Mutoscope and Biograph 68mm films (1897-1902)  

6pm  "dinner on your own" 

8pm  Silent Night

Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi (EYE) and Jeff Lambert (NFPF) with film repatriation news  

Ned Thanhouser introduces the newly preserved Clarence Cheats at Croquet (Thanhouser, 1915)

Ron Magliozzi & Peter Williamson (Museum of Modern Art, New York) present rediscovered rushes from the unreleased  Darktown Troubles (Biograph, ca. 1914) music by Stephen Horne

Jacqueline Stewart (U of Chicago) segues to the newly restored A Frontier Post (Fox, US, 1925) 12’  A day-in-the-life documentary about the “buffalo soldiers” of the U.S. Army’s 10th Cavalry, Fort Huachuca, Arizona. 35mm from Moving Image Research Collections, University of South Carolina

Wednesday, 2 April

9:45am  introductory remarks and short video TBA

10am Detritus

Antonia Lant (NYU) on Teclópolis (2009, Can Can Club, Argentina)  

Charles Musser (Yale U) on Industry’s Disinherited (Unions Films, 1949)  

Grover Crisp (Sony Pictures Entertainment) How Death of a Salesman (1951) Became an Orphan Work  

+ the never-released Career of a Salesman (Columbia Pictures, 1951) 

FORWARD: The EU Directive for a Registry of Audiovisual Orphan Works 

Nicola Mazzanti (Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique) introduction  

Géraldine Vooren (EYE)  
Thomas Christensen (Danish Film Institute)  
Q&A  
Howard Besser (NYU) moderator

11:45am  break

12:00  Restorations

Rob Byrne (SFSFF) Restoring The Last Edition (1925) 

Martin Koerber (Deutsche Kinemathek) and Andrea Krämer (Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft, Berlin) Digital Restoration of 1930s Gasparcolor Films  

            with Gasparcolor screenings  

1:15 pm LUNCH

2:15pm Latin American Archives  

Juana Suárez (Fundación Patrimonio Fílmico Colombiano) Outtakes from Gloria Triana’s  Yuruparí (FOCINE-Audiovisuales, 1983-86) documenting Colombia’s Afrodescendant and indigenous cultures  

Andrés Levinson & Paula Félix-Didier (Museo del Cine, Buenos Aires)  

            Caperucita Roja (Little Red Riding Hood, Jorge Mendez Delfino, 1933)  

            Caperucita Roja Inesita (Inés Mendez Delfino, 1960)  

            Perros en paracaidas (Dogs Parachute into Antarctica, 1963) 

4:15pm  break

4:45pm  Eastern European Archives

Elvira Diamanti, Eriona Vyshka, & Andi Lubonja (Albanian Film Archive) with Thomas Logoreci (Marubi Academy of Film) The Albanian Cinema Project  

            KF-16 [Albanian dances] (Ramazan Bogdani, 1972)  

            + excerpts from new restorations, including Nëntori i dytë (The Second November) (1982) and Tomka and His Friends (1977)

Elżbieta Wysocka (Filmoteka Narodowa) Man without a Movie Camera: Restoring the Cameraless Films of Julian Józef Antonisz  

• Ostry film “zaangażowany”: non camera (A Hard-Core Engaged Film. Non-Camera, 1979)  

• Światło w tunelu (A Light in the Tunnel, 1985)  

• Polska Kronika Non Camerowa nr.-1 (The Polish Non-Camera Newsreel no. 1, 1981) 

6:30 pm  DINNER provided

8:30 pm  American Independents 
Jeff Lambert (NFPF) introduces the launch of the DVD set Treasures 6: Next Wave Avant-garde, and a 35mm screening of Chicago Loop (James Benning, 1976) 9’; restoration by Academy Film Archive and Austrian Film Museum

Frank Scheffer and Paul Cohen introduce the premiere of their new work Zoetrope People (1980/2014) 

Dennis Doros (Milestone Films) and Mary Huelsbeck (Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research) The ‘Lost’ Films of Shirley Clarke   

p.s. Great Songs About The Great Flood, on WNYC's Soundcheck

A nice post script to yesterday post about the film The Great Flood.


John Schaefer interviewed filmmaker Bill Morrison today.
WNYC-FM, Podcast for Tuesday, January 7, 2014.



Soundcheck is "WNYC’s on-air and online destination for new music, live performances, and engaging conversations with artists, critics, and tastemakers." Hosted by John Schaefer every weeknight at 9 p.m. on 93.9 FM and WNYC.org.

A Great Flood of Film: Theatrical Premiere Jan 8-16

The year 2013 concluded with, among other things, Bill Morrison's film Decasia (2002) being named to the National Film Registry. Now 2014 begins with another achievement in archival film artistry.  The Great Flood is Bill Morrison's latest feature-length compilation of extraordinary strips of celluloid, scored with an original engaging music track by guitarist genius Bill Frisell. The film has its theatrical premiere and a week-long run at NYC's IFC Center, January 8 through 16, with four screenings daily (at 11am, 12:45, 4:20, & 8pm).

Go to the evening shows on Thursday, Friday, or Saturday to see/hear the filmmaker speak about this look at the historic Mississippi River floods of 1927.

Judging from the sneak preview clip we saw at NYU Cinema Studies on December 4, 2013, The Great Flood is another visually stunning work. The footage scanned from the original 35mm newsfilm in the University of South Carolina's Moving Image Research Collections is particularly glorious in its resolution. Not all of the scenes are from USC MIRC films, but those that are stand out from the others.  Better originals; better digital copying from the Carolina keepers of the Fox newsreel outtakes.

As ever, Mr. Morrison will also be revealing new work [yet untitled] at the 2014 Orphan Film Symposium in Amsterdam (March 30-April 2). So the OFS is happy to point you to this new theatrical run.

Here's the trailer from "friend of the show," Icarus Films (frequent provider of swell doorprizes at symposia past).



from Icarus Films.

(Icarus:  Love their unabashed motto: "Serious documentaries are good for you.")


Find the IFC Center at 323 Sixth Avenue at West Third Street
Box office: (212) 924-7771

about the 2013 National Film Registry, and orphan films

Among the lesser known or neglected (i.e., orphan-ish) titles add today to the National Film Registry are these. The blurbs are (mostly) from the Library of Congress's news release (http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2013/13-216.html). I've add some Orphan Film Symposium notes.

Decasia (2002)
  

Bill Morrison created his "found footage" collage from scraps of decades-old decomposing film. With music by composer Michael Gordon, "Decasia" hypnotizes and teases with images that fade and transform themselves right before the viewer’s eyes. Culling footage from archives across the country…. [principally at U of So. Car.]    

* Screened at the 2002 Orphan Film Symposium. And the subject of a few blog posts here one year ago.

Men and Dust (1940)


Produced and directed by Lee Dick—a woman pioneer in the field of documentary filmmaking—and written and shot by her husband Sheldon, this labor advocacy film is about diseases plaguing miners in Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma. Sponsored by the Tri-State Survey Committee, "Men and Dust" is a stylistically innovative documentary and a valuable ecological record of landscapes radically transformed by extractive industry.

* Screened during the 2012 NYU Orphan Film Symposium at the Museum of the Moving Image, as presented by Dan Friedlaender and Adrianne Finelli.  This was also part of a session called "Progressive Education and Labor Advocacy: A Lee Dick Retrospective," in which we also screened School: A Film About Progressive Education (1939) with introductions by Craig Kridel, Ivan von Sauer, and original School cast member Eugene Perl.  

The whole of the Men and Dust can viewed and downloaded here:  http://www.nyu.edu/orphanfilm/orphans8/mov8/Men_and_Dust.mov.    +Audio of the talks by all of the above are on the Orphans site too. 

Cicero March (1966) 

During the summer of 1966, the Chicago Freedom Movement, led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., targeted Chicago in a drive to end de facto segregation in northern cities and ensure better housing, education and job opportunities for African Americans. After violent rioting and a month of demonstrations, the city reached an agreement with King, in part to avoid a threatened march for open housing in the neighboring all-white town of Cicero, Ill., the scene of a riot 15 years earlier when a black couple tried to move into an apartment there. King called off further demonstrations, but other activists marched in Cicero on Sept. 4, an event preserved on film in this eight-minute, cinema-verité piece. Using lightweight, handheld equipment, the Chicago-based Film Group, Inc. filmmakers situated themselves in the midst of confrontations and captured for posterity the viciousness of northern reactions to civil-rights reforms.

*The soundtrack from Cicero March was part of Andy Uhrich's presentation at Orphans Midwest ("The Film Group of Chicago: Advertising Films and Verité Documentary of the 1960s and 70s"). Kudos too to Chicago Film Archives, which houses the Film Group Collection. 

Bless Their Little Hearts (1984)  
Billy Woodberry's UCLA thesis film. Part of the vibrant New Wave of independent African-American filmmakers to emerge in the 1970s and 1980s, Woodberry became a key figure in the movement known as the L.A. Rebellion. 

UCLA Film & Television Archive notes: "Restored from the original 16mm b/w negative A/B rolls and the original 16mm optical soundtrack."

Brandy in the Wilderness (1969)
 
This introspective "contrived diary" film features vignettes from the relationship of a real-life couple, in this case the director Stanton Kaye (as Simon Weiss) and his girlfriend [Michaux French as Brandy]. Reminiscent of Jim McBride’s "David Holzman’s Diary"—this simulated autobiography blurs the lines between reality and illusion, moving in non-linear arcs through the ever-evolving and unpredictable interactions.

Daughter of Dawn (1920)
 
A fascinating example of the daringly unexpected topics and scope showcased by the best regional, independent filmmaking during the silent era, "Daughterof Dawn" features an all-Native-American cast of Comanches and Kiowas [including a son and daughter of famed Comanche chief Quanah Parker (son of Cynthia Ann Parker, upon whose captivity experience that little Registry film called The Searchers (John Ford, 1956) was based]. Restored by the Oklahoma Historical Society. NFPF grant. To be released by Milestone Films. Clips here and elswhere: 

The Hole (1962)
   (viewable here)

Animators John and Faith Hubley created "an observation," as the opening title credits put it, a meditation on the possibility of an accidental nuclear catastrophe. 

Notes on the Port of St. Francis (1951)
  (viewable here)

Frank Stauffacher introduced the Art in Cinema series at the San Francisco Museum of Art in 1947 and made work influencing a generation of West Coast filmmakers.   

[NFPF Avant-Garde Masters grant. Preserved by Pacific Film Archives.]

The Lunch Date (1989)  (viewable here)
Adam Davidson's Columbia University student film.

+ 

Martha Graham Early Dance Films (1931-1944)

"Heretic," 1931; "Frontier," 1936; "Lamentation," 1943; "Appalachian Spring," 1944.

Frontier was filmed by storied documentarian Julien Bryan [whose film Siege (1940) is on the Registry] and Jules Bucher. 

and

Planetbenjamin's YouTube upload says:  

Filmed in 1943 at Bennington College by Russian-born sculptor Simon Moselsio. His wife [Herta, by name. -- ed.], who took still photos of the same piece, explained "We used two movie cameras for the motion picture, so we could take the picture from different angles.... I had the still camera around my neck and made the stills at the same time."

The Library of Congress notes for its Herta Moselsio Collection of 11" x 14" photos also indicate Herta shot motion-picture film. At various places official and otherwise Lamentation photos and movie footage are identified as taken in 1935, 1937, 1939, and 1943. Everyone seems to agree, however, that Graham first performed the piece in 1930.  

Herta Moselsio
"Lamentation,"ca. summer 1937
Silver gelatin prints
Music Division 
Purchase, 2001 (233.2, 234.2)

# 

Amsterdam hotels for the March 30-April 2 symposium.

Discount rates end February 27.

For attendees of the Orphan Film Symposium who seek a hotel in Amsterdam, here is a list.

Commissioned by EYE, Preferred Hotel Reservations has created blocks of rooms at discounted rates at several hotels close to the Symposium's venue.

https://preferredreservations.nl/9th-orphan-film-symposium

---

The 9th Orphan Film Symposium

Date of the event: 30 March 2014 - 2 April 2014

@ EYE Film Institute Netherlands,  IJpromenade 1  

• Ibis Amsterdam Centre*** - from € 135.00

• Park Plaza Victoria Amsterdam**** - from € 165.00

• Inntel Hotels Amsterdam Centre**** - from € 135.00

• NH City Centre Amsterdam*** - from € 125.00

• Botel*** - from € 94.00

• Bastion Amsterdam Noord*** - from € 115.00

John Bailey's report on "Orphan Films at the Dunn" and PORTRAIT OF JASON

The great cinematographer and director John Bailey is also active in film preservation issues, serving on the National Film Preservation Board, where he and the also-great Caleb Deschanel (also a supporter of orphan film concerns) represent the American Society of Cinematographers.

I was pleased that Bailey attended the Orphan Film Symposium event that AMPAS hosted May 10-11, 2013, at the Academy Film Archive's Linwood Dunn Theater in Hollywood. We had a short but engaged conversation on the second day, most which was about the revelatory experience of watching the Academy and Milestone's restoration of the 1967 Shirley Clarke film Portrait of Jason.

Today's edition of "John's Bailiwick" blog, entitled "Orphan Films at the Dunn," is his report on that event.  Recommended reading!

http://www.theasc.com/blog/2013/12/02/orphan-films-at-the-dunn-portrait-of-jason/

http://www.theasc.com/blog/2013/12/02/orphan-films-at-the-dunn-portrait-of-jason/

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