Program preview

Updated April 12, 2020.

Here’s the pre-Corona preview of the programming we anticipated for the 12th NYU Orphan Film Symposium —  Water, Climate, and Migration. Now we will migrate online later in May 2020. Although we cannot meet at Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam, much of the material will be presented in online forms, TBA. 

The original listings (below) were grouped by theme and topic. However, they give an indication of the rich diversity of films, presenters, subjects, and forms to be offered. 

OPENING ATTRACTIONS:
Recent Preservation from the Eye Collection

 Water and Movement: 68mm Mutoscope & Biograph restorations (in 8K!), presented by Frank Roumen and Giovanna Fossati (Eye), Katie Trainor (Museum of Modern Art NYC), and Simon Lund (Cineric). Also an 1897 68mm paper print from the Library of Congress, scanned by Cineric. 
Also, films of the 1953 North Sea flood disaster, curated by Rommy Albers (Eye). 

WATER
Opening remarks on Water, Climate, and Migration by Giovanna Fossati et al. (Eye), Floris Paalman (U of Amsterdam, Preservation and Presentation of the Moving Image), & Dan Streible (NYU) 

If the Antarctic Ice Cap Should Melt? — outtakes (Fox Movietone News, US, 1929) new scan from U of South Carolina Moving Image Research Collections; Introduced by Shiyang Jiang (NYU MIAP) with thanks to MIRC curator Greg Wilsbacher

THE SILENT WORLD
Sonia Shechet Epstein (Museum of the Moving Image NYC) Underwater Films from the Department of Tropical Research: Floyd Crosby and William Beebe’s Bathysphere in Haiti and Bermuda, 1927-1934  
Monique Toppin (U of the Bahamas) & Erica Carter (King’s College London) An Underwater Sense of Place: Bahamas Marine Locations in Cinema Memory 

Screening, with introduction by Ned Thanhouser
In de Tropische Zee (Thirty Leagues under the Sea) (Carl L. Gregory, Thanhouser, Submarine Film Corp., Bahamas/US, 1914)  from Eye Collections

RIVERS, DAMS, FLOODS
Stephanie Sapienza (U of Maryland) Unlocking the Airwaves: The National Association of Educational Broadcasters Radio Collection (1952-1973)
Joni Hayward Marcum (U of Wisconsin-Milwaukee) Nature and Energy, Control and Excess: American Infrastructural Cinema in the 1930s
Bradley E. Reeves (Appalachian Media Archives) Compilation video:  The Tennessee Valley Authority: “Built for and Owned by the People”     
Gregory A. Waller (Indiana U) & Andy Uhrich (Washington U) Irrigating and Reshaping America: Educational Films on the Power of Water, 1927-1948
Sonia García López (U Carlos III de Madrid) & David M. J. Wood (U Nacional Autónoma de México) Water, Catastrophe, and the Authoritarian-Humanitarian State: Las inundaciones en Barcelona (NO-DO, Spain, 1962) and Inundación (ICB, Bolivia, 1966)  

Amy Herzog (Queens College CUNY) Spindrift’s Wet Dream: Puget Sound and the Pornographic Imaginary. Spindrift (Richard Kornbacher, 1973) and [Kornbacher home movies] (1960s-70s)
Sofia Elizalde (Cineclub Rosario) Immigrant Women in the Early 20th Century and Erotic Exploitation: A Rediscovered “French” Film from Argentina ¡Mujer, tú eres la belleza! o La Mujer y el Arte [Woman, You Are Beauty! or Women and Art] (Camilo Zaccaría Soprani, AR, 1928)
Petra Belc (Zagreb) The Consolations and Horrors of the Sea: Restoring the Amateur Experimental Super 8 Films of Tatjana Ivančić, (Yugoslavia, 1970s)  

Anke Mebold  (Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum) Unseen Films of the River Lahn by the Inventor of the Leica Camera (Oskar Barnack, DE, 1914-1920);  +  Rund um Die Welt in 2 Stunden [Around the World in 2 Hours] (IT/FR/DE, ca. 1914)
Kimberly Tarr (NYU Libraries) From the Communist Party USA Collection: Let’s Get Acquainted (Kyiv Popular Science Film Studio, USSR, ca. 1972)  
Oliver Gaycken (Medicine on Screen) introduces Countdown to Collision (Arlie Productions, GWU Medical Center, 1970)
Bill Brand (BB Optics/NYU) and French Institute Alliance Francaise, debut the newly preserved Aqua (Samba Félix Ndiaye, Senegal, 1989)
Laura Kissel (U of South Carolina) moderator
+
Endpiece : Deliquescence, live projection and sound performance by A Clockface Orange (Rachael Guma and Genevieve HK) with Gabriel Guma (New York) 


CLIMATE
10:00  DARKENING DAYS OF PROGRESS
Jennifer L. Peterson (Woodbury U) Wheels of Progress: National Park Roads in US Government Films from the 1920s: Wheels of Progress (USDA, 1927); Roads in Our National Parks (USDA, 1927)
Oliver Gaycken (U of Maryland) & Sarah Eilers (US National Library of Medicine) The Darkening Day: US Public Health Service Films on Air Pollution, 1960-1969.  
Angela Saward (Wellcome Collection) It Takes Your Breath Away (Dr. M. Catterall, UK, 1964) medical community response to air pollution death 

NATURFILME
Nicholas Baer (U of Groningen), Katerina Korola (U of Chicago), Katharina Loew (U Mass Boston), and Philipp Stiasny (Film U Babelsberg Konrad Wolf) The Natural World Viewed: Early German Images of the Anthropocene
Naturschutz: Tieraufnahmen [Nature Reserve: Animal Photography] (Hermann Hähnle, 1915–1920); Bilder aus Grönland [Pictures of Greenland] (UFA, 1929); Die Aran-Inseln [The Aran Islands] (Heinrich Hauser, 1928)

ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
Julianna Villarosa (U of Iowa) Beyond the Frame: Neglected Films, Unnamed Filmmakers, and Unseen Islanders of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Atmospheric Nuclear Tests Archive
Andrés Levinson (Museo del Cine, Buenos Aires) Project for the Preservation of Argentine Antarctic Cinema: Amateur and Semi-professional Footage from Expedición Polar Argentina (1964-65)
Alice Plutino (U of Milan) Raising Environmental Awareness in Italy: An Untitled Documentary about Paper Recycling in Brescia (198?) and How This Super 8 Film Was Restored 

Carolina Cappa (Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola, San Sebastian, Spain) Project Nitrato Argentino (Museo del Cine Pablo Ducros Hicken, 2019)  

Alexander Markov (Ukulele Films, Russia) Constructing Hydroelectric Power Stations in the USSR and Egypt: documentary rushes and amateur films (1951-1964)
Eiren Caffall (climate-change journalist) with her film Becoming Ocean (Scott K. Foley, US, 2018)

ARCHIVAL SCIENCES
Linda Tadic (Digital Bedrock / UCLA) The Environmental Impact of Digital Archives
Floris Paalman (U of Amsterdam) & Luna Hupperetz (Vrije U Amsterdam) A Cultural Ecology Approach to Archiving: The Case of Cineclub Vrijheidsfilms (1966-1986) at the International Institute of Social History 
Oleksandr Makhanets (Urban Media Archive, Center for Urban History, Lviv, Ukraine) The [Unarchiving] Program: A Decayed Amateur Film Becomes Derevo (The Tree, Oleh Chornyi and Hennadiy Khmaruk, UKR, 2019)   

EVENING SCREENING — The HELEN HILL AWARDs:
Julie Hubbert (U of South Carolina) presents the awards to recipients Martha Colburn and Jaap Pieters, who will introduce their films.  Simona Monizza (Eye) moderator
+
Super 8 home movies of New Orleans pre- and post-Katrina flooding (Helen Hill, 2001-04) + Rain Dance (Helen Hill, 1990) from Harvard Film Archive


MIGRATION
Migrations American (African, Asian, European, Latin American)
Ina Archer (Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture) The Great Migration Project: Town of Highland Beach, Maryland Home Movies (1950s-60s)
Jesse Lerner (Claremont Colleges) A Semi-Amateur Documentary on Migrant Labor along the US-Mexican Border: Hands Across the Border (Great Western Sugar Co., US, 1963)
Klavier J. Wang (NYU) Awakening Immigrant Voices: Asia CineVision’s Manhattan Chinatown Community Television, 1977-1983  
Juana Suárez (NYU) Seeing and Hearing Migrant Labor and Class Strata in the Equine Industry: Video from an Unmade Documentary (2010)    
Anna Ida Orosz (Hungarian National Film Archive) Ah, Amerika! Lapok a kivándorlók zsebkönyvéből [Pages from Emigrants’ Diaries] (István Orosz, HU, 1984)

EXILES, REFUGEES, DIASPORA
Iga Harasimowicz (Polish National Film Institute) & Grazia Ingravalle (Brunel U London) Polish Diaspora through the Prism of Archival Films of the 1930s.  
Anna Leippe (Haus des Dokumentarfilms, Stuttgart) The “Daheim in der Fremde” Project: Amateur Films of Refugee Camps, in Southwest Germany, 1946-1969 
Kay Hoffmann (U of Offenbach) RhInédits and the Kinemathek of the Upper Rhine Valley: Amateur Films from Alsace, Baden, and Northern Switzerland

BIOMETRICS, INVADERS, MIGRANTS  
Nico de Klerk (Utrecht U) & Andrea Stultiens (Hanze U of Applied Sciences) Anthropologist Paul Julien: Dutch “Seasonal Worker” in an African “Contact Zone”  — Between the Nile and the Congo: From Cairo to Ituri Forest and Mount Kilimanjaro (Paul Julien, NL, 1934)
Christian Rossipal (NYU) (Un)documenting the State Archive: The Making of an Information Video for Asylum Seekers.
Medicinsk Åldersbedömning [Age Assessment], (National Board of Forensic Medicine, Sweden, 2017) 

CHILEAN IMMIGRANTS AND EXILES
Brenda Ibáñez Toledo (independent / Cineteca Nacional de Chile) Immigrants and Exiles: Home Movies of Two Chilean Families. The Melzers (1940s) and the Tobars (1970s)  
Jose Miguel Palacios (U Alberto Hurtado) & Elizabeth Ramirez-Soto (San Francisco State U) Performing Rites and Folklore in Chilean Exile Cinema – – excerpts from Dos años en Finlandia (Angelina Vázquez, Finland, 1975); Pilsner & Piroger (Kjell Jerselius and Claudio Sapiaín, Sweden, 1982); Re-torno (David Benavente, Netherlands, 1983) 

Matt Soar (Concordia U Montreal) Lost Leaders #21:  ASANASA (Matt Soar, 2019) 
+  a special announcement about 2022

 .