The Story of the C.C.C. (produced no later than 1937), color/bw, sound. A documentary made by the Civilian Conservation Corps documenting life and work in several Massachusetts camps. The intertitle cards tell the story of the CCC from its inception to around 1937. Commentary by Stephen Slappe, Head of the Video & Sound Department at Pacific Northwest College of Art, Portland, Oregon, for the Orphans 2020 Film Symposium. sslappe@gmail.com Here on the eve of the Orphan Film Symposium on Water, Climate, and Migration, artist and film collector Stephen Slappe sends this piece for the occasion. He shares thoughts about and
Month: May 2020
Aqua Senegal
An understated but apt opening title card. Today the happy news arrived confirming that Orphans 2020 has the privilege to offer viewers a first look at a newly preserved film from Senegal. Director Samba Félix Ndiaye‘s short called simply Aqua (1989) is a quiet, elegant work, structured with a subtle “little reveal” at the end. Shot outside of his home town of Dakar, the 12-minute documentary has no dialogue. When Ndiaye died in 2009, he was considered a major figure in African documentary. On Tuesday, May 26, as part of the 6 to 8 pm Orphans Online screening session, Bill
The Live Program
NYU Cinema Studies & Tisch School of the Arts present Orphans Online, May 26-29, 2020 (All times are NYC, Eastern Daylight Time; GMT -4) #Orphans2020 The 12th Orphan Film Symposium on Water, Climate, and Migration originally to be held at Eye Filmmuseum Amsterdam in May 2020 became impossible to convene (due to the you-know-what). Most of the 60 scheduled presenters agreed to experiment with an online edition, mixing live talks and live-stream screenings with extensive texts and videos posted on this NYU website. Some of these extraordinary and polished video presentations are already posted. The world has changed. Thanks
Rolf Forsberg’s ARK (1970)
Mark Quigley (UCLA Film and Television Archive) brings our attention to his environmental awareness film of 1970 and tells us about its exceptional but under-appreciated filmmaker, Rolf Forsberg (1924-2017). Then watch the whole film. Rolf Forsberg’s Film Group 1 presents Ark. 20 min.
Paul Julien: A “Seasonal Worker” in the “Contact Zone”
Nico de Klerk (Utrecht University) and Andrea Stultiens (Hanze University of Applied Sciences) Paul Julien: A “Seasonal Worker” in the “Contact Zone” Notes on our research, screening, and performance that were to have been presented at the Orphan Film Symposium / Eye International Conference in May 2020. Nico de Klerk: Our topic is rooted in research that we, unbeknown to either of us until recently, are doing on the photographic and cinematographic legacy of Dutch, unaffiliated anthropologist-cum-filmmaker/photographer Paul Julien. Mine as part of the research project ‘Projecting knowledge’, on the use of the optical lantern in academic teaching and outreach,
[Read on. . . . ] Paul Julien: A “Seasonal Worker” in the “Contact Zone”
Why Water, Climate, and Migration?
Three of the program committee members for the 2020 Orphan Film Symposium preview Orphans Online, explaining why the three themes were selected and how orphan films in particular address them. The live streams of May 26-29 begin at 10am, 2pm, and 6pm (EDT) each day. Still other videos continue to be placed on this blog daily. Anna McCarthy, chair of Cinema Studies at NYU, leads a conversation with Giovanna Fossati (Eye Filmmuseum, Amsterdam), Jennifer Peterson (Woodbury University, Los Angeles), and Dan Streible (New York University, NYC). Audio only: Always curating, Giovanna made for the occasion a playlist on the water
Home Movies from Highland Beach, Maryland
Screening notes by Candace Ming and Ina Archer The selection of films we will screen at the Orphan Film Symposium on Water, Climate, and Migration comes from the National Museum of African American History & Culture (NMAAHC) collection. Zora Lathan and the Mayor of Highland Beach, William Sanders, brought them to the museum, which scanned them over the course of several Great Migration Home Movie Project (GMHMP) appointments. The movies of the incorporated beach community were shot between the early 1950s and the mid-1960s by the Pinson and Sewell families. Here’s a sample. https://vimeo.com/420099929/7c66bedb22 Highland Beach was established over 125 years
The Orphans Radio Hour with Stephanie Sapienza
Watch this and you will smile, then laugh, and then say “Wow!” And you will absolutely learn a lot. Truly. The educational broadcasters of Cold War America never tapped the power of a medium the way this 12 minute and 45 second Radio Hour does. What started as Stephanie Sapienza‘s proposal to play a 1954 radio piece about the Mississippi River for the Orphan Film Symposium on Water, Climate, and Migration transformed from a talk about linked data and digital humanities into . . . this! or go to vimeo.com/419551316 The only question is: Emmy or Peabody? “The NAEB Radio
[Read on. . . . ] The Orphans Radio Hour with Stephanie Sapienza
Chinese Cable Television (1976-1983) from New York’s Chinatown
Klavier Wang introduces the Asia Cinevision CCTV Collection and her compilation of clips from newly-digitized videotapes. Located on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, Chinatown remains one of the biggest and most vibrant Chinese communities in the United States. Using fuzzy video images found on Chinese Cable Television (CCTV) broadcast tapes, we can now take a look at images, both nostalgic and familiar, recorded there between 1976 and 1983. The historical Asian CineVision Records are now under the custodianship of the Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, part of New York University Special Collections in Bobst Library. A recent archival
[Read on. . . . ] Chinese Cable Television (1976-1983) from New York’s Chinatown
The Tennessee Valley Authority: “Built for and Owned by the People”
Bradley E. Reeves (Appalachian Media Archives) presents The Tennessee Valley Authority: Built for and Owned by The People This new 23-minute video, made for the Orphan Film Symposium on Water, Climate, and Migration, documents the history and controversies surrounding the TVA since the 1930s, compiling 8mm and 16mm home movie footage, 16mm documentary film clips, folk music recordings, excerpts from feature films, and local television newsfilm and videotape. The Tennessee Valley Authority Act of 1933 chartered the agency to modernize the region. It aimed to educate farmers in ways to improve crops, help replant forests, control forest fires, and improve
[Read on. . . . ] The Tennessee Valley Authority: “Built for and Owned by the People”
Restored films of Henri Plaat
Here’s a true gift from Eye Filmmuseum, delivered expressly for this online edition of the Orphan Film Symposium. The museum and NYU planned for nearly two years to have the symposium convene in conjunction with the Eye International Conference. Although forces have made all of us re-organize the best laid plans, we are grateful that Eye continues to share its remarkable collections and curatorial talents. Since the first Orphan Film event in 1999, the Filmmuseum has contributed to the symposium. Curator Mark Paul Meyer introduces us to Dutch visual artist Henri Platt and two of the ten short experimental films
Movies at War (U.S. Army Signal Corps, 1944)
For Orphans 2020 Online, NYU PhD candidate Tanya Goldman has created a video introduction to Movies at War (1944) — an episode of the U.S. Army Signal Corps “Film Bulletin” series. She discusses how the film’s depiction of the global transport of film reels allows viewers to make sense of a complex media infrastructure and how the use of portable 16mm projectors gave life to a multi-sited nontheatrical circuit. As the Movies at War narrator proclaims, army effort propelled “entertainment unreeling to span the universe!” Play her introduction (13 min.), with a 9 min. excerpt from Movies at War: https://vimeo.com/418490057 …And there’s
[Read on. . . . ] Movies at War (U.S. Army Signal Corps, 1944)
The Austin Flood (Thanhouser, 1911)
For Orphans 2020 Online, citizen archivist Ned Thanhouser (founder of the nonprofit Thanhouser Company Film Preservation, Inc.) has created a new introduction to a sobering 10-minute documentary record of a deadly Pennsylvania catastrophe filmed in 1911. Preserved by the Library of Congress, the 35mm print appears to be a complete copy of the footage the Thanhouser Company released just a week after the disaster. This “graphic picture of the calamity” is presented here with a new piano score by Ben Model, recorded for this Orphan Film Symposium debut. Play full-screen here, or go to vimeo.com/421600208. And a lost film. As Ned