Because it was too perfect of a match, this presentation about the films of Tatjana Ivančić was programmed adjacent to the Helen Hill Award session with Martha Colburn and Jaap Pieters. All the keywords were there for Orphans interests: Super 8 film, experimental, amateur, woman, cine club, new preservation, restoration (and Austrian Film Museum — host of a special Orphans 2019, Radicals). The title Super Super 8s alludes to filmmaker/scholar/curator Melinda Stone, an important influence on the “orphan film movement” (a term I heard for the first time when she spoke at Orphans 2 in 2001). Her Super Super 8 Film Festival began touring in 1996. As it happens, an interview with Stone talking about the festival was published this month: Danny Plotnick, Super 8: An Illustrated History (Rare Bird Books).
The devotion to the particular gauge, amateur cinema, and the avant garde was evident in Petra Belc‘s proposal to present at the Orphan Film Symposium, where others interested in such work gather. “As it is a small but world-wide community, each meeting of such professionals always feels somewhat like a re-creation of the 1929 congress at La Sarraz, and I am convinced the Eye International Conference/Orphan Film Symposium possesses the same aura,” she wrote. When the world changed in March 2020 it looked likely she would not be able to share the work. The technical restoration work was suspended, like so much else. But by seeming force of will Belc and Nadja Šičarov of the Austrian Film Museum completed the work just before the May 27 premiere.
Orphans Online
3:30 pm, Wednesday, May 27, 2020
Super Super 8s
Click to enlarge, or view at vimeo.com/431032937.
Petra Belc (Cineclub Zagreb) & Nadja Šičarov (Austrian Film Museum)
The Maritime Mini-documentaries: Restoring the Amateur Experimental Super 8 Sound Films of Tatjana Ivančić
The live webcast included the first look at the Austrian Film Museum restorations of Ekvinocij [Equinox] (1973) and Varijacije [Variations] (1975). For access to these and other films by Tatjana Ivančić, inquire with Österreichisches Filmmuseum, Vienna.
Bios
Petra Belc holds a PhD in Film Studies from the University of Zagreb, and in her thesis she explores The Poetics of Yugoslav Experimental Cinema from the 1960s and 1970s. Previously she attained a degree in women’s studies and an MA in philosophy and comparative religion, and for many years worked as a movie trailer editor. Her research interests encompass feminisms, contemporary art, philosophy of image/making, and the archiving and preservation of small-gauge films. She reads and writes in Zagreb, Croatia, where she lives with her husband and their baby daughter.