The NYU Orphan Film Symposium convenes April 10-13, 2024, at Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens, NYC. Our theme: Work & Play. How have orphan works documented and envisioned these subjects throughout the history of moving images? Once again archivists, scholars, artists, curators, and others will convene to screen and discuss a plethora of preserved audiovisual works.
Registration is open to all. Click here to register. The symposium begins Wednesday evening, April 10, with an opening reception at 7pm and 8pm screening. April 11, 12, and 13, sessions all day, with an 8pm screening each night. (That’s 26 hours of programming. Plus catering, T-shirts, and more.)
The full program will be posted here, rolling out this week. Rather than overwhelm the page by listing all of the speakers selected, here’s the first portion, 24 presentations and 33 speakers.
- Ann Lyuwenyu Zhang (NYU) & Dino Everett (USC) Projecting 8.75mm Film Prints from China: News Report (1972) & animation Little Trumpet Player (1973)
- Eric Faden (Bucknell U) Preserving and Presenting Japanese Paper Films of the 1930s
- Ashley Dequilla (Filipino American Historical Society ) & Justin Williams (South Side Home Movie Project) The Estrella Alamar Audiovisual Collection: The Little Farmers of Reynoldsburg, Ohio (Nicholas Viernes, 1936)
- Karen Falk & Craig Shemin Work IS Play: Rarities from the Jim Henson Legacy & Jim Henson Company Collections, 1957-1987
- Hayley O’Malley (U of Iowa) & Allyson Field (U of Chicagto) Filmmakers of the Sojourner Truth Festival of the Arts, 1976 and 2023
- Sarah Bashir & Patrick Vonderau (U Halle / Stockholm U) Abandonware: LSD: Dream Emulator (Osamu Sato, 1998) on original PlayStation 1 console
- Ben Solovey (Film Preservation Society) Nintendo Film-Based Arcade Games, 1974-1978: Wild Gunman (Yokoi Gunpei, 1974), Kasco’s The Driver (1976)
- Patrick Ellis (U of Tampa) Industrializing Vision: The History of Polaroid (1978)
- Klavier Wang & Yen Yung-Cheng (National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Taiwan) Unveiling the True Face of a Parade: Formosan New Years procession / parade — outtakes (Fox Movietone News, 1930)
- Sophia Gräfe (Humboldt U, Berlin) & Carolin Pommert (Charité – Universitätsmedizin) Making Children Work: Medical Films from East Germany
- Charles Acland & Laura Pannekoek (Concordia U) Crawley Films and the Work of Canadian Resource Extraction
- Courtney Holschuh (Library of Congress) Nitrate Color Tests: Unidentified John Jones No. 122 (1930); Holiday in Mexico (1929) with Pickford & Fairbanks
- Rosemary Feurer (Northern Illinois U) & Charles Musser (Yale) Carl Marzani and The Sentner Story (1953)
- Luke Kuplowsky (York U) Where Will The Children Play? Urban Detritus and the Cine-Child; restoration debut of My Own Yard to Play In (Phil Lerner, 1959)
- Libertad Gills (U della Svizzera italiana, Switzerland; U de las Artes, Ecuador) The Working-class Films of Guayaquil’s Gustavo Valle: Un muñeco llamado Año viejo (1979) & El subamericano (1976)
- Howard J. Radzyner with rediscovered Roman Vishniac research films made with surgeon Philip N. Sawyer (1960s)
- Todd Wiener (UCLA) One in Seven: True Confessions of a Gay Fleshpouinder (John Canalli, 1988)
- Stephen Slappe (Dead Media Hour) East Bay Skateboarders, 1965 Home Movies
- Danielle Ash debuts her stop-motion 16mm film Toying (2024)
- Annabelle Aventurin Excavation Films of Bernard Nantet: [Tegdaoust Archaeological site, Mauritania] (197?)
- Aurore Spiers (U Chicago) Women Workers in the Media Archive: Citroën automobile factory films, 1914–1925
- Isabel Wschebor Pellegrino (U de la República) Cinematographic Archive and Labor in Uruguay: Films by Ferruccio Musitelli, 1970-1973
- David Sherman (U of Arizona) Painting and Scratching on Celluloid with Wayne Thiebaud: Make a Movie without a Camera (1954)
- Adina Brădeanu (Bodleian Libraries, U of Oxford) A Bucharest Film Studio Celebrates Its Fifth Anniversary: Noi la cinci ani / Us, Aged Five (Alexandru Sahia Studio, 1955)
+ The 2024 Helen Hill Award recipient ____________, the independent media artist selected by our colleagues at the University of South Carolina and past recipients.
Click here to register and enjoy three days and four nights of transnational camaraderie, sharing food, drink, screenings, music, and conversation with scores of fellow symposiasts.
Left: Bernard Nantet’s untitled film of Tegdaoust Archaeological site, Mauritania (197?). Right: My Own Yard to Play In (Phil Lerner, 1959). Submitted by Annabelle Aventurin (archivist) and Luke Kuplowsky (York U).