The whole program for April 10-13, 2024.
NYU Orphan Film Symposium
All events at Museum of the Moving Image
Register here. (Day rates available.)
Download the 12-page booklet here.
WEDNESDAY, April 10
7:00 pm Opening Reception
8:00 pm Welcome: Eric Hynes (MoMI), Dan Streible (NYU)
Fernando Martín Peña (Filmoteca Buenos Aires) introduces
Hasta la Vuelta (Antonio Ber Ciani, Argentina, 1936)
Sofía Elizalde (independent archivist) Finding Lost Films in Rosario
Screening: La vida a oscuras (2023, Argentina) 74′ [trailer] Enrique Bellande’s profile of a film collector
Juana Suárez (NYU) moderator
THURSDAY, April 11
9:30 am Welcome to the Orphan Film Symposium at MoMI (again!)
Dan Streible (NYU) introduces Barbara Miller (MoMI) The IATSE Collection
9:45 am Labwork & Leisure
Howard J. Radzyner (Radzyner, et al., LLC) The Vishniac-Sawyer Thrombosis Research Films, Newfound Work (1960s)
Angela Saward (Wellcome Collection) Medicine at Work and Play: A ‘Hidden Cinema’ (UK, 1931-1968)
Sonia Epstein (MoMI Science Film Curator) moderator
11am break
11:20 am Technologies at Play
Courtney Holschuh (LOC) Nitrate Multicolor Tests: Unidentified John Jones no. 122 (1930), Holiday in Mexico (1929)
Patrick Ellis (U of Tampa) Industrializing Vision: The History of Polaroid (1978)
Ben Solovey (Film Preservation Society) Battle Sharks and Wild Gunmen: The Challenges of Film-Based Arcade Games (1974-78)
Sarah Bashir & Patrick Vonderau (U Halle) Working Memory: Rethinking Orphan Works in Light of Interactivity. LSD: Dream Emulator (1998) for PS1
1:00 pm Lunch at MoMI
2:15 pm Moving Image Technologies at Work, in Asia
Koto music performed by Yoko Reikano Kimura (with thanks to the Lisa Lu Foundation)
Eric Faden & Jackson Rubiano (Bucknell U) Preserving and Presenting Japanese Paper Films
Ann Lyuwenyu Zhang (NYU) & Dino Everett (USC) Thinking Out of Sync: A Presentation of the Chinese Obsolete Film Format 8.75mm
Klavier Wang (National Yang Ming Chiao Tung U, Taiwan) Unveiling the True Face of a Parade in Formosan New Years procession–outtakes (Fox Movietone News, 1930)
4pm break
4:20 pm Creative Amateurs around the World
Sofía Elizalde (independent archivist, Rosario) Nostalgia for the Modern World: How to Instruct Operators and (also) Entertain the Audience with the Advantages of “La soldadura autógena” Excerpts from La Soldadura Autógena (1939?)
Maria Vinogradova (NYU/Pratt Institute) A Life Worth Filming: Soviet Ballet Dancers and Their 8mm Cameras
Sigridur Regína Sigurthorsdottir (Icelandic Home Movie Collective) Sjósetning [Launch] (Þóra Kristjóns, ca. 1970-78)
Christina Dovolis (York U) Floating Relics (2022) and the Jacobs Family Films (1950s-90s)
Zhang Zhen with Momo Li & Jenny Hsu (NYU) Making and Revisiting Zhang’s Student Film, Mellanrum [Gap] (Sweden, 1985)
6:00 pm Dinner
8:00 pm The Spirit of the Helen Hill Award
Welcome from MoMI Executive Director Aziz Isham
Karen Falk & Craig Shemin Work Is Play: Rarities from The Jim Henson Legacy & Jim Henson Company Collections
Jodie Mack (Dartmouth) Artisanal Computer Animation: Symmetry (James Browning, 1972) and outs
Danielle Ash (filmmaker) Toying (2024) a new 16mm film with live music
Jeremy Rourke (Helen Hill Award; Kodak grant) performs his music and “live cinema”: Lyrics on Paper (2014), Flower Tower (2024), The Rain Is a Friend of Mine (2024) & You’re Not Listening (2020)
FRIDAY, April 12
9:30 am Making Children Work; Teens Making Work
Sophia Gräfe (Humboldt-U Berlin) & Carolin Pommert (Charité Berlin) Making Children Work: Medical Films from East Germany. Die psychologische Führung des Kindes im Krankenhaus (1976)
Katerina Kampoli (CNC) The Centre Familial De Jeunes de Vitry Films
Et après (And Then, 1969), Zoo à delinquents (1975), Babel Circus (1971)
Joseph Clark (Simon Fraser U) moderator
11am break
11:20 am Fieldwork: Excavation and Extraction
Annabelle Aventurin (independent archivist) Excavation Films of Bernard Nantet: [Tegdaoust Archaeological site, Mauritania] (197?)
Tania López Espinal (Cineteca Nacional de México) & Mariana Hernández Blanca (Salvamento Arqueológico Tren Maya) Florencia en Cualác. Cualác, Cueva Ostocama (1951)
Charles R. Acland & Laura Pannekoek (Concordia U) Crawley Films and the Work of Canadian Resource Extraction
Saguenay (1962) & Searching (1968)
1:00 pm Lunch
2:15 pm Cine Amateurs at Work, in Latin America
Isabel Wschebor Pellegrino (U de la República) Cinematographic Archive and Labor in Uruguay: Films by Ferruccio Musitelli. Trabajadores de la construcción (1970) & Huelga General (1973)
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)
Lucía Malandro (Archivistas Salvajes; Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola) Los subterráneos Cuba. Nace una Plaza & Parrandas de Camajuaní (Miguel Secades & Miguel García, 1988)
Juana Suárez (NYU MIAP) moderator
3:50 pm break
4:15 pm Men and Women at Work and Play
Roger C. Lansing & Caleb Simonds (National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum) A Lost-and-Found Story From Cooperstown: Jimmie Foxx Home Movies, Japan (1934)
Anthony Gonzalez (NYU) & Kimberly O’Quinn (USC MIRC) The Walter S. Montgomery Collection: Startex: Men and Women at Work and Play (ca. 1940) and Spartan Mill as Community (1938)
Ashley Dequilla (Filipino American Historical Society of Chicago) The Estrella Alamar Audiovisual Collection. Little Farmers (1936), score by Les Talusan (2024)
Stephen Slappe (Dead Media Hour) East Bay Skateboarders, 1965 Home Movies
6:00 pm Dinner on your own
8:00 pm Arts on Their Minds
Tanya Goldman (Hunter College) & Elena Rossi-Snook (NYPL) A Piscatorial Symphony: Fish Market (1955)
Bill Morrison (Hypnotic Pictures) The Vanguard Tapes (excerpts) (2024)
Hayley O’Malley (U of Iowa) & Allyson Field (U of Chicago) Art on Her Mind: The Sojourner Truth Festival of the Arts, 1976 and 2023
with filmmakers Monica Freeman & Louise Fleming
[Earliest recorded interview with Faith Ringgold] (John Wise, 1972)
Valerie: A Woman, An Artist, A Philosophy of Life (Monica Freeman, 1975)
Just Briefly (Louise Fleming, 1975)
Spin Cycle (Aarin Burch, 1991)
SATURDAY, April 13
10:00 am Workers of the World
Aurore Spiers (U Chicago) Women Workers in French Automobile Factory Films, 1914–1925
Jacob Perlin (Film Desk/Cinema Conservancy) CPUSA Films Found in the UK: The People’s Holiday (United May Day Committee, 1947?) & What’s Happening in Harlem? (1949)
Rosemary Feurer (Northern Illinois U) & Charles Musser (Yale) Carl Marzani and The Sentner Story (1953)
Galarina Dolgovykh (NYU) moderator
11:40 am break
12:00 pm Shenanigans
Adina Brădeanu (U of Oxford) A Film Studio in Bucharest Celebrates Its Fifth Anniversary. Noi la cinci ani / Us, Aged Five (Romania, 1955)
Masha Godovannaya (Smolny Beyond Borders) The Archive of Necrorealist Evgeny Yufit
Todd Wiener (UCLA) One in Seven: True Confessions of a Gay Fleshpouinder (John Canalli, 1988)
Natalie Snoyman (Mill Valley Public Library) Beyond Invention: [Vibrabath advertising film] (Hal Schwartz, ca. 1957)
1:40 pm Lunch
2:45 pm Soundworks
Antonia Lant (NYU) The Pyramid Pictures Corporation, 1920-1922
Donald Crafton (U of Notre Dame) “Leo Roars!”
Shane Fleming (film collector) Drawing Room Talkies: DeVry Cine-Tone Films, 1928-1929
Susan Delson (film historian, arts writer) Work and Wartime, Soundies Style (1941-1944)
4:15 pm break
4:35 pm Kids at Play
Jennifer Horne (UC Santa Cruz) About Our Children (U.S. Children’s Bureau, 1921)
David Sherman (U of Arizona) Painting and Scratching on Celluloid with Wayne Thiebaud: Make a Movie Without a Camera (1954)
Adrianne Finelli (Prelinger Archives) & Jon Shibata (BAMPFA) See the Forest and the Trees: The Creative Work of the Fillinger Family. Celebration of Life: Trees (Paul Fillinger, 1973)
Wanda Strauven (Columbia U) moderator
6:00 pm Dinner in the museum
8:00 pm Farewell to Work & the Restoration of Play
Remarks by Dana Polan (Martin Scorsese Chair, NYU)
Luke Kuplowsky (York U) Where Will The Children Play?
Urban Detritus and the Cine-Child in My Own Yard to Play In (1959)
Kimberly Tarr (NYU) Introduces the 16mm preservation premiere of Farewell, Etaoin Shrdlu (David Loeb Weiss, 1980)
Sasha Waters (VCU) How to Restore a Film that Never Was? [sneak preview of a work in progress]
