Happy Amateur Movie Day!
The 2024 Orphan Film Symposium featured more amateur films than any previous gathering. Filmmaker and researcher Libertad Gills made this trailer for the occasion, introducing us to this exemplar of amateur film in Guayaquil.
The symposium showcased amateur films in multiple modes. In addition to quintessential home movies of family life, we also watched movies made to document professional work: archaeology in Mexico and Mauritania; ballet in Europe and the USSR; medical procedures; boat building; computer experiments; textile manufacture. Amateur films used as therapy for at-risk youth in midcentury France, and as labor activism in Uruguay. We saw cineclub productions from Cuba and unique solo voices from small towns in Iceland and the United States. Narrative, documentary, experimental,
Even reading a filmography of a selection of works conveys the thrilling variety of ways amateur films have engaged the world for a century.
Saturday (1931) “A film by R. H. Bolton, A. S. Amsden, J. C. Read.” 11 min. 9.5mm, b&w, silent; presented by Angela Saward. wellcomecollection.org/works/y6zghd67
Sjósetning [Launch] (Þóra Kristjóns, ca. 1970-78) 8mm, color, silent; presented by Sigga Sigurthorsdottir (Icelandic Home Movie Collective). A compilation created by a woman who brought her camera whenever the family business launch a new vessel. From the Technical Museum of East Iceland.
Lucía Malandro (Archivistas Salvajes; Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola, Spain)
Los subterráneos Cuba. More at wp.nyu.edu/orphanfilm/2024/04/02/salvajes/.
Nace una Plaza (A Square Is Born, 1988) and Parrandas de Camajuaní (1988). Two 16mm films from Cineclub Cubanacan, co-directed by Miguel Secades and Miguel García. Scanned 2024 by Archivistas Salvajes at EQZE. Digital restoration by Daniel Angeles.
Anthony Gonzalez (NYU) & Kimberly O’Quinn (USC MIRC) presented two by filmmaker Walter S. Montgomery Sr., preserved by the University of South Carolina, Moving Image Research Collections. Startex: Men and Women at Work and at Play (ca. 1938-39) 12 min. 16mm, b&w, silent. Spartan Mill as a Community (ca.1938) 60 min. 16mm, color, silent. Read more here.
Ashley Dequilla (Filipino American Historical Society of Chicago) presented extraordinary rediscoveries from the Estrella Alamar Audiovisual Collection. Nicholas Viernes, an immigrant farmer took up filmmaking in the 1930s. He also performs in The Little Farmers of Reynoldsburg, Ohio (Sep. 10-14, 1936) 15 min. 16mm, color, b&w. A small sample streams here.
Annabelle Aventurin (independent archivist, Paris) Excavation Films by Bernard Nantet: [Tegdaoust Archaeological site, Mauritania] (197?) and [Excavations in Tichitt and Tegdaoust, Mauritania] (1973) color, silent, 23 min.
Tania López Espinal (Cineteca Nacional de México) & Mariana Hernández Blanca (Salvamento Arqueológico Tren Maya)
Cualác, Cueva Ostocama (1951) 14 mins. 16mm, b/w, silent. Photography by César Lizardi, Footage of Emilia Florencia Jacobs Müller (on horseback), colleagues, and younger expedition workers; shots of cave drawings, glyphs, a stele, displays of codex pages, artifacts including a mask (resembling the drawing on the cover of Müller’s 1958 book El códice de Cualac). Source: Cineteca Nacional de México. Read José Solé’s post “Florencia in Cualác.” .
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) 8 min. Super 8, color, silent.
+ El subamericano (1976) 14 min. 16mm, color, sound. Camera and editing: Vicente Bowen. Sound: Martín Baus. Cast: Marta Torres Salazar (the woman), Nelson Hoppe (her husband), Matilde de Rivas, Armando Delgado (second clown), Elba Abad (party host). Source: Guayaquil Analógic film collective.
Katerina Kampoli (CNC) The Centre Familial De Jeunes de Vitry Films, 1950-1983. Three 16mm sound films.
Zoo à delinquents (1975) by Jean Marc Bringuier, “with the collaboration of all the young people, their educators, their dog, their psychiatrist, and the involuntary participation of a film crew.”
Et après (And Then, 1969) by Jean-Francis Fernandès. Cast: Patrice Lebon. Music: D. Dupont, with Club Electronique Vitry.
Babel Circus (1971) by Jean-Marc Bringuier, documenting his visit to New York City.
Maria Vinogradova (NYU/Pratt Institute) Soviet Ballet Dancers and Their 8mm Cameras. Home movies shot by star dancers Yuri Soloviev and Tatiana Legat in the 1960s. 8mm and 16mm. These include travels in Paris, where superstar Rudolf Nureyev is glimpsed. [Reel S-001 Yuri Soloviev home movies – beach scenes, Golovinka] (1968) includes young Mikhail Baryshnikov doing hand-stands in the sand by the Black Sea.
Huelga General (Uruguay: 27 de junio 1973) 16mm, color/b&w, (sound lost).
Director: Ferruccio Musitelli. Production: SUNCA (Union of Construction Workers). Source: Laboratorio de Preservación Audiovisual, Universidad de la República, Isabel Wschebor Pellegrino.
Christina Dovolis & Cléo Sallis-Parchet (York University)
Floating Relics (2022) 7 min. A video about the Jacobs family film collection, documenting the Niagara borderlands from the 1950s through the 1990s. vimeo.com/767513055
These are only a dozen of the presentations at the symposium.
See the full program for Orphans 2024: Work & Play.
