July 3, 2022: Here’s the actual “run of show” for the June 15-18 symposium. The program evolved as the event unfolded, with unforeseen films and even speakers added. Each session began with one of the series of trailers, first generated by Long Xi Vlessing, with logo by Valeria Kriletich.
Below also includes some links to streaming video (predating the symposium) and relevant web pages. Recordings made of and at the symposium will be added in new posts.
It all happened in the de Sève Cinema, Concordia University, Tiohtià:ke/Montreal.
Wednesday, June 15
8pm Opening screening: Making Counter-Archives
Haidee Wasson (Concordia U) Bienvenue à Tiohtià:ke
Dan Streible (NYU) Welcome to the Orphan Film Symposium
The Vulnerable Media Lab presents
Iré a Santiago (Sara Gómez, Cuba, 1964)
Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industrias Cinematográficos (ICAIC)
New restoration introduced by Susan Lord (Queen’s U)
Making Counter-Archives
Debbie Ebanks Schlums and Janine Marchessault (York U)
8 films by Artists in Residence with the Archive/Counter-Archive Project
Federica Foglia, Innesti Neri e Bianchi [White and Black Grafts] (2022)
Jean-Pierre Marchant, A Life on the Borderlands (2021)
Sharon Isaac & Kelsey Diamond, Thunder Rolling Home (2019)
Pamila Matharu, stuck between an archive and an aesthetic (2019)
Jennifer Dysart, Keewatin Missions films (1950s) & Caribou in the Archive (2019)
Chris Chong, Propaganda (2021-22)
Nada El-Omari, Yaffa (2019)
Nadine Valcin, Origines (2021)
Roundtable with Jennifer Dysart, Jean-Pierre Marchand, Pamila Matharu, Nadine Valcin, moderated by Janine Marchessault
Thursday, June 16
9:30 am On Counter-Archives
opening remarks Monika Kin Gagnon (Concordia U)
9:30am to 11am Black Atlantic/Black Pacific: Archives, Restitution, Activism
Susan Lord, Jenn Norton, Brandon Hocura, Michelle O’Halloran, & Rebecca Gordon (Queen’s U) Apparitions: Vulnerable Media Lab Projects and Sara Gómez
María Fernanda Carrillo Sánchez (U Autónoma de la Ciudad de México) & Isabel Restrepo Jaramillo (National U of Colombia, Medellín. ) Magnetic Bojayá: Audiovisual Memories of the Atrato and Colombian Pacific Archive (1994-2008)
Juana Suárez (NYU MIAP APEX) moderator
11:30am to 1pm First Looks
Melissa Dollman (Tribesourcing Southwest Film Project), Rhiannon Sorrell and Michael Parrish (Diné College) with Jennifer Jenkins (U of Arizona) The Tribesourcing Southwest Film Project: A Diné Response to the Sponsored Educational Film The Navajo Moves into the Electronic Age (General Dynamics, ca. 1968)
Tom Child, N̓a̱msg̱a̱mk̓ala (Kwagu’ł First Nation) & Joseph Clark (Simon Fraser U) The Ethnographic Films of George Hunt
• Totem Land (J. B. Scott, Associated Screen News, 1927)
new restoration by Canadian Educational, Sponsored & Industrial Film Project; live musical accompaniment by José María Serralde Ruiz [silent video here]
• Boas on Human Capabilities–outtakes (Fox Movietone News, 1928) new 6.5k scan by Moving Image Research Collections (U of South Carolina) [SD video here; 2 min.]
• Kwagu’ł film and audio recordings (Franz Boas with George Hunt, 1930)
Kester Dyer (Carleton U) moderator
2:45 pm to 4:30pm Africa (as seen from abroad)
CK Ming & Bleakley McDowell (Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, NMAAHC)
Lebert “Sandy” Bethune’s Pan Africa (1971) outtakes and rushes
Mark Williams (Dartmouth College) & Aboubakar Sanogo (Carleton U) U.S. Archival Moving Images of Africa via the Media Ecology Project
Catherine Russell (Concordia U) moderator
5pm Black is . . . ?
Teddy Reeves & Ina D. Archer (NMAAHC) “Photographed By Willie P. Jackson”: Portraiture and Experimental Cinematography in Willie P. Jackson’s Church of God films (ca. late 1940s)
Mark Quigley (UCLA Film and Television Archive) Social Justice Activism and Surveillance Television: [Malcolm X press conference on deadly police raid in Los Angeles] (newsfilm via LAPD, 1962) read about | watch video
Eric Dawson & John Morton (Tennessee Archive of Moving Image and Sound) Melungeon Home Movies: An Intimate Look at a Minority Group in Rural Appalachia. Newly preserved Vardy Community Footage (David Swartz, 1946-47) video excerpt
8pm Screening: Reanimating Histories
Paul Gordon (Library and Archives Canada) introduces Bill Morrison‘s film Buried News (2021); newsreels documenting US racial divide (1917-1920); from the Dawson City Collection [sample of footage used: 1917 silent protest in New York]
Philip Hoffman (Film Farm: Independent Imaging Retreat)x introduces Your New Pig Is Down the Road (Helen Hill, 1999) hand-processed 16mm
Helen Hill Award and Kodak grant to filmmaker and animator
Kelly Gallagher
A program of short works:
A Herstory of Women Filmmakers (2009),
More Dangerous Than a Thousand Rioters: The Revolutionary Life of Lucy Parsons (2016),
Pine and Genesee (2021),
From Ally to Accomplice: A Film in Three Movements (2015),
Ceallaigh at Kilmainham (2013),
We Had Each Other (2021) [teaser],
In the Future (2021) [screener]
Dan Streible (NYU) moderator
with Susan Courtney (U of South Carolina)
Friday, June 17
9:30am to 11am Hidden at Home
Madison Brown (Northwestern U) Complicating the “Home” in Home Movies from Lac La Ronge Indian Residential School in Saskatchewan (Rev. George W. Fisher, 1930s)
Tara Merenda Nelson (Visual Studies Workshop) Hidden Video History of Urban Renewal in Rochester: Linda and Brenda Benson Tape 1 (Nancy Rosin, 1978)
Ryan Conrad (Carleton U) The Death of the Videomaker: Gay Men’s AIDS Tapes of 1980s and ’90s Canada
May Chew (Concordia U) moderator
11:30am to 1pm . . . and its Discontents
DeeDee Halleck (UC San Diego emerita) & Henning Engelke (Philipps U Marburg) Incarcerated Youth: The Otisville Film Club, 1969-1972
A Madman’s World (Kenneth Brown & Charles Smith, 1971)
The Bloody Crime Crusher (John Vann & James Spann, 1971)
Stephanie Sapienza (U of Maryland) & Matt St. John (U of Wisconsin – Madison) Voices of Discontent: Recovering a 1968 Detroit Audio Collection. Seeds of Discontent (1968)
Liz Miller (Concordia U) moderator
2:15pm to 3:45pm Cine útil
David M.J. Wood (U Nacional Autónoma de México) & Sonia García López (U Carlos III de Madrid) A Call to Emancipation: Liberating Discourses in Mexican and Spanish Student Films of the 1950s.
• Eres libre (J. Ramiro Girón, Richard Kent Jones, and Alfonso Robles Landi; Mexico, 1956) from CREFAL
• Quince minutos (María Elisa Corona, Spain, 1955) from Filmoteca Española
live musical accompaniment by José María Serralde Ruiz (MX)
Rafael de Luna Freire & Laura Batitucci (Fluminense Federal U) Cinematographer Esdras Baptista’s Film Collection (1940s-80s): Rediscovering a Brazilian Communist Filmmaker;
music performed live by Landscape of Hate featuring Vivek Venkatesh & Jessie Beier
4:15pm to 6pm Work & Play Internationale
Liz Czach (U of Alberta) Repatriation and the Arctic Films of Betty and Lewis Rasmussen: Arctic Holiday (1948) [or, The Travel Lecture Film as an Extractive Practice]
Masha Salazkina (Concordia U) & Charles Tepperman (U of Calgary) Tracing the International Amateur Cinema Network in the 1930s. The newly restored Memmortigo? (Delmir de Caralt, Spain, 1933) [metadata at amateurcinema.org]
Global Histories of Radical Worker Films:
Tanya Goldman (Bowdoin College) [Miners, Miners; conflict between workers and troops, workers and police] FILMS 001 compilation (ca. 1931-1950s)
Dino Everett (USC) Camp Kinderland (New York and Los Angeles Workers’ Film and Photo Leagues, ca. 1932) music by José María Serralde
Diane Wei Lewis (Washington U) Prokino Sakuhin-shū (Japan, 1929-1932)
Bjørn Sørenssen (NTNU) Norwegian workers film footage (1930s)
Charles Acland (Concordia U) moderator
8:00 pm Screening: Women of Cuba & Suriname: New Film Restorations
The Vulnerable Media Lab presents
Guanabacoa: Crónica de mi familia (Sara Gómez, ICAIC, Cuba, 1966)
New restoration introduced by Susan Lord (Queen’s U)
Luna Hupperetz (independent researcher, Amsterdam), Floris Paalman (U of Amsterdam) & Nadia Tilon (former member, LOSON, National Organisation of Surinamese in the Netherlands) present
Strijd op 16mm (A Battle Restored) (Kiki Ho, Ananta Khemradj, & Luna Hupperetz, 2022)
Oema foe Sranan / Vrouwen van Suriname (At van Praag, Cineclub Vrijheidsfilms & Henk Lalji, LOSON, 1978, Suriname and NL)
Oema foe Sranan (Women of Suriname) has been restored by Eye Filmmuseum in collaboration with the International Institute of Social History.
Saturday, June 18
10:00am to 11:15am Missing Pieces
Annabelle Aventurin (Ciné-Archives, Paris) Ballade aux sources (North Africa, 1965):
The Never-released First Film by Med Hondo (co-directed with Bernard Nantet)
Touda Bouanani (Rabat) & Léa Morin (TALITHA, Rennes) Les Archives Bouanani: À la recherche du trésor perdu.
Ibn al Ghaba / Le fils de la jungle (Son of the Jungle) (Mohamed Osfour, Morocco, 1941) silent; 2022 English narration by Léa Morin; text by Ahmed Bouanani. 8 min.
Six et Douze (Six and Twelve) (Ahmed Bouanani, Majid Rechich, Mohamed Tazi; Morocco, 1968) Centre Cinématographique Marocain. 18 min.
Caroline Martel (filmmaker/researcher) moderator
11:45am to 1:00pm Black Panther Chariot
Josh Morton (Mayday Archive Project) & Brian Meacham (Yale Film Archive) Black Panther Counter-Narrative, Breakfast (1970) and Charles Garry Interview (1971);
[May Day home movie, 1970]; Mayday (May 1st Media, 1970)
Sterling Warren, Ina D. Archer, & Bleakley McDowell (NMAAHC) The Chariot Is Coming: Robert Goodwin’s Black Chariot (1971) and The Upper Chamber (1961)
Debbie Ebanks Schlums (York U) moderator
2:15 to 3:45pm Pacific Ephemera
Lisa Uyeda & Jeffery Chong (Nikkei National Museum & Cultural Centre, BC) The Tomojiro Inouye Family Collection of Films (Canada, ca. 1940-47)
[stream]
Denise Khor (U Mass Boston) Recovery and Archival Absence: Screening: The Oath of the Sword (Japanese American Film Co., US, 1914) musical accompaniment by Andrei Castañon
Qin Dao (On Kino, Guangzhou) & Geng Tengtian (Prague) with Xin Zhou (Concordia U) Found Videotapes from China (1980s-90s)
4:15 to 6pm Community: Media, Archiving, Dialogue
Patricia R. Zimmermann (Ithaca College), Louis Massiah (Scribe Video Center) & Carmel Curtis (XFR Collective) We Tell: Fifty Years of Participatory Community Media
Program: “States of Violence” 47 min.
• Ain’t Nobody’s Business (YWCA Battered Women’s Program, New Orleans Video Access Center, 1978)
• Inside Women Inside (Christine Choy & Cynthia Maurizio, Third World Newsreel, 1978) [trailer]
• Why Archive? (Activist Archivists, 2012)
+ Open discussion on counter-archives and counter-archiving
Rick Prelinger (UC Santa Cruz), Juana Suárez (NYU APEX)
Amalia Córdova (Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage) moderator
8:00 pm Screening: Two Sons & Sales Femmes
Louis Pelletier (U of Montreal) Sponsored Films, Lecturers, and Northern Canadian Audiences in the 1920s
Les deux fils de monsieur Dubois (Gordon Sparling, Canadian Forestry Association, 1928) premiere of restoration by Canadian Educational, Sponsored & Industrial Film Project; musical accompaniment by Andrei Castañon
Laura Horak (Carleton U) & Maggie Hennefeld (U of Minnesota)
Screening Cinema’s First Nasty Women:
• Pranks (US, 1909) Music by Gerson Lazo-Quiroga
• Laughing Gas (US, 1907, with Bertha Regustus) Music by Matt Hayes and Gerson Lazo-Quiroga
• La Pile électrique de Léontine / Betty’s Electric Battery (France, 1910) Music by Gonca Feride Varol
• Fatty and Minnie He-Haw (US, 1914, with Minnie Deveraux) Music by Eliot Britton. Introduced by Kickapoo artist Arigon Starr.
• The Red Girl and the Child (US, 1910, with Red Wing) Music by Don Ross. Introduced by Cherokee scholar Liza Black.
Jojolo (John Taylor & Lebert Bethune, France/US, 1966)
a portrait of model and actress Johanne Harrelle in Paris
from NMAAHC Smith Center for the Digitization and Curation of African American History
+ A benediction
Brian Meacham (Yale) Outtakes from Sedat Pakay’s James Baldwin: From Another Place (US, 1973) filmed in Istanbul, 1970
We acknowledge Concordia University is located on unceded Indigenous lands. The Kanien’kehá:ka Nation is recognized as the custodians of these lands and waters. Tiohtià:ke/Montréal is historically known as a gathering place for many First Nations. Today, it is home to a diverse population of Indigenous and other peoples. We respect the continued connections with the past, present, and future in our ongoing relationships with Indigenous and other peoples within the Montreal community.
— Territorial Acknowledgement, concordia.ca
