Author: Dan Streible

Kol Nidre (nidrei, nidrey, or כל נדרי) is an Aramaic phrase translated as “all vows.” The words are heard and chanted in synagogues on the eve of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement in Judaism. In 2022, “Kol Nidre night” falls on October 4. (Hebrew calendar: Tishri 9, 5783). Music associated with the text has been around a thousand years. Recordings of pieces entitled Kol Nidre began well over a century ago.  Musical settings for the traditional chant have taken many forms over centuries. Some twenty-first century artistic uses of the tradition have crossed paths with orphan film work, which

[Read on. . . . ] All Vows again

Here’s a remarkable presentation at the NYU Orphan Film Symposium on Counter-Archives, recorded June 16, 2022, at Concordia University. It centers on a rediscovered and restored nonfiction film (a sponsored film, a travelogue, a newsreel production, an ethnographic film), fraught with colonialist rhetoric and ideological  baggage — yet redeemed, or at least re-contextualized and informed, by a First Nation perspective. “Making it right.” The film Totem Land (1927) runs 10 minutes; the session 51. Aiding in the contextualization is a sound newsfilm fragment recorded a year later, in which famed anthropologist Franz Boas speaks plainly against “scientific” racism.  Kester Dyer (Carleton

[Read on. . . . ] Watch: Ethnographic Films of George Hunt

“At last the day has came.” So says Frau Leuchtag to her fellow refugee Carl, headwaiter at Rick’s Café Américain in the film classic Casablanca (1942). The day they celebrate is a departure to America. Today’s celebration is the long-anticipated Kino Lorber release of the four-disc box set Cinema’s First Nasty Women — or at least the New York Times publication of “Rewriting Women Back Into Film History” by film critic Manohla Dargis. Her assessment? “A mind-expanding endeavor, the set features 99 mostly comic rarities produced from 1898 to 1926, gleaned from archives and libraries across the globe. It is

[Read on. . . . ] Watch: Nasty Women teaser

“A Call to Emancipation: Liberating Discourses in Mexican and Spanish Student Films of the 1950s.” Recorded at Concordia University, June 17, 2022. These were the first two of three presentations for an Orphan Film Symposium session called Cine útil (a nod to the 2011 anthology Useful Cinema, edited by our hosts Charles Acland and Haidee Wasson, and which contains essays by 5 scholars also participating in the symposium this year:  Zoë Druick, Gregory Waller, Joseph Clark, Charles Tepperman, and Michael Zryd ).  David M.J. Wood introduces a ten-minute film produced in Mexico and performs live English translation of the recorded Spanish-language

[Read on. . . . ] Watch: A Call to Emancipation

Here’s the NYU Orphan Film Symposium session entitled “. . .  and its Discontents,” parts 1 and 3 of 3. Recorded June 17, 2022, at Concordia University.  37 minutes.   DeeDee Halleck (UC San Diego emerita) and Henning Engelke (Philipps U Marburg), Incarcerated Youth: The Otisville Film Club, 1969-1972, with screening of           • A Madman’s World (Kenneth Brown & Charles Smith, 1971)           • The Bloody Crime Crusher (John Vann & James Spann, 1971) Liz Miller (Concordia U) moderator  Click to enlarge or watch at vimeo.com/739282562 Video of the Q&A session is

[Read on. . . . ] Watch: Incarcerated Youth and the Otisville Film Club, 1969-1972

Part 2 of 2 from the #Orphans2022 Counter-Archives Session 4 of 16 — Africa (as seen from abroad) — recorded June 16, 2022. In part 1, CK Ming & Bleakley McDowell of the National Museum of African American History and Culture present rushes from the unfinished documentary Pan Africa (1971) by Lebert Bethune.  42 min.  In part 2, Mark Williams (Dartmouth College) & Aboubakar Sanogo (Carleton University) present a variety of films from the Sherman Grinberg Film Library and the U.S. National Archives regarding the history of colonialism and “the idea of Africa.” These are part of the ongoing Media Ecology Project, which connects

[Read on. . . . ] Watch Africa (as seen from abroad) part 2

June 16 greetings. Day 2 of the Orphan Film Symposium.  The sessions begin at 9:30am, 11:30am, 2:15pm, 4:30pm, and 8:00pm. The complete program listings are here.  Instructions on how to live-stream the sessions.  Today is the only day in which none of the content will be restricted from the webcast.  However, a password is required. Here’s how to get it.   1. Register your name and email address using the NYU Orphan Film Symposium registration portal. Type in $0 in payment (or a pay-what-you-will donation). If you make no payment, you will not get an automatic email confirmation.  However, we will

[Read on. . . . ] Streaming Bloomsday