NYU Cinema Studies & Tisch School of the Arts present Orphans Online, May 26-29, 2020 (All times are NYC, Eastern Daylight Time; GMT -4) #Orphans2020 The 12th Orphan Film Symposium on Water, Climate, and Migration originally to be held at Eye Filmmuseum Amsterdam in May 2020 became impossible to convene (due to the you-know-what). Most of the 60 scheduled presenters agreed to experiment with an online edition, mixing live talks and live-stream screenings with extensive texts and videos posted on this NYU website. Some of these extraordinary and polished video presentations are already posted. The world has changed. Thanks
Author: Dan Streible
Rolf Forsberg’s ARK (1970)
Mark Quigley (UCLA Film and Television Archive) brings our attention to his environmental awareness film of 1970 and tells us about its exceptional but under-appreciated filmmaker, Rolf Forsberg (1924-2017). Then watch the whole film. Rolf Forsberg’s Film Group 1 presents Ark. 20 min.
Paul Julien: A “Seasonal Worker” in the “Contact Zone”
Nico de Klerk (Utrecht University) and Andrea Stultiens (Hanze University of Applied Sciences) Paul Julien: A “Seasonal Worker” in the “Contact Zone” Notes on our research, screening, and performance that were to have been presented at the Orphan Film Symposium / Eye International Conference in May 2020. Nico de Klerk: Our topic is rooted in research that we, unbeknown to either of us until recently, are doing on the photographic and cinematographic legacy of Dutch, unaffiliated anthropologist-cum-filmmaker/photographer Paul Julien. Mine as part of the research project ‘Projecting knowledge’, on the use of the optical lantern in academic teaching and outreach,
[Read on. . . . ] Paul Julien: A “Seasonal Worker” in the “Contact Zone”
Why Water, Climate, and Migration?
Three of the program committee members for the 2020 Orphan Film Symposium preview Orphans Online, explaining why the three themes were selected and how orphan films in particular address them. The live streams of May 26-29 begin at 10am, 2pm, and 6pm (EDT) each day. Still other videos continue to be placed on this blog daily. Anna McCarthy, chair of Cinema Studies at NYU, leads a conversation with Giovanna Fossati (Eye Filmmuseum, Amsterdam), Jennifer Peterson (Woodbury University, Los Angeles), and Dan Streible (New York University, NYC). Audio only: Always curating, Giovanna made for the occasion a playlist on the water
Home Movies from Highland Beach, Maryland
Screening notes by Candace Ming and Ina Archer The selection of films we will screen at the Orphan Film Symposium on Water, Climate, and Migration comes from the National Museum of African American History & Culture (NMAAHC) collection. Zora Lathan and the Mayor of Highland Beach, William Sanders, brought them to the museum, which scanned them over the course of several Great Migration Home Movie Project (GMHMP) appointments. The movies of the incorporated beach community were shot between the early 1950s and the mid-1960s by the Pinson and Sewell families. Here’s a sample. https://vimeo.com/420099929/7c66bedb22 Highland Beach was established over 125 years
The Orphans Radio Hour with Stephanie Sapienza
Watch this and you will smile, then laugh, and then say “Wow!” And you will absolutely learn a lot. Truly. The educational broadcasters of Cold War America never tapped the power of a medium the way this 12 minute and 45 second Radio Hour does. What started as Stephanie Sapienza‘s proposal to play a 1954 radio piece about the Mississippi River for the Orphan Film Symposium on Water, Climate, and Migration transformed from a talk about linked data and digital humanities into . . . this! or go to vimeo.com/419551316 The only question is: Emmy or Peabody? “The NAEB Radio
[Read on. . . . ] The Orphans Radio Hour with Stephanie Sapienza
Chinese Cable Television (1976-1983) from New York’s Chinatown
Klavier Wang introduces the Asia Cinevision CCTV Collection and her compilation of clips from newly-digitized videotapes. Located on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, Chinatown remains one of the biggest and most vibrant Chinese communities in the United States. Using fuzzy video images found on Chinese Cable Television (CCTV) broadcast tapes, we can now take a look at images, both nostalgic and familiar, recorded there between 1976 and 1983. The historical Asian CineVision Records are now under the custodianship of the Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, part of New York University Special Collections in Bobst Library. A recent archival
[Read on. . . . ] Chinese Cable Television (1976-1983) from New York’s Chinatown
The Tennessee Valley Authority: “Built for and Owned by the People”
Bradley E. Reeves (Appalachian Media Archives) presents The Tennessee Valley Authority: Built for and Owned by The People This new 23-minute video, made for the Orphan Film Symposium on Water, Climate, and Migration, documents the history and controversies surrounding the TVA since the 1930s, compiling 8mm and 16mm home movie footage, 16mm documentary film clips, folk music recordings, excerpts from feature films, and local television newsfilm and videotape. The Tennessee Valley Authority Act of 1933 chartered the agency to modernize the region. It aimed to educate farmers in ways to improve crops, help replant forests, control forest fires, and improve
[Read on. . . . ] The Tennessee Valley Authority: “Built for and Owned by the People”
Restored films of Henri Plaat
Here’s a true gift from Eye Filmmuseum, delivered expressly for this online edition of the Orphan Film Symposium. The museum and NYU planned for nearly two years to have the symposium convene in conjunction with the Eye International Conference. Although forces have made all of us re-organize the best laid plans, we are grateful that Eye continues to share its remarkable collections and curatorial talents. Since the first Orphan Film event in 1999, the Filmmuseum has contributed to the symposium. Curator Mark Paul Meyer introduces us to Dutch visual artist Henri Platt and two of the ten short experimental films
The Austin Flood (Thanhouser, 1911)
For Orphans 2020 Online, citizen archivist Ned Thanhouser (founder of the nonprofit Thanhouser Company Film Preservation, Inc.) has created a new introduction to a sobering 10-minute documentary record of a deadly Pennsylvania catastrophe filmed in 1911. Preserved by the Library of Congress, the 35mm print appears to be a complete copy of the footage the Thanhouser Company released just a week after the disaster. This “graphic picture of the calamity” is presented here with a new piano score by Ben Model, recorded for this Orphan Film Symposium debut. Play full-screen here, or go to vimeo.com/421600208. And a lost film. As Ned
Wild Fowl in Slow Motion
In the previous post about the teaser/trailer that Courtney Stephens created for Orphans 2020, I noted her source materials had their own interesting orphan stories. News about the schedule for the late May symposium — Orphans Online — will be posted here in a few days. Meanwhile, a consideration of the short fragments used in the teaser sets up the issues we will be examining in depth — and suggests how neglected films can provoke thinking about water, climate, and migration. The uncanny footage called If the Antarctic Ice Cap Should Melt? — outtakes (Fox Movietone News, 1929) is our emblematic
Trailers
At the 2018 NYU Orphan Film Symposium, filmmaker/programmer Courtney Stephens and programmer/filmmaker KJ Relth debuted their creative archival compilation Mating Games, made from amateur films shot at Muscle Beach in 1963. (The USC Hefner Moving Image Archive supplied the scans of 16mm films shot by Russell Saunders.) For the 2020 symposium, @courtcolt offered to create a video teaser or two, pointing to the May gathering at Amsterdam’s Eye Filmmuseum and its themes of water, climate, and migration. As we were comparing archival film sources to use the world changed and the Orphan Film Symposium is now migrating to an all-online edition for
Orphans Online (corona)
A picturesque reminder: the 2020 Orphan Film Symposium on Water, Climate, & Migration is migrating to an online edition for late May. Details to come. Created by Courtney Stephens.
Moving Water Montage Power
For our class on Curating Moving Images, undergraduate student and filmmaker Linh Vu created a sixty-second video trailer heralding the 2020 Orphan Film Symposium on Water, Climate, and Migration. As an experimental small-gauge filmmaker, she was inspired by the rhythm of Jane and Stan Brakhage’s noted 1959 birthing film. She has written about Sergei Eisenstein’s conception of montage as “an idea that arises from the collision of independent shots.” (See her essay “Window Water Baby Moving and the Power of Montage,” on her site linhvufilm.com, December 23, 2019.) Here’s Linh Vu’s collage, made from of a dozen pieces — archival
Wasser
Yes, the May 2020 Orphan Film Symposium will be MIGRATING to an online format. (More on that later.) Meanwhile, here’s literally a minute for some audiovisual play with orphan films and our theme of water. Soojin Park and Lan Linh Nguyen Hoai created this video trailer for Orphans 2020 just before the global pandemic forced them away from NYU NYC. [archiveorg Orphans_2020_trailer1 width=640 height=480 frameborder=4 webkitallowfullscreen=true mozallowfullscreen=true] They set about editing from a pool of digitized films after reading an exposé about the global water crisis in Le Monde diplomatique 26 (2019). Linh translated the opening lines of Wasser. Von
Alas!
UPDATE: The 2020 Orphan Film Symposium / Eye International Conference must be canceled. Alas! The program listing will remain posted here, for the record. Such an exciting line up of speakers and screenings it was. What a disappointment to be unable to gather in Amsterdam and convene with beloved allies, partners, and friends from around the world. Thanks to the Eye Filmmuseum and our program committee of Giovanna Fossati, Gerdien Smith, Eef Masson, and Jennifer Peterson for all the work. After we all figure out how life is going to
Haverstraw on Paper
In “68mm 8k Phantoms,” I wrote about how the 1897 American Mutoscope and Biograph film The Haverstraw Tunnel was highly praised upon its release but is now difficult to see. And it’s not on any website. The next day the Library of Congress Moving Image Section responded by sending a ProRes MOV file. So here, online for the first time, is a version of the 1897 motion picture copyrighted in 1903 as Haverstraw Tunnel. The Library scanned its silent, black-and-white, 16mm film at 24 frames per second.. (Downloadable at archive.org/details/haverstrawtunnel). The speed looks about right, although the original 68mm films
68mm 8K Phantoms
This writer has been viewing film since the Lumiere babies, the Haverstraw Tunnel and the Empire State Express were the screen stars. . . . — Epes W. Sargent, Moving Picture World,Oct. 16, 1920 Only now do I fully understand this statement and appreciate its 1920 utterance. I did not see The Empire State Express (American Mutoscope Co., 1896) until perhaps 2020. And I have not seen The Haverstraw Tunnel (1897) at all. Where can we see them? The latter is absent from the web and video releases, but hasn’t disappeared
An “Orphans International”
At the 2020 Orphan Film Symposium in Amsterdam, we’ll see films from the 1930s about Polish diaspora. Archivist Iga Harasimowicz (Polish National Film Archive) will talk about the collection and recent digitization work, joined by scholar Grazia Ingravalle (Brunel U London). Opening frames from Among Poles Living in France (1938) & Polish Settlement in Brazil (1936). Filmoteka Narodowa. Meanwhile, Prof. Ingravalle has just published her report on “Radicals,” the 2019 Orphan Film Symposium at the Austrian Film Museum in Vienna. Read it on the blog of Domitor, the International Society for the Study of Early Cinema. “As a transnational scholar,”
Program preview
Updated April 12, 2020. Here’s the pre-Corona preview of the programming we anticipated for the 12th NYU Orphan Film Symposium — Water, Climate, and Migration. Now we will migrate online later in May 2020. Although we cannot meet at Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam, much of the material will be presented in online forms, TBA. The original listings (below) were grouped by theme and topic. However, they give an indication of the rich diversity of films, presenters, subjects, and forms to be offered. OPENING ATTRACTIONS: Recent Preservation from the Eye Collection Water and Movement: 68mm Mutoscope & Biograph restorations (in 8K!),