For the 12th Orphan Film Symposium, NYU Cinema Studies and the University of South Carolina Film and Media Studies Program present the 2020 Helen Hill Award to Martha Colburn and Jaap Pieters. Each biennial symposium presents the award to independent filmmakers whose work embodies the creative spirit, passion, and activism of the late animator, filmmaker, and educator, a Columbia, South Carolina-born artist and citizen of the world who inspired many. Colburn and Pieters will each present selections from their own work to an international audience of archivists, scholars, curators, and artists at the NYU Orphan Film Symposium, hosted by Eye
Author: Dan Streible
Thomas Elsaesser’s passing
Much more needs to be said about the passing of Thomas Elsaesser four days ago while in Beijing on a lecture tour. For the moment here is a link to listen to his keynote address to the 9th Orphan Film Symposium, The Future of Obsolescence. March 31, 2014, at EYE Film Institute Netherlands. He kindly gave permission to share it. 32 minutes. Thomas Elsaesser <www.thomas-elsaesser.com>, Professor Emeritus at the Department of Media and Culture of the University of Amsterdam, and Visiting Professor at Columbia University. He has authored, edited, and co-edited some twenty volumes on early cinema, film theory, German and
Deadline
Orphans 12: Water, Climate, and Migration The first deadline for proposals to present at the May 23-27, 2020 Orphan Film Symposium in Amsterdam was November 19th. The call for proposals remains posted here and at eyefilm.nl/call-for-proposals. (We may consider proposals that arrive after that date, but the program committee has begun reviewing proposals.) Three details to highlight: Orphans 2020 proposals will be reviewed by a program committee: Chief Curator Giovanna Fossati and Gerdien Smit at Eye Filmmuseum; University of Amsterdam assistant professor Eef Masson, coordinator of the MA program in Preservation and Presentation of the Moving Image (Media Studies); film
Twenty
Orphans at Twenty Dan Streible Orphans 2020 is nigh (and its call for proposals now open). At the moment, however, 20 also reminds me that September 2019 marks the 20th anniversary of the Orphan Film Symposium. The milestone prompts me to recall the experience of the first event now often called simply “Orphans.” Some veterans of the 1999 gathering recently sent thoughts about it. September 22 through 25, 1999, the University of South Carolina in Columbia hosted a high-spirited group of symposiasts and attendees for a one-time only event we called Orphans of the Storm: Saving ‘Orphan Films’ in the
Climate strikes back.
With the 2020 Orphan Film Symposium being devoted to Water, Climate, and Migration, the Global Climate Strikes on the Fridays of September 20 & 27, 2019 are of course relevant to how we are now conceiving of audiovisual recordings of these phenomena. The 1929 Fox Movietone News outtakes catalogued as If the Antarctic Icecaps Should Melt? connect neglect media artifacts to the global moment in a potent and uncanny way. Here’s a sample of the 10 minutes. The University of South Carolina MIRC DVR provides the original Fox librarian’s notation: “‘Scientists say gigantic frozen sea at South Pole could flood
CFP for Orphans 2020
Call for Proposals The first deadline for proposals to present at the May 23-27, 2020 Orphan Film Symposium in Amsterdam was November 19th. The call for proposals remains posted here and at eyefilm.nl/call-for-proposals. We may consider proposals that arrive after that date, but the program committee is now reviewing proposals. The 12th Orphan Film Symposium — Water, Climate, & Migration — hosted by the 6th Eye International Conference 23-27 May 2020 The biennial NYU Orphan Film Symposium returns to Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam, 23-27 May 2020, combining forces with the annual Eye International Conference to explore contemporary archival and academic
Around the World with H.T.C.
In response to my post of August 9, “Underground,” archivist-historian and Orphans veteran Paul Spehr commented about early advocacy for underground storage for film preservation. He began working in the Library of Congress Motion Picture Section in 1958, retiring as assistant chief in 1993. In the early 1960s the LoC was presented with a collection of 35mm negatives of films shot by Herford Cowling for Burton Holmes for showing at the 1933 Chicago World Fair. Cowling had been a very early consultant on standards for storage of motion picture film — going back to the 1920s
Underground
As we look to the May 2020 Orphan Film Symposium, devoted to Water, Climate, and Migration, I think of the first symposium 20 years ago, when the first presenter was a geologist. Conceptions of preservation begin with where stuff is stored; often the answer is underground. Water, climate, and migration. Each of these intertwined topics is of course highly topical and attracting urgent attention, but they have always been important subjects.. In conceiving of this symposium we have not used the significant word Anthropocene, but it now haunts our thoughts about historical audiovisual recordings of planet Earth, its physical and
Because Amsterdam.
Next week watch this space for the official Call for Proposals for the 12th Orphan Film Symposium, May 23-27, 2020, which returns to Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam. Orphans 2020 is also the 6th annual Eye International Conference. The co-branded symposium will be dedicated to Water, Climate, and Migration. (More on that in the next post.) The 2020 event will be in the long-running international biennial format, with four nights and three full days of screenings and presentations showcasing dozens of rediscovered orphan films from throughout the history of cinema. Mark your calendars to join archivists, scholars, curators, artists, preservationists, restorers,
Orphan films, Xiamen University
Orphan films in China? Many, of course! So at last the Orphan Film Symposium visits China. Xiamen University invited me to talk about the symposium-as-festival (“Screening Orphan Films: Why and How?”) and to screen a sample of shorts at the two-part conference on festivals and archives. Most of the other works presented here also fit within the orphan rubric. We saw a variety of previously neglected, forgotten, obscure, seldom-seen, or undistributed titles: ethnographic films, a found-footage remix, video art appropriation, a propaganda drama about comradeship among Chinese and North Korean soldiers during the Korean War, home movies from Taiwan,
Orphans 2020: Water, Climate, Migration
“Save the dates!”
Orphans | RADICALS | The Program
Here’s the official program. Registration is open to all. Click here to join an international gathering of archivists, curators, scholars, artists, and others dedicated to saving, studying, and screening radically diverse types of neglected works. RADICALS: a special edition of the NYU Orphan Film Symposium at the Austrian Film Museum in Vienna, June 6-8, 2019 Thursday, June 6 15:00 to 21:00 Registration at Filmmuseum (Augustinerstraße 1) 19:00 Movements, a program in the film series “There are no rules!” Restored and Revisited Avant-Garde Films from the Netherlands. Introduced by curator Simona Monizza (EYE Netherlands Film Museum) 20:30 Symposium reception party
Register for Orphans 2019 in Vienna
REGISTER now for RADICALS, the special edition of the NYU Orphan Film Symposium at the Austrian Film Museum in Vienna, June 6-8, 2019. Click here for registration information, with discount for early payment.s Thursday, June 6, 7pm: There Are No Rules! A screening of Dutch experimental films curated by Simona Monizza (EYE Netherlands Film Museum). An Örphans opening reception follows in the lobby and al fresco bar area (with drinks & nibbles) at das Österreichische Filmmuseum. Among the presentations and screenings slated for RADICALS throughout Friday, June 7 and Saturday, June 8. Kimberly Tarr (NYU Libraries) Angela Davis Report (DDR, 1972) Premiere
Screening Orphans at MoMA, Jan. 21, 2019
Orphans at MoMA Monday, Jan. 21, 2019 (MLK Day) 6:30 pm Museum of Modern Art (11 West 5rd Street, NYC) To Save and Project: 16th International Festival of Film Preservation Beloved Community: Rarities of African American and LGBTQ Cinema—and More highlights from the Orphan Film Symposium on Love Piano accompaniment by Ben Model Three American Beauties (Edison, 1906) 35mm, 1’ MoMA’s restoration of an original hand-colored print; directed by Edwin S. Porter and Wallace McCutcheon. Museum of Modern Art Welcome by Josh Siegel (MoMA) Intro by Dan Streible (NYU Cinema Studies, Orphan Film Symposium) Sarah Keller (U Mass Boston) introduces filmmaker
Film Forum NYC presents “Orphans of New York,” Oct. 14 & 15
October 18, 2018: Now that the two screenings are done, I’ve updated the filmography and comments for the record. At the conclusion of the October 15 show, Film Forum announced this screening would turn into a semi-annual series. “Orphans of New York.” That’s what Bruce Goldstein, Director of Repertory Programming at New York’s influential* nonprofit indie moviehouse Film Forum, entitles our show of 22 entertaining but previously neglected films shot around the city from 1899 to 1979. Tickets are available online at or at the box office. Film Forum, 209 W. Houston St. Sunday, Oct. 14, 3:10 pm Monday, Oct.
[Read on. . . . ] Film Forum NYC presents “Orphans of New York,” Oct. 14 & 15
Orphans of New York, Oct. 14 & 15
“Orphans of New York” at Film Forum, NYC (209 W. Houston St.) Sunday, Oct. 14, 3:10 pm repeats Monday, Oct. 15, 7:00 pm Memorable shorts shot in New York City, 1899 to 1979. Introductions by Bruce Goldstein (Film Forum) & Dan Streible (NYU Cinema Studies) + special guests Piano accompaniment for silent films by Steve Sterner See little-known films such as these: * New York University (ca. 1960) Willard Van Dyke Library of Congress Paper Print Collection, new scans: * New Brooklyn to New York Via Brooklyn Bridge no. 1 (1899) Edison Co. * The Deceived Slumming Party (1908) Biograph
Galería goes live.
This delightful GIF became an emblem of the 2018 Orphan Film Symposium devoted to love. It then became an Orphans 11 T-shirt. A happy marriage resulted from the April 14th screening at the 11th Orphan Film Symposium — and the Museo del Cine has already debuted it online. Stephen Horne played musical accompaniment (accordion and piano) for the museum’s restoration of the silent film Galería Cinematográfica Infantil (1927), introduced by Carolina Cappa. The Museo has married that raw live recording, complete with audience laughter and applause, to the newly-restored 12-minute portrait of a hundred kids living in the town of General Pico,
Orphans 11 Intros
Thursday, April 12, 9:30am Introductions David Schwartz (Chief Curator, Museum of the Moving Image) Welcome Anna McCarthy (Chair, NYU Cinema Studies) Opening Remarks Dan Streible (Director, NYU Orphan Film Symposium ) Why Love? [archiveorg Orphans11_Intro width=640 height=480 frameborder=0 webkitallowfullscreen=true mozallowfullscreen=true] Video shot and edited by Antonia Carey & Nick Palazzo courtesy of Reel Heroes documentary.
Symposiasts 13 to 95
The latest NYU Orphan Film Symposium has wrapped — and the love buzz was lively throughout. Here’s the first of many photos to come, taken at Wednesday’s opening reception, April 11, 2018, at Museum of the Moving Image. Shane and Craig. April 11, 2014. Right: Craig Shemin of the Jim Henson Legacy, who that evening presented dozens of pieces from the Henson archive — ads, outtakes, sponsored films, experiments, tests, and the restored Time Piece (1965). Unbeknownst to NYU Orphans, Craig met Shane 4 years ago when TCM selected them as two of the “Ultimate Fans.” They appeared on TCM as guest programmers during
Bios
About the presenters at Orphans 11 Lina Accurso is an independent silent film historian who has been working to set a memorial headstone at the unmarked grave of Mrs. Alice B. Russell Micheaux in 2018. Brendan Allen manages the Archives for Democracy Now! He attended the School of Visual Arts and received a BA in English Literature and Media Studies from the University of New Mexico. He worked as a video librarian for Black Entertainment Television in 1998 and then moved to the Public Broadcasting Service in Alexandria, Virginia, where he worked as the library media coordinator. In 2006, Brendan