Michael Grant In 2019, the Media Preservation Unit at New York University Libraries digitized a collection of nearly 400 short pieces of film from the George Amberg and Robert Gessner Papers, held by NYU Special Collections. Shot on black and white 35mm film, they showed a startling array of scenes of life in New York City in the early 1950s. For years, the films were known in the library and to NYU cinema studies professor (and Orphan Film Symposium boss) Dan Streible, but their origins (to say nothing of their copyright status!) were a mystery. Scanning the films enabled us