Rafael de Luna Freire (Universidade Federal Fluminense) Cinematographer Esdras Baptista’s Film Collection (1940s-80s): Rediscovering a Brazilian Communist Filmmaker; music performed live by Landscape of Hate (Vivek Venkatesh & Jessie Beier) Professor de Luna presents research and new film digitization work conducted with Laura Batitucci at LUPA, Laboratório Universitário de Preservação Audiovisual, which he founded at his university in the city of Niterói. Recorded June 17, 2022, NYU Orphan Film Symposium on Counter-Archives, at Concordia University. The presentation concludes with a premiere screening of previously unseen documentary footage, accompanied by live guitar music and an audio mix that sampled recent political
Category: Counter-Archives
Watch Reanimating Histories 3 (Kelly Gallagher)
Recorded June 16, 2022, in the de Sève Cinema, Concordia University, Tiohtià:ke / Montreal. Part 3 of 3. The culmination of the Reanimating Histories session was the tradition of “Helen Hill night.” Kelly Gallagher receives the OFS Helen Hill Award and Kodak grant. Symposium co-founders Susan Courtney (U of South Carolina) and Dan Streible (NYU) introduce. After Kelly’s remarks (“Another world is possible”), watch seven of her works, ranging from an early student film to two of the most recent inspiring productions. The line-up: A Herstory of Women Filmmakers (2009), More Dangerous Than a Thousand Rioters: The Revolutionary Life of Lucy
[Read on. . . . ] Watch Reanimating Histories 3 (Kelly Gallagher)
Watch Reanimating Histories 2 (Phil Hoffman)
Since 2008, each NYU symposium recognizes an independent filmmaker with its Helen Hill Award, given to media artists who share the spirit of the late experimental animator’s work and values. On this occasion, awardee Kelly Gallagher agreed we should show a Helen Hill film. We selected one of her films made during her years in Canada, and in particular one she made at the now-legendary “Film Farm” in Ontario. When we discovered the founder would be in attendance, we of course asked him to speak — which he graciously did. This was the only celluloid print screened at the symposium.
[Read on. . . . ] Watch Reanimating Histories 2 (Phil Hoffman)
Watch Reanimating Histories 1 (Bill Morrison)
Recorded June 16, 2022. Here’s the opening segment of the Orphans 2022 program “Reanimating Histories,” which was built around filmmaker Kelly Gallagher receiving the Orphan Film Symposium’s biennial Helen Hill Award. First, Bill Morrison was to introduce his recent film Buried News. Pairing his work with Helen Hill makes sense. She screened her first home movie footage rescued from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina at the 2006 Orphan Film Symposium, in her hometown of Columbia, South Carolina. He was there to debut Who By Water. She presented him with her VHS copy of his film Decasia with the muck of
[Read on. . . . ] Watch Reanimating Histories 1 (Bill Morrison)
Watch Malcolm X press conference (1962)
Session 5 of 16 at Orphans 2022: Counter-Archives was entitled “Black is . . . ?” Here’s a video recording of the second of three presentations on this panel. Recorded at the de Sève Cinema, Concordia University, June 16, 2022. The full symposium program listing is here. Mark Quigley (UCLA Film and Television Archive) Social Justice Activism and Surveillance Television Screening: [Malcolm X press conference on deadly police raid in Los Angeles] (1962) 10 min. excerpt Presentation contains sensitives images. Footage includes racial epithets. Click to enlarge, or stream at vimeo.com/732572655. On April 27, 1962, a confrontation initiated by
Watch “Photographed By Willie P. Jackson”
From Session 5 of 16 — Black is …? — at Orphans 2022: Counter-Archives, Concordia University, Tiohtià:ke / Montréal. The first three presentations on this panel. The symposium program listing is here. Dr. Teddy Reeves & Ina D. Archer (Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture) “Photographed By Willie P. Jackson”: Portraiture and Experimental Cinematography in Willie P. Jackson’s Church of God films (ca. late 1940s) Abstract: William “Willie” P. Jackson (1910-1980) is an almost entirely unknown filmmaker. Until 2021, his work was not part of a single memory institution or archive.
Watch Vulnerable Media Lab & Sara Gómez
Opening remarks (3′) on Counter-Archives by Monika Kin Gagnon (Concordia U) were followed by the first of two presentations in Session 2 of 16 — Black Atlantic/Black Pacific: Archives, Restitution, Activism. This opening morning presentation followed the opening night screening of Iré a Santiago (Sara Gómez, ICAIC, Cuba, 1964). Susan Lord, Jenn Norton, Brandon Hocura, Michelle O’Halloran, & Rebecca Gordon (Queen’s University) Apparitions: Vulnerable Media Lab Projects and the Case of Sara Gómez Click to enlarge, or watch at vimeo.com/732210177 Q&A for all panelists followed the session’s presentation on the Atrato and Colombian Pacific Archive: watch here. Abstract: The
Watch Magnetic Bojayá
María Fernanda Carrillo Sánchez (U Autónoma de la Ciudad de México) & Isabel Restrepo Jaramillo (U Nacional de Colombia, Medellín) Magnetic Bojayá: Audiovisual Memories of the Atrato and Colombian Pacific Archive (1994-2008) Juana Suárez (NYU) moderator / translator From Session 2 of 16 — Black Atlantic/Black Pacific: Archives, Restitution, Activism — at Orphans 2022: Counter-Archives, Concordia University, Tiohtià:ke / Montréal. A moving presentation by documentarian-archivist-scholars working with archives of Afrodescendent and Indigenous communities in western Colombia. Bojayá magnetica refers to the hundreds of mini-DV and VHS magnetic tapes in the collection. Key fact: The town of Bellavista in Bojayá, located
Watch Orphans 2022
NYU Cinema Studies and Concordia University presented the thirteenth biennial Orphan Film Symposium, Counter-Archives, in Tiohtià:ke / Montréal, Canada, June 15-18, 2022. Orphans 2022 resumed the symposium’s format as a three-day, four-night in-theater event, with an international group of archivists, scholars, and artists presenting and talking about previously-neglected films. More than 80 presenters took the podium in a total of 16 sessions. Orphans 2022 also met the new era’s expectation of “blended content,” live-streaming each session from the de Sève Cinema via the NYU Cinema Studies site. We thank Concordia’s Jean-Francois Martin and Alexandre Page for fluidly projecting and live-mixing
Women film eclipses, 1898-1901
Note: This is a draft in progress, with additions, corrections, and other edits appearing as they become available. What I thought would be an addendum to an earlier post, “Capturing Venus in Motion and Filming an Eclipse in the 19th Century,” expanded into territory I did not expect: four women were involved with the operation of motion-picture cameras during solar eclipses in 1898, 1900, and 1901. Gertrude Bacon, Ada Ardley Maskelyne, Annie Russell Maunder, and a certain “Mrs. Ireland.” Each used one or more machines from the London magician-inventor/s John Nevil Maskelyne (1863–1924) and/or his father John Nevil Maskelyne (1839-1917).
Counter-Archives 2022
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. https://ia601406.us.archive.org/5/items/trailer_Orphans2022/OFS_Trailer_1_sound_720.mp4 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
Jojolo / Jo-jaw-gay
An initial post-symposium note: This Orphan Film Symposium on Counter-Archives was rewarding; one first-time attendee said “transformative.” Others offered similar assessments, in more joyful words than I write here. With 80 presenters and a sizable group of organizers and star projectionists many mercis are due. A hallmark of Orphan Film Symposiums is the accidental “rhyme,” a serendipity connecting two or more moments in two or more of the works screened. One of this year’s rhymes is minor, a literal wordplay: Jojolo and Jo-jaw-gay. Another is significant: that an opening night film featured a Montréal protagonist who we saw again on
Creative Process
In my creative work and in my teaching, I try to emphasize the importance of process: the necessity of taking time to sit with images and ideas, to let the mind wander, to fossick, as Ross Gibson has put it, thereby de-emphasizing – if only temporarily – the inexorable pull towards polished outcomes. In this brief post, I’d like to share some early process work of Long Xi Vlessing*, a senior undergrad student at Concordia who was hired by us to help develop a visual sensibility for Orphans 2022. While Long Xi’s work might not be especially evident in the
Tiohtià:ke
Here spoken by our Concordia University host Monika Kin Gagnon, chair of the Department of Communication Studies. She will offer opening remarks on Counter-Archives on opening morning, Thursday, June 16. And here Tiohtià:ke and Kanien’kehá:ka, courtesy of Wahéhshon Shiann Whitebean. The pronunciation guide is from Concordia’s rich and instructive Indigenous Directions web resource and its Territorial Acknowledgement page. As the symposium theme of counter-archives, the work of the Archive/Counter-Archive project, and the selection of films and presentations all affirm, everyone involved supports the principles of territorial (lands and waters) acknowledgement. We hope the four days of symposium activities reveal these values and demonstrate the actions
Stream
Select portions of the 2022 Orphan Film Symposium on Counter-Archives can be watched live on the NYU Cinema Studies Vimeo site. 1. Register your name, affiliation, 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 email a PASSWORD to all registrants on Tuesday, June 14. And again June 15 and 16. Use this password to log-in to the Live Event (as Vimeo calls it). If you previously registered to attend, no need to
Esperanto
Soon after its first appearance in the 1890s, the medium of motion pictures was almost routinely referred to as a “universal language,” as least as long as they were silent movies in those first 30+ years. By the 1920s an international movement of self-described “amateur” filmmakers also adopted a utopian way of speaking about the power of noncommercial cinema. Fitting then that a twenty-first-century, international partnership among archivists and scholars to preserve films from an international amateur cinema network of the 1930s has restored a film bearing a title in Esperanto, the “international language” invented at roughly the same time
Sympose
It’s true. Less than two weeks to go before the 2022 NYU Orphan Film Symposium commences at Concordia University in Tiohtià:ke, a.k.a. Montreal. An opening screening with 9 short films on Wednesday, June 15, will be followed by three days of presentations and nights of more screenings and. Two panels each morning, two each afternoon; screenings nightly. It’s also true: registration remains open for this live-in-a-theater event. We will again have (as since 1999, save for the OMG of 2020) food and drink at hand, returning to the ritual of convivial, symposiastic conversation over meals — where learning continues and
Our 2022 Helen Hill Award goes to KELLY GALLAGHER
Each biennial Orphan Film Symposium confers the Helen Hill Award to an exceptional independent filmmaker whose work befits the late artist’s legacy, a celebration of creativity, animation, collaboration, and things made by hand. This year that’s Kelly Gallagher. On June 16, at Concordia University in Tiohtià:ke / Montreal, Orphans 2022 hosts Kelly Gallagher at the symposium, where she will screen her work for an international audience of archivists, artists, scholars, and curators. Her films certainly resonate with those of the award’s namesake. And given this year’s symposium theme — Counter-Archives — she is an apt match to the occasion. We
[Read on. . . . ] Our 2022 Helen Hill Award goes to KELLY GALLAGHER
Orphans 2022 Program & Schedule
W00t, w00t! ¡Viva, Huzzah, Hourra, & Yaaasss! The schedule for the entire four-day Orphans 2022 program is now available HERE. Join us June 15-18 in Tiohtià:ke, a.k.a. Montréal, Québec, Canada, for the NYU Orphan Film Symposium. Registration open to all!
Orphans 2022 – Speakers, Presentations, Screenings
UPDATE (May 10, 2022): The full Program and Schedule is now here. We are happy to announce this slate of speakers, presentations, and screenings for the Orphans 2022 Counter-Archives. Registration is open (to all!) for the June 15-18 event at Concordia University in Tiohtià:ke / Montréal. Limited to 160 seats. Yes, the symposium is greenlit for an in-person gathering! Most of the speakers will be together in the theater, with a few presenting via video link. (Schedule of themed sessions forthcoming.) The symposium begins on the evening of Wednesday, June 15, followed by three days and nights of presentations
[Read on. . . . ] Orphans 2022 – Speakers, Presentations, Screenings