The 12th Orphan Film Symposium Water, Climate, & Migration May 26-29, 2020 Tuesday, May 26: WATER The Silent World https://wp.nyu.edu/orphanfilm/2020/06/16/session1/ https://vimeo.com/429504288 Environmental Impact https://wp.nyu.edu/orphanfilm/2020/06/17/impact/ https://vimeo.com/429875386 Water Tuesday screenings https://wp.nyu.edu/orphanfilm/2020/06/17/watch3/ https://vimeo.com/429498250 Wednesday, May 27: CLIMATE Early German Images of the Anthropocene https://wp.nyu.edu/orphanfilm/2020/06/18/german/ https://vimeo.com/430242631 Darkening Days https://wp.nyu.edu/orphanfilm/2020/06/19/darkening/ https://vimeo.com/430561049 The Helen Hill Awards https://wp.nyu.edu/orphanfilm/2020/06/20/helen/ https://vimeo.com/430926503 Super Super 8s: Films by Tatjana Ivančić https://wp.nyu.edu/orphanfilm/2020/06/20/super8/ https://vimeo.com/431032937 Climate Wednesday screenings https://wp.nyu.edu/orphanfilm/2020/06/21/climatewed/ https://vimeo.com/431071315 Thursday, May 28: MIGRATION Great Migrations https://wp.nyu.edu/orphanfilm/2020/06/21/greatmigrations/ https://vimeo.com/431088477 Euro Migrations https://wp.nyu.edu/orphanfilm/2020/06/22/euro/ https://vimeo.com/431339417 Migration Thursday screenings https://wp.nyu.edu/orphanfilm/2020/06/23/migrations/ https://vimeo.com/431690134 A Clockface Orange performs Deliquescence https://wp.nyu.edu/orphanfilm/2020/06/24/clockface/ https://vimeo.com/432042400 Friday, May 29: Never Lost But Found in the Ocean:
Category: Migration
Postscript to An Atlantic Voyage as Bon Voyage
A postscript to the post about Anke Mebold’s screening of An Atlantic Voyage, the multicolored, silent-era compilation of travelogues from the early twentieth century, produced by ?? in the year ??. The Orphans Online program listing calls this stand-alone segment Envoi & Bon Voyage! An excited sentiment that required the rare exclamation point. In addition to including a film literally about a ship carrying travelers on a touristic voyage, the session was a cheerful, celebratory ending to the four days of screenings and talks that characterize all the Orphan Film Symposiums heretofore. The term envoi is a rare one in English prose.
[Read on. . . . ] Postscript to An Atlantic Voyage as Bon Voyage
Watch: Bon Voyage, AN ATLANTIC VOYAGE (Orphans Online 10b of 10)
Streaming now: an HD recording of the final part of the final session of Orphans Online, May 29, 2020. Anke Mebold (DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum) introduces the puzzle/compilation film of uncertain date and origins. Original music composed and performed by Stephen Horne. 24 minutes. Click to enlarge, or watch at vimeo.com/432997996. The Mebold metadata on the DFF film: An Atlantic Voyage: Von Hamburg zu den Niagarafällen mit dem Schnelldampfer Kaiser Wilhelm II [From Hamburg to the Niagara Falls with the Express Steamer Kaiser Wilhelm II] (DE[?] 19?? / GB 1903[?] / FR 1906[?]); with footage from [?] Charles Urban
[Read on. . . . ] Watch: Bon Voyage, AN ATLANTIC VOYAGE (Orphans Online 10b of 10)
Watch: Never Lost But Found in the Ocean (Orphans Online 10a of 10)
Now streaming in HD, this roundtable of artist, archivist, and scholars, with extensive audience discussion. 99 minutes. “Never Lost But Found in the Ocean: On Biographies of Film Copies.” Film historian Maria Vinogradova (NYU Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia) conceived of the topic in collaboration with Bill Morrison, whose newest work is inspired by an unlikely recovery of celluloid from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. Joining them are Peter Bagrov, curator at the George Eastman Museum; Joan Neuberger, Eisenstein scholar and professor of history, University of Texas at Austin; and moderator Marina Hassapopoulou from NYU Cinema Studies faculty. Click to enlarge or
[Read on. . . . ] Watch: Never Lost But Found in the Ocean (Orphans Online 10a of 10)
Watch: Thursday finale, A Clockface Orange (Orphans Online 9b of 10)
Now streaming, this HD recording of Deliquescence, a live multimedia performance by the artist known as A Clockface Orange (Genevieve HK & Rachael Guma, liquid-light projection) with Lea Bertucci (sound) and Bradley Eros (light). Their multilayered triptych also incorporate footage found in Prelinger Archives. The 14-minute piece is followed by discussion with the artists. Click to enlarge or watch at vimeo.com/432042400. A Clockface Orange:presents live liquid-light performances to accompany musicians, artists, and recordings of all genres. Its work showcases an appreciation for ephemeral, experiential art inspired partly by Fluxus and 1960s experimental culture, incorporating the use of liquids on glass to
[Read on. . . . ] Watch: Thursday finale, A Clockface Orange (Orphans Online 9b of 10)
Watch: Euro Migrations (Orphans Online 8 of 10)
Session 8 of Orphans Online, Thursday, May 28, 2020 3:00 pm Euro Migrations 121 minutes. As with the Great Migrations session before it, Euro Migrations features films documenting migrations within European borders and immigration between Europe to Latin America. Add to this a contemporary state-produced Swedish informational video aimed a migrants and refugees from the Middle East and Africa. The discussion includes dialogue among the panelists, commenting on each other’s films, concluding with Christian Rossipal’s informal report on activist organizations now using video to address issues facing recent migrants to Europe, e.g., Noncitizen Archive and its parent organization (“a nomadic
[Read on. . . . ] Watch: Euro Migrations (Orphans Online 8 of 10)
Watch: Great Migrations (Orphans Online 7 of 10)
Streaming now: an HD recording of the live session of May 28, 2020, which began the day of programming dedicated to the theme of Migration. 108 minutes. The session title Great Migrations of course alludes to the historians’ now-conventional name for the movement of millions of African Americans out of the American South throughout the early and mid-twentieth century. In film historiography, Jacqueline Najuma Stewart’s book Migrating to the Movies: Cinema and Black Urban Modernity (2005) maps the ways in which that transformation also shaped cinematic experiences. In film archiving and preservation, the term “media migration” takes in much of the work
[Read on. . . . ] Watch: Great Migrations (Orphans Online 7 of 10)
Watch: The Helen Hill Awards (Orphans Online 5a of 10)
Wanna cut to the chase? Watch the replay edition of the Helen Hill Awards portion of Orphans Online here. 52 minutes. For each Orphan Film Symposium, beginning in 2008, NYU Cinema Studies and the University of South Carolina Film and Media Studies Program celebrate independent filmmakers with the Helen Hill Awards. The announcement of Martha Colburn and Jaap Pieters receiving the 2020 award is here. Thanks to Eye Filmmuseum hosting (what was to have been) an Amsterdam symposium, experimental film curator Simona Monizza worked with both artists to select works to showcase, including two films restored by Eye. The live edition
[Read on. . . . ] Watch: The Helen Hill Awards (Orphans Online 5a of 10)
Listening to Ja’Tovia Gary and The Giverny Document
May 28, 2020: On the final evening of the Orphan Film Symposium, after a screening of her new film The Giverny Document (single channel) artist Ja’Tovia Gary joined in conversation with Terri Francis (Director of the Black Film Center/Archive, Indiana University). Watch the recording of their discussion (with the filmmaker in Dallas, the scholar in Bloomington) below. The Giverny Document remains in its festival run and is now also a three-screen museum installation, The Giverny Suite. These are also part of flesh that needs to be loved, a sculptural installation whose exhibition at Paula Cooper Gallery in New York was cut
[Read on. . . . ] Listening to Ja’Tovia Gary and The Giverny Document
Title Tiles
As a preview to the reposting of video recordings of the May 26-29 Orphans Online, we have these title cards (or tiles) designed by Valeria Kriletich (in Buenos Aires). Each pair will appear before the video segments being prepared by Walter Forsberg (in Mexico City). The new streaming video will free from the few technical glitches we experienced during the live event. Some films screened in May will necessarily be absent from the new HD files, to honor the filmmakers’ and archives’ agreements. The new video segments will indicate what has been removed, where to find it elsewhere, and often
Archives Day and Liberty
It’s International Archives Day. June 9, 1948: The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization convened a meeting of archivists who created the International Council on Archives. In 2007, ICA declared the 9th of June as International Archives Day, an occasion to raise awareness of the importance of these memory institutions. Although sometimes perceived as dead-letter offices or institutions where the Ark of the Covenant gets forgotten, archives are, advocates contend, essential for a healthy society. An ICA declaration of 2010 ends with this: “Open access to archives enriches our knowledge of human society, promotes democracy, protects citizens’ rights and
Militant Film Circuit of Cineclub Vrijheidsfilms
Luna Hupperetz (University of Amsterdam) The Militant Film Circuit of Cineclub Vrijheidsfilms: Reconstructing a Dutch Multi-sited Cinema History in Light of the Cineclub Film and Paper Collection (IISH) Luna produced this original video in May 2020 as an alternative to being able to (with Floris Paalman) screen 16mm films and talk in person from Cinema 1 at the Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam. The original abstract of 2019 reads: A cultural ecological approach to archiving: the case of Cineclub Vrijheidsfilms at the International Institute of Social History (IISH) Activist films from the 1960s and 1970s served the fight against social inequality
[Read on. . . . ] Militant Film Circuit of Cineclub Vrijheidsfilms
Harnessing Excess: Water in American Infrastructural Cinema of the 1930s
This research was originally paired with Bradley E. Reeves (Appalachian Media Archives) and his new compilation video, TVA: “Built for and Owned by the People” (2020). Harnessing Excess: Water in American Infrastructural Cinema of the 1930s by Joni Hayward Marcum In 1942 Educational Screen described the government-operated Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) as “harnessing the water and reclaiming the land” of the region. Founded in 1933 as part of the New Deal policies, the TVA was founded as a public corporation. Shortly after the start of the great depression, there was little trust in private companies. Thus, the public utilities run
[Read on. . . . ] Harnessing Excess: Water in American Infrastructural Cinema of the 1930s
A Town on the Yangtze
Wan-go Weng’s A Town by the Yangtze (1951) by Jonah Volk (Columbia University Libraries) Wan-go H.C. Weng (also known as Weng Wango) is a Chinese-American filmmaker, writer, art historian and collector, poet, and master calligrapher. Born in 1918 in Shanghai, and still alive at the age of 101, he is the great-great-grandson of Weng Tonghe, a prominent 19th century Confucian scholar. Moving to the United States in 1938 to study engineering at Purdue University, Weng later studied art at the University of Wisconsin, and had a decades-long career producing educational and sponsored films. Widely respected in the world of Chinese
The Story of the CCC (193?)
The Story of the C.C.C. (produced no later than 1937), color/bw, sound. A documentary made by the Civilian Conservation Corps documenting life and work in several Massachusetts camps. The intertitle cards tell the story of the CCC from its inception to around 1937. Commentary by Stephen Slappe, Head of the Video & Sound Department at Pacific Northwest College of Art, Portland, Oregon, for the Orphans 2020 Film Symposium. sslappe@gmail.com Here on the eve of the Orphan Film Symposium on Water, Climate, and Migration, artist and film collector Stephen Slappe sends this piece for the occasion. He shares thoughts about and
The Live Program
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
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
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