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
Category: Orphans 13 2022
Streaming Bloomsday
June 16 greetings. Day 2 of the Orphan Film Symposium. The sessions begin at 9:30am, 11:30am, 2:15pm, 4:30pm, and 8:00pm. The complete program listings are here. Instructions on how to live-stream the sessions. Today is the only day in which none of the content will be restricted from the webcast. However, a password is required. Here’s how to get it. 1. Register your name 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
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
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
Come one, come all! Orphans 2022 – June 15-18, 2022
UPDATE. June 13, 2022. [vimeo 714575128 w=640 h=360] You can still register to attend the symposium in person. Day-rate is $50 to include food/drink. For locals attending only one session (sans food), no charge. To WATCH the live-stream online, register on the same site. In the first field, enter $0 payment (or a pay-what-you-will gift). The following day you will received an email with the password. Log in to the Vimeo “live event” page: https://vimeo.com/event/2190360 during symposium hours. Schedule here. Some screenings will not be live-streamed due to rights restrictions or, more likely, the nature of sensitive or problematic material. Questions?
[Read on. . . . ] Come one, come all! Orphans 2022 – June 15-18, 2022
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 – COVID Protocols
UPDATED JUNE 12, 2022: The Government of Canada lifted its Travel Advisory for all non-essential international travel in February. As of April, proof of negative PCR test is no longer required for fully vaccinated travelers to Canada. Proof of vaccination with a Government of Canada approved vaccine is required for foreign nationals boarding air, rail and marine vessels crossing the border, as well for those crossing land border by automobile. Unvaccinated adults who are foreign nationals are not allowed entry into Canada for the purposes of tourism. Travelers entering Canada are required to set up account ArriveCan account and upload
Orphans 2022 – Accommodations
[googlemaps https://www.google.com/maps/embed?pb=!1m18!1m12!1m3!1d2796.6772916126374!2d-73.57992358444146!3d45.49644287910146!2m3!1f0!2f0!3f0!3m2!1i1024!2i768!4f13.1!3m3!1m2!1s0x4cc91a6a7982822f%3A0x8697f7d5f6922f4b!2sJ.A.%20de%20S%C3%A8ve%20cinema!5e0!3m2!1sen!2sca!4v1646322456508!5m2!1sen!2sca&w=600&h=450] All Orphan Film Symposium events will be held in the J. A. de Sève cinema on Concordia’s Sir George Williams (downtown) campus. Here’s a list of hotels near Concordia, but please note that the Montreal Formula 1 Grand Prix car race is on the same weekend as our gathering, so book accommodations early. We strongly recommend making sure your hotel booking is refundable (in case of further COVID setbacks etc.). For the very latest information, please visit our Orphans 2022 Accommodations page.
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
Update on symposium plans (Jan 13, 2022)
Gentle colleagues! We write to update you on our current discussion regarding the Orphan Film Symposium on Counter-Archives, to be held at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada, June 15 to 18, 2022. (If you submitted a proposal, you will receive an email soon.) The Orphans 2022 organizing committee is watching developments regarding COVID as the pandemic determines so much about what we can do together in June. The current situation is difficult as we have such a big, beautiful international community. While COVID knows no borders, our governments do and traveling into and out of Canada could prove challenging. Indeed, at
Propuestas — Huérfanos 2022
Convocatoria de propuestas (Fecha límite: 1 de octubre de 2021) ORPHANS 2022: COUNTER-ARCHIVES / CONTRA-ARCHIVOS Concordia University (Tiohtià:ke/Montréal, Quebec, Canada) 15-18 de junio de 2022 Reconocemos que la Universidad de Concordia se encuentra en tierras indígenas expoliadas. Se reconoce a la nación Kanien’kehá:ka como custodiadora de las tierras y aguas en las que nos reuniremos. Tiohtià:ke/Montréal* se conoce históricamente como lugar de reunión para muchos pueblos indígenas. Hoy en día, es el hogar de una población diversa de pueblos originarios y de otras naciones. Respetamos las continuas conexiones con el pasado, el presente y el futuro en nuestras relaciones actuales
Filmography: Edison-Ott Sneeze (1894)
As part of this website’s annotated filmography of all works shown at the 2014 Orphan Film Symposium, the descriptions below are for items shown as part of this presentation: Dan Streible, “A New Look at an Old Sneeze: Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze,” 9th Orphan Film Symposium, Obsolescence, Eye Filmmuseum, Amsterdam, Mar. 31, 2014. Includes live accompaniment by Stephen Horne. 27 min. Audio here. Recorded in January 1894, Fred Ott’s Sneeze (as it came to be known) was not seen as a moving image until reanimated from still photographs to 16mm film in 1953. The many film histories written before and