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
Category: Orphans Blog
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 – 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
![[Unarchiving] in Lviv, Ukraine](https://wp.nyu.edu/orphanfilm/files/2022/02/Flag_of_Ukraine.svg-640x392.png)
[Unarchiving] in Lviv, Ukraine
Update: Monday, Feb 28, 2022 at 6:25 PM Dan Streible <dan.streible@nyu.edu> wrote: Opportunistically, at 3am today, Facebook communications with colleagues in Lviv led to a live online classroom visit with Ukrainian scholar-archivists Bohdan Shumylovych and Oleksandr Makhanets. At 12:30pm (NYC time) they were in Zoom with the NYU students gathered in the Curating Moving Images class. It was dark in Ukraine, past curfew, but from their home basements in Lviv, they spoke about their work at the Urban Media Archive, which included a collaboration with a historian of Soviet-era amateur film, Maria Vinogradova. We all agreed
Orphans 2022 – Registration is Open
UPDATE. June 13, 2022. 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 by pasting https://vimeo.com/event/2190360 in a new browser window during symposium hours. Schedule here. Some screenings (7 short films and the 55-minute documentary Women of Suriname) will not be live-streamed due
MLK Day and film preservation
Happy Birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. (aka MLK Day in the USA). On Sunday, January 23, 2022 (1:30pm) the mostly-annual “Orphans at MoMA” screening returns to the Museum of Modern Art’s To Save and Project, International Festival of Film Preservation. More on that in the next post. For now we can note that among the 14 short films on display will be outtakes from a 1973 Turkish documentary about James Baldwin and three recently preserved very early silent films (1898, 1902) documenting African American performers and communities. The 2022 TSP festival opened with the Academy Film Archives restoration of
Capturing Venus in Motion and Filming an Eclipse in the 19th Century
A program entitled “Orphans Films of Outer Space,” is part of the World of Knowledge: International Film Festival of Popular Science and Educational Films, which runs December 1-6, at the Lenfilm Cinema Center in St. Petersburg, Russia. On Sunday, December 5, 2021, I will introduce the films (via Zoom) to the viewers in the New Holland Pavilion. After the terrestrial projection of a 16mm print and four digital videos, filmmaker Jeanne Liotta and I will participate in a Q&A. The line-up: • Passage de Vénus (Jules Janssen and Francisco Antônio de Almeida, 1874) 5″ • The Transit of Venus (David
[Read on. . . . ] Capturing Venus in Motion and Filming an Eclipse in the 19th Century
About Orphans 2022: Counter-Archives
ORPHANS 2022: COUNTER-ARCHIVES Concordia University, Tiohtià:ke/Montréal, Quebec, Canada (June 15-18, 2022) *We acknowledge that Concordia University is located on unceded Indigenous lands. The Kanien’kehá:ka Nation is recognized as the custodians of the lands and waters on which we will gather. Indigenous Directions Leadership Council, Concordia University (2017) New York University join forces with Concordia University to present the 13th edition of the Orphan Film Symposium in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal, June 15-18, 2022. This biennial event brings together an international group of archivists, scholars, artists, curators, preservationists, librarians, collectors, distributors, documentarians, students, researchers, and others devoted to saving, studying, and screening all manner
Astrovac (ca. 1970)
Orphans in Space: Forgotten Films from the Final Frontier special edition for Roger That! 2021 Astrovac: Zero Gravity Personal Body Wash Unit (ca. 1970) Produced by Fairchild-Republic 5 min., color, silent; Source: A/V Geeks added soundtrack by Andrew Insignares & Christopher Insignares (2012) Little is known about this silent demonstration film, save from what can be surmised from the images. The opening title card “Company Confidential” presumably refers to the film’s producer. Screen credits identify Republic Aviation, a division of Fairchild Hiller Corporation, as developer of the Astrovac device. (Fairchild acquired Republic in 1965. Both were major aircraft and aerospace
The Big Bounce (1960)
Orphans in Space: Forgotten Films from the Final Frontier special edition for Roger That! 2021 The Big Bounce (Jerry Fairbanks, 1960) 15 min., color, sound. Source: Prelinger Archives In addition to its time-capsulation of telecommunications in the early space age, The Big Bounce represents two important forces in postwar sponsored films: the American Telephone and Telegraph Company and Jerry Fairbanks Productions. AT&T and its Bell System subsidiaries regularly commissioned films to shape the corporation’s relationship to consumers. Many aimed at manners, such as Party Lines (1947, etiquette for sharing telephone lines), Adventure in Telezonia (1949, directory assistance), The Nation at
Ed Feil’s passing
Word from Ken Feil today that his father, the great filmmaker Ed Feil, has passed away, age 96. Such a life and career! Much more can be written about Feil’s scores of films. But for today, we can recommend you watch the exceptional educational melodrama The Inner World of Aphasia (1968). Shot, edited, and directed by Ed, with Naomi Feil playing the lead part. The Feil family honored us with their presence at a special screening in November 2016. Here are photos from that memorable evening at the Museum of Modern Art, made possible by Katie Trainor and Josh Siegel as
Merci, Henri. Gracias, Ambulante. Thanks, orphanistas.
As Twenty Twenty draws to a close, it’s a good time to express gratitude to those who helped make good things happen amid anxious times. First, thanks to all of who share their work — archiving, preservation, writing, research, publication, scanning, media production, programming, curating — in ways that allow us to collectively save, study, and screen orphan films. The eclectic body of previously neglected moving images and sounds continues to intrigue and inspire us. Although we of course missed gathering in person for the NYU Orphan Film Symposium at Eye in Amsterdam, the online edition of Orphans 2020: Water,
[Read on. . . . ] Merci, Henri. Gracias, Ambulante. Thanks, orphanistas.
All Vows revisited again
Kol Nidre (nidrei, nidrey, or כל נדרי) is an Aramaic phrase translated as “all vows.” The words are heard and chanted in synagogues on the eve of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement in Judaism. This year “Kol Nidre night” falls on September 27, 5781 (a number that looks better than the annus horribilis 2020). Music associated with the text has been around a thousand years. Recordings of pieces entitled Kol Nidre began well over a century ago. Musical settings for the traditional chant have taken many forms over centuries. Some twenty-first century artistic uses of the tradition have crossed
Haverstraw Restored
A third post about the wonderful little big-format film of 1897 called The Haverstraw Tunnel, presented below in a restored form, online for the first time. We must thank the British Film Institute and BFI National Archive for the work (thanks, Bryony Dixon) and the access (thanks, Espen Bale). To appreciate the historical significance of The Haverstraw Tunnel, see the February 29, 2020 post “68mm 8k Phantoms” (how the film caused a sensation in 1897 and generated a name for a genre, the phantom ride — but was not on the web or DVD) and the March 5 post for
Rewatching Orphans Online 2020
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:
Amateur Settler Cinema in Early Texas: Old Texas (Charles Goodnight, 1916)
Daryl Meador The famed Texan frontiersman and cattle rancher Charles Goodnight was an unlikely filmmaker, especially in 1916 at the age of eighty. Goodnight is historicized as the archetypal pioneer, both figuratively and literally. He helped to ignite a vast transformation of the Texas panhandle, first as a militia man expelling indigenous populations from West Texas, and later as the first settler to establish a commercial cattle ranch in the region. He is historicized with such fierce and romantic frontier nostalgia that he exemplifies, in the words of Alex Hunt, “the notion that truth and fiction, story and history, can
[Read on. . . . ] Amateur Settler Cinema in Early Texas: Old Texas (Charles Goodnight, 1916)
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
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”
The Tennessee Valley Authority: “Built for and Owned by the People”
Bradley E. Reeves (Appalachian Media Archives) presents The Tennessee Valley Authority: Built for and Owned by The People This new 23-minute video, made for the Orphan Film Symposium on Water, Climate, and Migration, documents the history and controversies surrounding the TVA since the 1930s, compiling 8mm and 16mm home movie footage, 16mm documentary film clips, folk music recordings, excerpts from feature films, and local television newsfilm and videotape. The Tennessee Valley Authority Act of 1933 chartered the agency to modernize the region. It aimed to educate farmers in ways to improve crops, help replant forests, control forest fires, and improve
[Read on. . . . ] The Tennessee Valley Authority: “Built for and Owned by the People”