Category: Uncategorized

Notes by Robert Joseph Schneider One of the greatest powers of film is the ability to transpose an individual into whatever they’re watching. Roger Ebert famously referred to movies as an “empathy machine,” but I’m most focused on their ability to transport us through time and place. Ethnographic and nonfiction films are one of the best examples of this. Many of us will never go to the Arctic but through the work of Robert Flaherty we may be able to feel as though we have. A number of such films will transport us during the 11th Orphan Film Symposium. Dozens

[Read on. . . . ] Seeing “Mating Games” (1963/2018)

Notes by Becca Bender One would not expect the film collection of a seminal figure in the history of film technology to go missing…. Which makes it extremely surprising that the home movie collection of Leopold Godowsky Jr., co-inventor of Kodak’s Kodachrome film, was found in the archive of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (LCPA) in the spring of 2017, with no indication of how it got there. The Godowsky Jr. collection consists of 150 films, the overwhelming majority of which are silent, color, 16mm rolls. The dates range from the mid-1920s through 1970, with the bulk having been

[Read on. . . . ] Found: The Leopold Godowsky Jr. Home Movie Collection

Louis Trott, one of the founders of the Tennessee Archive of the Moving Image, will show and discuss Fee and other home movies from the TAMIS Walther Barth Collection at the 11th Orphan Film Symposium. Seven of the 101 reels of 16mm film have been scanned by BB Optics and NYU’s MIAP Program for the event, which runs April 11-14.  Seeing Fee Notes by Erica Lopez What was life like in pre-Nazi Germany era?  Home movies show us peoples’ experiences that might have been forgotten or lost forever, had someone not rescued these film records often buried in a hallway closet or attic. The Walther

[Read on. . . . ] Walther Barth’s home movies

Notes by Caroline Z. Oliveira  The little-known film experiment Laserimage (Ivan Dryer, 1971-72) is part of the session called Technophilia at the 11th Orphan Film Symposium. On April 13, Kathleen Maguire introduces the premiere screening of a new 16mm print, preserved by Bill Brand (BB Optics) and his students in NYU MIAP’s Film Preservation class. Coordinator of the Cinema Arts Program at The Exploratorium in San Francisco, Maguire (also a MIAP grad, ’08) brought attention to the film’s preservation needs.  Ivan Dryer was the originator of commercial laser light shows in 1973, but he had also been an aspiring filmmaker. In

[Read on. . . . ] Exploratorium • Symposium • Laserium

A GIF from Jennifer Peterson from a digital video created when Dino Everett scanned a silent 16mm nature film in the David Shepard Collection of Educational Films of the 1920s at the  University of Southern California’s Hefner Moving Image Archive. — 30 — 

Notes by Anna Tantillo On Wednesday, April 11, the 2018 Orphan Film Symposium begins with an 8pm program at Museum of the Moving Image, The Early Films of Jim Henson. “Early” here means before 1969, when Sesame Street first made his creations famous on children’s television.  For many people, when remembering entertainment pioneer Jim Henson, they recall his colorful Muppet creations. While the Muppets certainly have made an enormous impact on viewers, they account for only one portion of Henson’s vast repertoire, which includes shorts, features, sponsored films, experimental work, documentaries, and advertisements. Before the Muppets’ mass popularity on television,

[Read on. . . . ] The Early Films of Jim Henson

Notes by Shahed Dowlatshahi Long considered a “lost film,” The Aryan is a 1916 western starring and co-directed by William S. Hart, produced and distributed by the Triangle Film Corporation. No complete copies are known to survive of the movie that was released in 5 reels and running about 50 minutes. However, as with some other presumed-lost films (such as the director’s cut of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis), the only known copy has been found at the Museo del Cine in Buenos Aires. Fernando Peña, with the assistance of Kevin Brownlow, identified the museum’s La Fiera Domada (The Tamed Beast) as a

[Read on. . . . ] La Fiera Domada (1916/1923)

NYU Cinema Studies presents the 11th Orphan Film Symposium, April 11 – 14, 2018  Museum of the Moving Image Theme: Love.  Wednesday, April 11, 7:00 pm Reception for registered symposiasts Wednesday, 8:00 pm Opening Screening Becca Bender (Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts / NYU MIAP) Discovering the Leopold Godowsky Jr. Collection: Elsa and Albert Einstein visit  Hollywood (1931) and the Home Movies of the Co-inventor of Kodachrome Frannie Trempe (NYU MIAP) World Conference of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (1926) Karen Falk (The Jim Henson Company) & Craig Shemin (The Jim Henson Legacy) The Idea Man: Early Films of Jim Henson, including the newly-restored

[Read on. . . . ] Program for Orphans 11 : Love

Here’s list of films and presenters slated for the 11th Orphan Film Symposium, April 11-14, 2018. It’s about LOVE. Final scheduled coming very soon.  Events begin Wednesday, April 11, with a 7pm reception for registrants and an 8pm screening. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday: begin with panels at 9:30am; lunch and coffee breaks; panels end at 6pm. After dinner breaks, 8pm screenings each night.  Registration is open!  And open to all.  Join us at Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, NYC.  Click here to register. Galería Cinematográfica Infantil  (ca. 1927) Courtesy: Museo del Cine Love:  Frontispiece:  Fox Movietone News outtakes [Dr. Fritz] Wittels on This Thing Called

[Read on. . . . ] Registration Is Open! Here’s a preview of the films and speakers.

Filmmaker (and scholar) Mila Turajlic is on a roll. Her 2017 documentary, The Other Side of Everything, has been garnering wide praise since its debut at the Toronto International Film Festival and acclaim at the International Documentary Filmfestival in Amsterdam. (Or as Variety, which always boils the takeaway down to telegraphic declarations, put it: “Serbian Doc Wins Big at IDFA.”) Meanwhile Turajlic is making another feature-length documentary about the career of Stevan Labudovic, succinctly identified as “Tito’s cameraman.” Labudovic, who died in November 2017, accompanied the president of Yugoslavia on his world tours after Tito co-led the establishment of the international Non-Aligned Movement in 1956.

[Read on. . . . ] Filmmaker Mila Turajlic with Yugoslav films from the Non-Aligned Movement

The theme of the 11th Orphan Film Symposium is Love.  In her keynote talk, film historian Jennifer Peterson will take us in a direction surprising and wondrous.  Jennifer Peterson Love, Loss, and Climate Change:  Watching the Historical Nature Film Today   As the scope and scale of climate change and ecological collapse become ever more apparent, old films about the environment take on new meaning. Nature films were prevalent in the classrooms of the twentieth century. Generations of children watched these simple films about ecosystems, seasons, animal and plant species. How do these films display (and attempt to foster) a love of nature?

[Read on. . . . ] Keynote by Jennifer Peterson: Love, Loss, & Climate Change

This post is from August 15, 2014, and the predecessor Orphan Film Symposium blog. It is reposted here to improve discoverability and, one hopes, duration. — DS, New York City, June 27, 2020 The text below is essentially as it appeared in the December 1999 edition of International Documentary magazine, with only a few emendations. The publication doesn’t appear in any Web or database searches I’ve done.  The IDA is alive and well, however the International Documentary Association’s members-only archive of magazines only goes back to 2001. Hence, I take the liberty of republishing it here and embedding links to transcripts

[Read on. . . . ] “Saving Orphan Films: A South Carolina Symposium” (1999)