ORPHANS MIDWEST: Materiality of the Moving Image
2013 Film Symposium – September 26-28
Presented by IU Libraries Film Archive, Indiana University Cinema and NYU Cinema Studies/Tisch School of the Arts
Indiana University Cinema and IU Libraries Film Archive host this impressive gathering of scholars, archivists, and media artists, screening dozens of cinema rarities and rediscoveries, as well as new productions, music performances, and curated presentations. “Orphan films” are all manner of neglected cinematic artifacts.
Partnering with the NYU Orphan Film Symposium, IU’s prominent media units join forces to showcase their collections and expertise in the study and preservation of moving images: IU Libraries Film Archive, Department of Communication and Culture’s Film and Media Studies Program, Black Film Center/Archive, The Kinsey Institute, Indiana University Cinema, Lilly Library, and the Media Preservation Initiative.
This project is supported by Indiana University’s New Frontiers in the Arts & Humanities Program and the College Arts and Humanities Institute (CAHI).
Anticipated highlights include:
Keynote address by Tom Gunning (University of Chicago)
Jacqueline Stewart (Northwestern University) and Brian Graney (Black Film Center/Archive) on African American activist uses of film in the 1930s
Nadia Ghasedi (Washington University) and Carolyn Faber (Kartemquin Films) on saving and using outtakes from noted documentaries, with Noelle Griffis (Indiana University) outtakes from the Peter Bogdanovich Collection
New and recent film and music by Bill Morrison
Donald Crafton (University of Notre Dame) with Partnership of Faith (1949, Studebaker Corp) and Gregory A. Waller (Indiana University) nontheatrical film history rediscovered
Andrea J. Kelley (Indiana University) Hoagy Carmichael home movies and Soundies, Hong Kong Blues and Lazybones (1941, with Dorothy Dandridge, directed by Dudley Murphy) from the Archive of Traditional Music
Kelli Hix (Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum) with An Evening of Music in Orphan Films, featuring a cacophony of music-related orphan film shorts from midwestern and southern archives and collections. Live musical accompaniment and interaction to be announced.
Craig Kridel (University of South Carolina) on Alice Keliher and the Human Relations Film Series (1937-1942) “a component of one of the more radical educational experiments of the 20th century”
Multimedia artist Heddi Vaughan Siebel with Anthony Fiala’s Arctic Expedition Films, 1901-1905
Mike Mashon (Library of Congress, Head of Moving Image Section) on Restoring Paper Print Motion Pictures in the Data-Cine Era
Dan Streible (NYU Orphan Film Symposium) Moving Image History and the F-word; or, “Digital Film” Is an Oxymoron SCREENING: 35mm and digital versions of the never-before-screened
Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze (Jan. 1894) RT: 0:09!
Premieres of film restorations:
A Frontier Post (Fox, 1925) a never-released documentary on the “Buffalo Soldiers” of the U. S. Army’s 10th Cavalry, Fort Huachuca, Arizona, Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze (1894) on paper, 35mm, digital, Fox Movietone News outtakes, Indiana University Graduation (June 10, 1929), from the University of South Carolina Moving Image Research Collections
Mona Jimenez (NYU Moving Image Archiving and Preservation Program) on early video processing tools by artists and technologists of the 1960s and 70s
Alex Kupfer (NYU Cinema Studies) University Extension programs as pioneers of nontheatrical film distribution and production: The “Wisconsin Idea” and the IU Extension and AV Center
Greg Wilsbacher (University of South Carolina) on “Fox Varieties” in the Newsfilm Archive • A Frontier Post (Fox, 1925) 35mm, 12 minutes; music TBA
Heddi Vaughan Siebel (media artist) on Anthony Fiala’s Arctic Expedition Films, 1901-1905
Michael Casey (Indiana University – Media Preservation Initiative) on IU’s comprehensive effort to preserve its vast audio, video, and film holdings totaling over 500,000 items, with a large number of them being unique.
Rachael Stoeltje (IU Libraries Film Archive)
Russell Sheaffer (Indiana University)
Andy Uhrich (Indiana University)
For more information, visit www.cinema.indiana.edu/about/orphans-midwest
