Second-year MIAP student, Ben Moskowitz, filmed Orphans 6 and is currently producing a short video documenting the symposium.

Daniela Bajar is an MA Cinema Studies student originally from Argentina. She was in charge of press during Orphans 6. She also established contact with speakers of Spanish speaking countries and helped translate Spanish films into English.

Gabriella Hiatt served as a faithful blog contributor during the symposium. She also helped create the "welcome kits" handed out to fellow orphanistas and coordinated the multimedia presentation during Thursday night's dinner reception at Judson Memorial Church.

Jennifer Pondo collaborated with students from NYU's Film Scoring program to provide soundtracks for the newly restored La Venganza de Pancho Villa and the 1968 NYU surveillance film.

Kathleen Maguire dutifully manning registration tables during Orphans 6. She also gave a presentation with fellow MIAP student, Leah Churner, on the Bob Parent Collection at Anthology Film Archives.

Leah Churner hails from Texas and is a graduate of the MIAP Program. At the symposium, she and Kathleen Maguire spoke about the Bob Parent Collection at Anthology Film Archives, and the problems with preserving unedited amateur films. She also helped out behind the scenes.

Lisa Fehsenfeld worked on administrative duties in preparation for Orphans 6, including recruiting and organizing volunteers. She also spoke with Yvonne Ng on The Story of Hackettstown, screened on Saturday night.

A soon-to-be NYU MIAP graduate, Miwa Yokoyama fundraised for Orphans 6 by soliciting in-kind donations, sponsorships, and fine swag. Not afraid of grunt work, she also helped Dr. Charles Leary with the preparation of registration materials and name tags. She is currently working on an audio archiving project of Orphans 6, with fellow classmate Yvonne Ng, to make portions of the symposium accessible online.

Nicole Martin helped design the stylish (and free) Orphan 6 t-shirts and constructed the helpful maps, chock full of "ditty points," that were handed out to participants. She also provided much needed technical support during the symposium and coordinated our cross-country sing-a-long with Melinda Stone.

Roberto Ang is an MA student in Cinema Studies at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. He is also in the certificate program in Culture and Media. He was born and raised in Manila, but has mostly lived in various parts of the US including Alaska. He received his BA in Comparative Literature from UCLA with minors in French and Spanish. During Orphans 6, Roberto prepared projection scripts for Spiro and James and helped transport incoming film and video for screenings.

Museum Studies student, Peter Sebeckis, was a blog designer, code writer, editor, and contributor during the symposium. He also wrote the subtitles for the Jewish Labor Committee's film, Nos Maison d'Enfants.

A soon-to-be graduate of NYU’s Archives and Public History Program, Tracy Bunting collected, organized, and edited biographical blurbs for Orphans 6 speakers and presenters. She also contributed a few blog postings during the symposium. So taken was she by her first real blogging experience, Tracy decided to team up with Wayne Titus and help “curate” the blog for future orphanistas. She spent many of her final NYU days spicing up our beloved site and turning many a name into a hyperlink.

Besides serving as blog editor, writer, and designer extraordinaire, Wayne Titus crafted Orphans 6 signage. He sent drafts to the printers and ensured the completion of the final gatorboard (no animals were harmed!) signs posted outside all the venues. He also helped behind the scenes by collating registration packets the day before the event and handing out t-shirts during Wednesday's reception. Amongst all this Orphans excitement, he still had time to attend to his student career as a 1st year M.A. in the Cinema Studies program at Tisch School of the Arts.

Yvonne Ng is a second-year MIAP student who has worked with a variety of institutions that deal with orphaned works. She is happy to have been involved with this year's successful Orphan Film Symposium! Leading up to Orphans, she helped with recruiting sponsors and acted as a liaison between the Symposium and the vendors and archives who were preserved work for the event. During Orphans, she worked with Zack Lischer-Katz to coordinate the audio recording of the sessions and conducted interviews of symposium participants for the Orphans video, produced by Ben Moskowitz. She is now working with fellow orphanista, Miwa Yokoyama, to assemble, preserve, and make accessible the audio recordings from the event.

Check out Elise Nakhnikian's glowing notice at The House Next Door.

Jenny Davidson, a Comp Lit professor at Columbia, talks about her friend Helen Hill.

Former MIAPer, Lauren Sorensen, now an Assistant Director at Canyon Cinema also weighed in on the Bay Area Video Coalition blog.

Check out Bee Thiam's blog of our "most marvelous" Orphans: Asian Film Archive Blog.

Get a different perspective on Orphans at Walking Off the Big Apple.

Shooting Down Pictures has some serious Orphans envy!.

Spiro Karantzalis proudly watches over his machines

The Spread

The food was to die for!

Richard Allen loses his virginity as Dan beams in the background

The happiest table in the room

The mood was indeed celebratory, if a bit raucous, and marked the successful end of a packed week of orphan films. Laura Rooney from AMIA took to the podium for opening remarks: “WOW!” she exclaimed in response to the symposium before she implored us to become members of AMIA. Dan Streible, commonly referred to by students and presenters as Coach Tubbs or Uncle Dan, had to shout into the microphone to be heard over the many rowdy orphans who were having trouble finding their seats. He went “off program” by inserting an Orphans favorite, Ro-Revus Talks about Worms (1971), which the audience devoured at Orphans 5.

Online Videos by Veoh.com

The educational short, produced by the Office of Economic Opportunity, features a frog puppet that warns against the dangers of parasitic worms you can get when eating food dropped on the ground or if you go to the bathroom outdoors. The video has gained a significant cult following. Intended for children, the Orphans audience was well-matched as they howled at the narrating puppets that told horrific tales of invisible worms that migrate into your belly and multiply if you don’t maintain a good diet and appropriate hygiene level.

Unexpectedly, two color reels of outtake footage by Sam Fuller referenced earlier in the day were introduced by Mark Toscano who asked the audience if the location with French street names was recognizable. FRANCE! blurted one audience member, which was quickly refuted by BELGIUM! from another. Audience participation and spontaneous piano interludes were recurring themes for the evening.

Vince Collins’ short psychedelic masterpiece, 200 (1976), offered a nice counterpoint to the conventional political campaigning we have grown increasingly accustomed to seeing. Collins was commissioned by the U.S. Information Agency in 1976 to commemorate the bicentennial. Blinking stars and gyrating stripes reflect a State gone wild on hallucinogens. The national eagle rapidly interchanges with a peace sign, the white house and Mount Rushmore. At one point the Mayflower drifts across the screen followed by a cornucopia of American imagery—hamburgers, televisions, baseballs, and hot dogs.

Julie Hubbert presented excerpts from Music for the Silent Newsreels (1930, Fox Movietone News). She explained that newsreels received unusual treatment and were afforded room for improvisation at a time when popular music was taboo for features. She presented a “film-less film,” featuring pianist Harry Rosenthal at the piano narrating a hypothetical newsreel as he plays recognizable tunes such as Emile Waldteufel’s "The Skater's waltz". He would later go on to act in Preston Sturges screwball comedies, including The Palm Beach Story (1942) and The Lady Eve (1941).

Students from NYU’s MIAP program presented a compilation of three films uncovered from the garage of itinerant filmmakers, Dan Dorn and Dan Dorn Jr. The films promote the civic, industrial, and educational splendors of three New Jersey towns during the 1930s. The opening title of The Story of Hackettstown (1933) declared the film a “Civic and Educational Romance,” and was produced by the Hackettstown Kiwanis Club. The civic film does in fact weave in the love story of a young man visiting from out-of-town who unwittingly falls for a local girl. The love story unfolds in-between devotional footage of the town--the leather factory, a local parade, the Hackettstown Highball Team, a school fire drill--and culminates with the young man’s proposal, for we must assume he has fallen for both the girl and Hackettstown.

Particularly noteworthy was Joseph Clark’s presentation of sound from the March of Time’s Radio City Music Hall premiere of Peace, By Adolph Hitler (1941), a film concerning Hitler’s propaganda campaign and the history of Nazi aggression. Joseph explained that the sound of the audience during the premiere was the orphan, which he recently uncovered from the American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming. The audience is well-behaved for the most part until Charles Lindbergh, who was heavily involved within the Non-interventionist movement, appeared on screen. Most of the audience reacted vituperatively with boos and jeers, but applause is also audible. The discovered sound is a significant addition to the often-ignored and nebulous history of film reception during World War II.

Martha Kelly presented Our Day (1938), a delightful film made by her father, Wallace Kelly, who was a photographer and writer and made many films for family viewing occasions. The film depicts an idealized and comic day-in-the-life of the Kelly household based in Lebanon, Kentucky. Martha added that it is an exceptional day when “everyone is happy, healthy, and well-dressed”. It is also a full day, complete with an energetic croquet battle, a game of hearts, and a glimpse into the photographic studio of Wallace Kelly that was based in their Kentucky home. The film ends bitter sweetly with a handwritten title that also signals the ensuing end to a fantastic symposium: “All good things must come to an end….And so must Our Day!”

Peggy Ahwesh presented a wildly frenetic film called Beirut Outtakes (2007), derived from material left in a projector in an abandoned theater in Beirut. The material, retrieved by her friend in 1988, consists of a variety of commercial fragments from 1961 to 1968 from Lebanon and overseas. Commercials for French cigarettes, carpet cleaners, United Airlines, underwear, and even the film Dead or Alive, flash on the screen at rapid speed. The decayed film and fragmentary nature of the material is unintentionally experimental, enacting the strange and hypnotic experience of watching commercials.

Beirut Outtakes, 2007

Dan appropriately brought the Symposium full-circle by concluding the night with Tunnel of Love (1996) by Helen Hill. This exceedingly charming film about accidental romance incorporates methods of stop-motion and hand-processed film. It includes delightful footage of toy animals, cotton candy, and swirling cocktail umbrellas. In fact, accidental romance and chance discovery seem to be a common trait uniting all orphan films and everyone involved in the Orphan Film Symposium for that matter. Just when Dan thought he could wipe the sweat off his brow, students declared they had an announcement for Coach Tubbs. As he leaned against the piano in the corner of the room, a student rushed toward him and dumped a water cooler filled with hundreds of film ends over his head, followed by two whipped cream pies that landed smack on his face. And with that, the Sixth Orphan Film Symposium concluded. Until next time!

- Gabriella Hiatt

Greg turned the microphone over to Bill Birch, work worked as a camera operator for Fox Movietone News as part of Frank Capra’s famed Signal Corps unit. Bill, who filmed stories about the home front as well as combat in the Pacific Theater, was a wonderful raconteur and told an entertaining story about his experience rising through the ranks of Signal Corps.

Bill Burch (843rd SSPD), Dan, and Greg Wilsbacher

Because the army increasingly relied on the Signal Corps during World War II, the organization needed to expand and recruit fast. As a staff cameraman for Newsreel, married and without children, Birch was extremely “draftable,” a point he made as a PowerPoint image appeared of him in his twenties reclined in uniform on an army cot. Bill was interested in working for Signal Corps since he could perform camera duties. After numerous interviews Birch was “enlisted” in Chicago, receiving the impressive rank of Staff Sergeant in December 1942. Birch explained that this was unheard of since he had no basic training and no clue as to who to salute, so he saluted everything that moved! Birch’s precautionary measures paid off since his first job was in California working for none other than Hollywood director, Frank Capra. Under Capra, Birch worked on the entire spectrum of army films—newsreel, studio and documentary material, reenactments, combat films, and the P-word: PROPOGANDA!

Birch was involved in the Why We Fight series, which was intended to demonstrate to American soldiers the reasons for U.S. involvement in the war. Later on they were also shown to the general U.S. public to persuade them to support American actions.

Birch wore many hats during his time at Signal Corps and was responsible for setting up complete units--sound, optic, electric, props--and loading them onto the truck. He even modified a car to shoot newsreel by positioning the camera on the rooftop. Capra received a direct order from Washington to reenact “The Battle of Hill 609,” the film of which was lost when the ship was torpedoed and sunk. Capra whole-heartedly embraced the job and was provided with a cast of soldiers who had been at the actual battle. The unit moved to the desert that apparently bore a strong resemblance to the original battle location in Tunisia. The film team worked in the sweltering heat, around the clock, with no sleep.

While working in Okinawa, Birch received orders to shoot a new training unit in Ft. Washington, Arizona led by revered Army general George Patton, also known as “Old Blood and Guts”. Birch recounted giving orders to the general in order to execute a shot that involved Patton’s salute to the American flag for a specified period of time. When Patton didn’t execute his saluting role correctly, Birch had to graciously accept the blame and request that he do it over. The intimidating general suggested that Birch recite army orders to him to get the shot that he needed. After he completed the orders, his presence was requested by the general. Birch saluted the general and was asked:

”What did you do in civilian life?”

“I was a cameraman,” Birch replied.

“Nobody that hadn’t done something like that for a living would have the balls to do what you did. And you did it perfectly!”

The program then switched to the more sobering subject of concentration camp liberation footage. Marsha Orgeron, author of LIBERATING IMAGES? Samuel Fuller’s Film of Falkenau Concentration Camp (2006), presented on Sam Fuller’s twenty-two-minute film, which recorded the aftermath of the liberation of Falkenau, a Nazi concentration camp in Czechoslovakia. She contextualized the footage as during a time when recording and documenting the horrific truth of the concentration camps was encouraged by the government. Upon full discovery of the Nazi Concentration camps, General Dwight Eisenhower ordered camera crews to comprehensively document evidence of the atrocities for use in the war crimes tribunals. Enlisted men took on the unofficial capacity of filming what they witnessed not only for political ends, but for their personal collections and subsequent viewing by their families and friends. These films eventually made their way into archives in the U.S. Orgeron explained that while there were prohibitions against general filming, there was tacit acceptance for any witness to film the horrors discovered in the liberated camps. Many soldiers immediately sent their amateur footage back home.

Marsha Orgeron and Christa Lang Fuller

Sam Fuller’s liberation footage of Falkenau stands in great contrast to the genre of amateur liberation footage. For one, the film is so extensively edited that it tells a story (a fact that contradicts his claim that he ignored the film for years), and it operates on multiple experiential levels—witnessing, filming, remembering, and revising. Fuller’s film can be broken down into three parts— it depicts 1) the dead before burial, 2) the transportation of bodies to the burial site, and finally 3) the burial itself. Fuller and Captain Kimball Richmond were responsible for the filming and orchestration of the film’s constituent parts. Captain Richmond incorporated residents from the neighboring village into the film, whom play an active role as witnesses and participants; they are forced to confront the reality of what had been done. Fuller often included the neighboring houses in the frame, indicating their proximity to the camp, and hence the town's awareness and complicity.

Sam's Camera

Mark Toscano introduced the newly preserved print of Fuller’s V—E + 1. The original was held at the Academy Film Archive, where Toscano works, for over 10 years. There had been a plan to preserve the film, but it didn’t happen until Orgeron’s research. In her paper, she writes that “Fuller’s panning movement and walking-in reminds us of the cinematographer’s guiding hand, his presence as witness and in some ways, as judge.” The controlled camera is impressive given the horrific content, but also allows for a different kind of witnessing freed from the jittery effects of shock and disbelief, and toward a place of reckoning, remembering, and understanding.

Image from V—E + 1 May 9, 1945

Sam Fuller on celluloid (ca. summer 1945). Courtesy of the Academy Film Archive

Christa Lang Fuller, Sam Fuller’s wife, spoke after the film screened. She discovered the film in 1966, with no previous awareness of its existence. Born in Germany, Christa shared memories of coming from a generation that was continuously reminded of Nazi atrocities, and often applied blame to relatives and friends. She also signaled the importance to show films like Sam’s to young people so they do not become immune to horrors. As an aside, Christa mentioned that Sam shot extensive footage of “less morbid” subjects such as the Karaja Indians in the Brazilian Amazon.

- Gabriella Hiatt

Her first clip is a snippet from the 1916-17 film The Black Stork, directed by the Wharton brothers and produced by eugenicist Dr. Harry Haiselden who also starts (as himself) in the film. The Dr. Kevorkian of his day, Haiselden professed the right of parents to allow their disabled babies to die through the withholding of medical treatment.

The narrative of the film finds a diseased fiancé withholding the fact of his disease from his betrothed. A particularly disturbing flashforward shows the couple having their first child, which is born with an unidentified disability. A slender, wide-eyed baby flails about, alone on a cart, as his parents moan and cry in sadness (and apparent horror). The film ends with the ‘good’ doctor convincing them to allow their child to die. This clip introduces the audience to the horrors of the early culture of institutionalization that was the guiding principal of society’s care for the disabled from the 1800's through the 1960's.

Two subsequent clips further illustrate this history by showing the scientific communities’ construction and imposition of normalcy through studies of child development and the attitudes of the public toward these “shut-ins,” respectively. A down syndrome baby who cannot grasp blocks in a way that doctors define as “normal” grows into a precocious and lovely 5 year-old who is obviously proficient and willfully un-stacking the doctor’s carefully constructed towers, in spite of his admonishments. An outrageous ad for a drive-in theater beckons folks to “bring your shut-in friends” for free.

Kissel’s final two clips engage with the advocacy of rights for those with disabilities. The first, a 1978 production of the KU bureau of child research, posits that the bureaucrat responsible for legislating social responses to disability is an alien. The second is a WWI era film clip showing early efforts at vocational rehab with the “legless automobiles.”

Applause.

Jason Livingston. Photo by Rick Prelinger.

Jason Livingston, a film and video maker who confessed that he normally avoids referencing the personal in his work, took the mic next to introduce a piece that turned up in his parent’s closet. The 16mm print turned out to be part of the work of Philip Mallory Jones and the Ithaca Video Project, a 1970s era collective that provided access to portable video equipment to individuals and community groups and encouraged creative and advocacy-related uses of the medium. The two clips from this reel that Livingston screened are part of a work-in-progress on the labor of upstate media arts collectives of this period. Narrated by Irving Powless, the clips deal with protests by members of the Iroquois Nation against the state government’s reneging on the terms of a 1950's era agreement. This breach allowed interstate 80 to pass through their territory.

Onondagas vs. New York State, 1972

Clip one introduces the audience to Oren Lyons, a member of the Seneca Nation and the Iroquois Confederacy whose life is dedicated to fighting for the rights and livelihood of indigenous peoples both locally and internationally. Summing up his feelings after a long history of struggle with state and federal governments, which was characterized by the frequent and gross violations of promises and treaties, a clearly frustrated Lyons declares that he is not asking anything of the government in this current struggle. “All I want is to be left alone.” The second clip from this project strongly resembles footage from the National Film Board of Canada production You Are on Indian Land and features I-81 workers being obstructed by demonstrating Indian groups.

Livingston ended by announcing that he may have just located more footage for the project in the archive of the Visual Studies Workshop, and he looks forward to continuing this research.

Taking the stage next was Grace Lile of the Witness Media Archive (WMA) who began her discussion on the role of visual images in human rights advocacy by referencing the power wielded by the Rodney King video. The video was able to spark protest and investigative action by authorities into what would have otherwise been a forgotten episode of police brutality. What if, she asked, human rights advocates around the world could have the same access to such video production and, more importantly, a highly visible venue for injecting such images into the public arena? She argued that using video strategically to win the struggle for human rights means using it as one component of a larger campaign that has specific goals and plans. By offering a venue for this footage, Witness Media Archive sees itself as having a potentially useful role in the activist process.

She illustrated this by screening three very powerful clips dealing with the struggles of the Nakamata ancestral group in the Philippines to claim rights to their ancestral lands. The first two were segments of Seeing is Believing, a Peter Wintonick documentary about the political and social uses of handicams, that was in production while some of the political events depicted in it were still in the process of unfolding. The third clip was taken from the news coverage of The Probe Team but uses the images shot by the Nakamata on their own camera as ‘witness’ to the retaliatory murders of several of their members.

Seeing Is Believing: Handicams, Human Rights and the News, 2002

In thinking about this footage, and in deciding to post some of it on the web, Lile and others at WMA had to consider many concerns, including whether promoting this piece of technology would further jeopardize the lives of its authors. In this new era of access, with the entrance of You Tube, better cell phone video and other technologies, WMA has created a new website where footage can be uploaded in order to try to develop a model for responsibly increasing the power of human rights advocates. This can be accessed in beta version at http://hub.witness.org/en/node/33.

Musser dedicates this screening of The People’s Congressman, a film that Paul Robeson narrated and in which he appeared, to his late friend and mentor Jay Leyda, who always insisted that the campaign film was an ignored genre. In trying to determine who made the film, Musser encountered in the film’s case a piece of paper that read “Jay Leyda knows who made this film.” The audience chuckled as Musser noted the irony of this find, lamenting that he should have started this project a few decades ago in order to take advantage of his late colleague’s expertise.

He suggests that many think left wing filmmaking ended with the passing of Frontier Films in the early 1940s, but the work of Union Films after WWII shows that the committed aesthetic did not disappear quietly on the eve of the war.

Union Films contracted with United Electrical and other unions to produce documentaries and campaign films between 1946 and 1949. Members of the film company included Carl Marzani, Max Lambarg, Andy Cusick, Victor H. Kumow (cameraman), Edith Eisner Marzani (business manager and distribution agent), Max Glanbard (an ex-community theater director), and Richard Lyford.

Marzani, who founded the film company, produced the academy award nominated War Department Report in 1943 while employed in the government’s wartime Office of Strategic Services and worked subsequently in the Department of State’s Presentation Division. During his period in federal employ, he failed to divulge a previous brief stint as a CPUSA organizer. In 1947, Marzani was controversially indicted on fraud charges and served time in prison. Union Films’ first production, Deadline for Action (1946) (Watch video here), available as part of the Prelinger collection on archive.org, was released a few months prior to his conviction and caused him a great deal of trouble.

Charles Musser, in spirited debate with Richard Allen

The People’s Congressman was produced for the campaign of Vito Marcantonio, a former republican, who was running for re-election in New York’s 18th Congressional District on the American Labor Party ticket. The film, which Musser suggests evokes The River and takes a few jabs at The City, offers an alternative vision of the future for America’s citizens that involves improving their urban plight, rather than fleeing to the suburbs.

The Film: Pan over streets of the Upper East Side. These people need someone who will fight with them. Marc was born in this district, was born on this street “right in this very house”. The neighbors know him well. They know that he is incorruptible. Marc looks out over the East River, remembering all he has accomplished in this district. He talks one by one with a crowd of forlorn faces, listening to their concerns from behind thick black-rimmed glasses. Slow pan of the heavily burdened citizens crowding his office: “these are their faces.” Marc is hated by big business. Labor must have its own party. A progressive party. In front of a crowd of 50,000 at Yankee Stadium, Vito with fist in air stands “shoulder to shoulder” with men like Paul Robeson and Henry Wallace. Re-elect Vito Marcantoni. American Labor Party. The end.

Cynthia Young speaks as Capa looks on approvingly

Cynthia Young from the International Center of Photography (ICP) takes the podium to speak about the Center’s efforts to catalogue and conserve a rare photo collection that was discovered in Mexico in 1995. “The Mexican Suitcase,” as it was known, contained over 3,500 negative images of the Spanish Civil War shot by Robert Capa, Gerda Taro and David Seymour (also known as Chim). It was discovered by the great nephew of General Aguilar Gonzales in Mexico and recent negotiations on the part of the photographer's heirs brought its contents back to the United States.

Young notes that the “suitcase” was actually not a suitcase at all but three boxes: one Ilford photo box and two commercial boxes of film. She screens selections from two rolls of film. The first shows troops along the Rio Segura. Although many shots from this roll and others have been published and are well known, Young suggests that the discovery of the film negatives from which these images originated allows a new perspective. We can see sequences of images that contextualize previously published images for example, and we now have knowledge of what was edited out of those well known pieces. Furthermore, by making the images public, the memory of the events by bystanders and people in the photos may be triggered. While screening the second role of film, Young notes for example that coverage of the suitcase find in a local Mexican newspaper caused one man to come forward and identify himself as a child climbing on top of a car in one of the photographs.

She closes by announcing that the ICP is working with Eastman House on a custom scanner to help with the digitization of the negatives. They are currently scanning the film and estimate that the process will take about a year. They intend to publish all of the material online when complete.

Roman Gubern and Cynthia Young

Continuing with the theme of the Spanish Civil War, Romån Gubern from Filmoteca Española takes the mic to explain the work of Laya Films. In the propaganda battle that was being waged in Spain in 1936, many films were made to garner support, financial and otherwise, for the Republican regime. With a name referencing the pre-Roman Catalonian territory of Layetana, Laya Films set up a production and distribution department in Spain during the war that produced newsreels and documentary films and circulated Soviet and other films. An estimated 107 films were produced by the film company, including at least 20 documentaries. They had arrangements with several major distributors in the United States and abroad including Paramount and Pathe. At the end of the war, their significant archive of footage was confiscated by Franco’s authorities, disassembled and transferred to a police archive. This file was used to identify suspected criminals and insurrectionists. By 1945 the material was largely destroyed by a fire in the building where it was housed in Madrid.

Gubern screens two reels of surviving outtakes covering the Liberacion de Malaga and related maneuverings. These silent reels were scored for this event by NYU film scoring students, and contain the iconic image of a bugler that graces the Orphans 6 program.

Although the narrative that these images suggest is obscured by their status as outtakes, a strong sense of sympathy for the people of the devastated town, and a clear need for food and reinforcements for hard working Republican troops is evident.

If we were left happily wanting more after Gubern’s presentation of footage, we were happy to see Paula Felix-Didier take the stand to introduce the screening of an edited version of this footage entitled Noticario de Laya No. 3 (1937). Paula credits Mona Jimenez with her concern about this then unidentified piece of nitrate film that led to her own eventual discovery of its origin. Alfonso del Amo Garcia’s General Catalogue of the Films of the Spanish Civil War provided the important bit of information that an extant print of Noticario de Laya No. 3 was not known to exist. However, previous inspection work by students in NYU’s Moving Image Archiving and Preservation program had identified the film as one of Laya’s newsreels and noted that it was in fairly stable condition but needed preservation. The film came to reside at Bobst along with three reels of footage of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade via the efforts of archivist Victor Berch. Sarah Ziebell and Dan Streible’s efforts also helped get the reel preserved and now one copy has been deposited here at the Tamiment Library and one at the Filmoteca Española in Madrid.

As the projector rolls, the outtakes we have just seen assume a more organized form. Militia men coming from the Aragon Front arrive in Barcelona. Scenes from the town of Malaga, which fell to the Fascists in February of 1937, showcase the devastation to homes and buildings. Sounds of bullets hailing on the southern Front. American ambulances arrive in Barcelona on their way to the Madrid Front. Lines of refugees leave Madrid. A happy newlywed militiaman descends the steps of a church with his new bride. Cut to Oviedo and more sounds of gunfire. Catalonian people greet their Basque brothers. The revolution creates new free schools for a new generation. The reel ends with a meaningful series of shots of children in school, the most memorable of these a medium long shot of a group of young kids looking out at the camera raising their fists—“la liberta”.

A former journalist and, as Dan introduced him, 'an expert on Spanish cinema history,' Steven Marsh ventured a thoughtful and well prepared response to this enlightening panel. He called attention to the relevance of the discovery of the Laya newsreel and others of its kind to the ongoing debates in Spain about the relation of the archive to cultural memory. Suggesting that these films are part of the nuancing of traditional approaches to the Spanish Civil War, he focused on the way our study of them can interrogate and ask questions of the accepted history. Marsh linked the Laya newsreel to the recent controversial law that Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has made the centerpiece of his campaign. The “law of historical memory” increases funding for efforts to recover and identify bodies from mass graves across the country and pushes local governments to make their wartime archives more accessible to researchers. Marsh notes that the significance of this law, and its interesting linking of bodies and archives, may have a complicated meaning for the current generation in Spain that is too young to have participated in the transition from dictatorship to democracy. In modern day Spain, just as before, this archive of films, documents and bodies takes on the quality of performative memorialization.

The unruly nature of propaganda is quite evident, argued Marsh, in the history of this footage: it’s re-purposing by pro-Franco forces into an archive of suspected criminals being the prime example of this bricolage aesthetic of re-use. If the image of raised fists of little children can serve the Generalitat’s goal of self determination for, and world recognition of, a fledgling state as well as the aspirations of pro-Franco forces to quash that state, it needn’t stop there. The re-opening of the archive of historical memory by Zapatero has created a 3rd generation audience for these raised-fist images and the history of their circulation and re-purposing. It is this new generation that will be responsible for approaching and producing Spain’s national cultural memory. But, Marsh argues, this new generation, by their lack of immediate memory, must participate in a politics of the self that requires them to see their ‘self’ as an ‘other’. Marsh notes that this kind of spectatorship takes on the form of a heterology, divorced from the melancholia of earlier generations that lived through the war. In this environment, the political subject exists in the interval between two ideologies.

Assisted by the Communist Party, the workers made the film to show what happened during the strike and how they were treated. Reels 1-4 were in great shape, but according to George reel 5 was frozen solid and "looked like a coffee cake." Not wanting to lose the beautiful material, George took an image of every scene from this reel and assembled it using iMovie and iPhoto. He presented us with a 4-minute compilation of all the stills which included striking images of children attending school, playing in a newly constructed playground, and participating in a game of "crack ball." The film emphasized that these are the children of the working class, the future workers of America, and they should be the primary focus of poverty aid.

The second screening was of the Jewish Labor Committee's Nos Maisons d'enfants presented by Gail Malmgreen of Tamiment Library. The film is a preservation work-in-progress as one reel is fully restored while the other was just transferred from nitrate. The film was made for the JLC as a fundraising tool. Gail explained that the film was meant most likely for private screenings to show how the JLC used their funds to aid Holocaust survivors in the immediate post-war period. Unfortunately, little is known about the children portrayed in the film, although Gail surmised that many of them were not in fact orphans but had parents who were destitute following the war. Most people are more interested in orphaned children than with those who have parents. (If only the same could be said for film!)


Images from Nos maisons d'enfants, 1949

The film documents day-to-day life in several homes throughout France. Some houses too care of children whose parents were killed, while others cared for refugees from Europe and North Africa. The children study, receive medical attention, and dance and sing outside. The final scene depicts a group of children thanking their "friends in America." A young girl says, "We learn. We sing. We play. We want for nothing." The double-orphaned film is a fascinating artifact of post war history, but I think Gail said it best in her presentation when she commented, "The soul of the film is in the faces."

For further reading please see Gail Malmgreen's article, The Children, available on our blog.

A Fair(y) Use Tale, Professor Eric Faden of Bucknell University

To sum up Howard Besser’s presentation in one sentence: “If we really want to do our jobs responsibly, we are going to have to break the law.” Howard, Director of the MIAP Program at NYU, described the problematic nature of current copyright law and the importance of copyrighted material to the creative process. In terms of the Orphan Film Symposium, Howard explained that it would have taken months and an extensive budget to fully adhere to the copyright law for all our screenings. He used some of this year’s Orphan films, La Venganza de Pancho Villa, Noticiario de Laya #3, and Sunday, to emphasize the complicated underlying rights embedded in each work. As a small silver lining, Howard presented a report released Friday from the Section 108 Study Group of the Copyright Office. The report stated that it “may be possible” to expand copyright exemptions to librarians for audio/visual material. In other words, the flexibility that librarians have in reproducing and distributing textual material may be expanded to include media. (The key words in all this are “may be” as the report stated further evidence was needed to implement the change.)

Howard lectures on copyright. Photo by Rick Prelinger.

Howard sending out Disney love

The following presenter, Peter Decherney, who is currently writing a book on Hollywood and copyright law, explained other exemptions made by the copyright office. More specifically, he outlined his efforts in 2006 to allow professors of Film or Media Studies to present clips of DVDs as part of class instruction, an action otherwise prohibited under copyright law. Facing opposition from Time Warner, Pioneer, and the Motion Picture Association, Peter's exemption was granted provided that the material presented in class is included in the department's libraries. The Copyright Office will make more exemption rulings in 2009, and Peter hopes to expand the exemption to include other professors and students.

Rina Pantalony and Peter Decherney. Photo by Rick Prelinger.

Our enlightening discussion ended with Rina Pantalony, a lawyer with the Canadian Justice Department and Adjunct MIAP professor who explained the role of Fair Use policy. Acknowledging the frustration and lack of dialogue within our "permissions culture,' Rina explained the importance of a detailed internal policy in order to abate risks with copyrighted material. While not encouraging blatant law-breaking, Rina argued that institutions and professionals should implement policy (such as the "Best Practices Protocol" in the documentary film community) and apply it in a consistent way. She also encouraged both sides of the argument to come together and endorse such policy making.

The panel sparked interesting and lively debate that spilled over into our break. Thank you to Orphans for providing the forum to discuss these issues with such an eclectic panel and audience. Luckily, tensions were cooled as we shifted our attention to films focusing on the "real" orphans.

Bobst Library, the home of the Fales Collection, courtesy of Blue Jake

Enter Jim Lindner, a respected authority on preservation and migration of electronic media. Jim echoed Ann’s concerns about the problem of format obsolescence along with tape deterioration. In 2001, Jim helped to develop SAMMA, a videotape to digital file migration system. The automated SAMMA is essentially a robot which takes a tape, uses a gentle archival cleaner, analyzes the signal of the tape, and encodes it into a digital file. SAMMA can convert from any format (Betacam, Digibeta, U-matic, VHS, etc.) to any digital output format. Throughout the migration process, the SAMMA system also closely monitors the tape, looking at every frame and collecting extensive metadata. Therefore, those using the machine can get an unbiased analysis of the image quality and invaluable statistical information about the video without actually looking at the video itself (and possibly damaging it further). SAMMA also produces a less expensive, semi-automated machine, SAMMA solo, which was recently used to digitize U-matic tapes in the Downtown Collection.

Sarah Zieball, former Moving Image Preservation Specialist for NYU’s libraries, explained how Fales became a beta test site for the SAMMA solo machine. The machine helped digitize almost 300 U-matic works in a little over three months and allowed Fales to test their technological “readiness” for digitization projects of this kind. Sarah also explained how SAMMA solo encouraged Fales to adopt an alternative appraisal model. While Fales archivists were accustomed to appraising material first, SAMMA digitizes items first and then provides information with which the material can be appraised for curatorial value.

To conclude the panel, Brent Phillips, Media Specialist at Fales, gave us an overview of the content of the newly digitized material, including how many tapes were migrated and their current preservation formats. We were then treated to a 7-minute collection of clips including video of graffiti artists in New York City, a promotion for Creative Time, and a trippy appearance by Allen Ginsberg.

Melinda Stone and Sam Sharkey appeared via a live video feed from San Francisco. They began the night with a “natural anthem” sing-along film to the song, "Everyone Needs a Hoe." Although the audience couldn’t see the words to sing, the marriage of technology to folk music delighted all.

Post-dinner euphoria thanks to I-Chat

Orphan love from coast to coast!

Proving that there’s more than one way to reflect on rural life, Helen Hill award winner Naomi Uman presented a selection from her work-in-progress titled Kalendar based on her time spent in the Ukraine. The piece maps the names of the months in Ukrainian with images, that set often gray landscapes against the bright colors of spring, people’s houses and clothing.

Naomi Uman with door prize

Returning to the U.S., North Carolina State University professor Devin Orgeron presented the rare film about a state that isn’t trying to market itself as a tourist destination. Orgeron began his project by looking for state-funded travel films, many of which were made in the 1940’s and 1950’s as states sought to take advantage of the post-war economic boom. North Carolina’s films promoted the state as “variety vacationland,” a nod to its beaches, mountains and piedmont region. He showed a recent advertising campaign that demonstrated the resiliency of this slogan.

George Stoney and Devin Orgeron

But George Stoney’s 1949 film Tar Heel Family, is a sharp contrast from the boosterish travel films that are usually produced by state governments. Instead, “Tar Heel Family,” was targeted at high school students, who were intended to learn from the film that North Carolina was not protecting its natural resources and risked losing much of its prosperity if it didn’t change its course. After the screening, Stoney noted that he was particularly proud that he was able to include African-Americans in the film- a difficult feat in the still-segregated South.

The night concluded with a screening of Uman’s thesis film from Cal Arts, Leche, which focused on ranch life in Mexico. While there were no hay rides nor barnyard animals (although Uman’s dog, Tattoo, was present for the screening), the country night of Orphans proved to be a success.

- Martin L. Johnson

The preferred choice for health-conscious smokers

If orphan film ever becomes its own genre, one of its traits will surely be the mixing of the banal with the beautiful, and the ordinary with the outrageous. For the last day session on Friday, the audience got a touch of all four with screenings presented by two Marks: Williams (Dartmouth) and Quigley (UCLA).

Williams went first with a kinescope he became aware of when he was working on his dissertation (soon to be a book) on early television in Los Angeles. Producer Harold Jovien had a private collection of kinescopes, most from shows he worked on, including a special episode of the “The Orchid Awards,” in which Ronald Reagan would give an orchid (for what and why was not clear) to an honored guest. For this episode, irritably sponsored by Viceroy Cigarettes (which promised a less irritable, healthier cigarette) the award went to Liberace, the mid-century’s favorite one-named musician.

With performances by Liberace, stories of family (his mother and his brother) and romance, repeated advertising breaks, and a hokey climax- the passing of a gift orchid from Reagan to Liberace that is perhaps one of the great exchanges in U.S. cultural history (only topped by Elvis Presley's gift of a gun to Richard Nixon), the piece was precisely the kind of televisual gem one expects to see at Orphans. Williams noted that both, ironically, were key icons of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980's.

As the old vaudeville advice goes, never follow an animal or child act. For Orphans, we might add a kinescope of a cigarette company-sponsored award show starring Reagan and Liberace to that list.

But UCLA's Mark Quigley, with help from Dan Einstein, pulled it off during the second half of the presentation. It should be mentioned that they had some help from a six-foot, six-inch bespectacled blond man with a lisp, also known as Bud Keiser. From 1960 to 1983, Keiser was the force behind Insight, a narrative television show sponsored by the Paulists, a Catholic order that seeks to work outside the church to do social good.

In Los Angeles, outside the church meant Hollywood, and Insightrecruited star actors, writers and directors (everyone from Rod Serling to William Shatner to Bob Newhart took part, many of them even donating their fees back to the Paulists) to appear on the show which aired on Sunday mornings and other forlorn time-slots on television stations all over the country. This odd variety of quality television—the show received praise from the New York Times and other places—is offset by the religious, humanist message (as Quigley noted, the show was liberal in its politics except when it came to sex outside marriage and abortion).

Clips of the shows were screened, along with the 1965 episode Locusts Have No King, a small town drama that raises important moral questions about whether one should fight vice, or just leave vice be (Eliot Spitzer, take note). The two also discussed preservation efforts at UCLA's Film and Television Archive, which now houses the collection.

- Martin L. Johnson