Events are in the USC School of Music Recital Hall, except as indicated.

Wednesday September 25, 8 pm

An Evening with film composer David Raksin
Academy Foundation Visiting Artist
Julie Hubbert (USC School of Music), moderator

Thursday September 26
Orphanista Welcome (9-9:15) Dan Streible (USC Film Studies)

EARLY SOUND (9:15 - 11)

David Pierce (British Film Institute), “British DeForest Phonofilm Recordings of the Music Hall Tradition”

Ken Weissman (Library of Congress), “Eubie Blake, Eddie Cantor & Calvin Coolidge: Restoring De Forest Phonofilms, 1922-25”

William O'Farrell (National Archives of Canada), moderator

NEWSREELS (11:15 - 12:45)

Robert Heiber (Chace Productions), "The Sound of Newsreels: Issues for Preservation & Restoration"

Ray Edmondson (Archive Associates) "The Voice of Australia: Cinesound Review”

Lunch at the Hunter Gatherer

REDISCOVERY: SOUNDS OF THE FILMS OF ZORA NEALE HURSTON (2-3:45)

Kristy Andersen (Bay Bottom News), “On Making BlackSouth: The Life Journey of Zora Neale Hurston”

Arlene Balkansky (Library of Congress), "Zora Neale Hurston and the Beaufort, South Carolina Church Footage: The Recovery of Sound and Film"

Elaine Charnov (Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival), “Zora Neale Hurston as Ethnographic Filmmaker"

CINEMA TECHNOLOGIES in GERMANY between the WARS:
SOUND, COLOR, X-RAYS (4-5:45)

Frances Guerin (University of Kent) "Perpetrator Images and The Third Reich in Colour (BBC, 2001)"

Kay Hoffmann (Documentary Film Center, Stuttgart), “Röntgenstrahlen (Germany, 1937): Talking X-Ray Films”

Joachim Polzer (Polzer Media Group GmbH, Potsdam), “Weltwunder der Kinematographie: The Earliest Optical Sound Films”

Scott Curtis (Northwestern University), moderator

Supper at the Columbia Museum of Art

SCREENING at the Columbia Museum of Art (8-10)

Scott Stark (Flicker), Found Home Movies Meet the Avant Garde

Skip Elsheimer (A/V Geeks), 16mm School Soundtracks: The Musical

Stephen Parr (Oddball Film+Video), Sonic Oddities from the San Francisco Media Archive

Friday September 27

SCORING (9-10:30)

Daniel Goldmark (University of Alabama), "Live Piano Accompaniment & DeForest Sound for the Fleischer cartoon Has Anybody Here Seen Kelly? (1926)"

Neil Lerner (Davidson College), "An Ignored Parent to Hollywood's Musical Vocabulary: Virgil Thomson's Score for The Plow That Broke the Plains (1936)"

Ivan Raykoff (Whitman College), "Playback Pianists and the Crisis of Disembodiment, or ‘I Ghosted for The Abbott and Costello Show’”

SHORTS (10:45-12:15)

Shelley Stamp (UC Santa Cruz), "Shoes (1916) and The Unshod Maiden (1932), or Giving Progressive Cinema a Good Talking To: Unmaking and Restoring the Films of Lois Weber”

Nico de Klerk (Nederlands Filmmuseum) 35mm SCREENING: “European Theatrical Shorts of the 1930s”

Lunch at the Koger Center for the Arts

MY SONG GOES FORTH (1:30-2:30)

Charles Musser (Yale University), introduces a 35mm screening of the newly-preserved Paul Robeson documentary, My Song Goes Forth (1937, Great Britain/South Africa).

MEDIA MIGRATION (2:45-4:15)

Bjørn Sørenssen (University of Trondheim), “Digitizing Filmed TV Ads from 1950s Norway”

Rick Prelinger (Internet Archive), “A Model of Plenty: Putting Orphan Films (and Television) On-line”

Laura Kissel (USC New Media), moderator

PEOPLE LIKE US (4:30-5:30)
British artist Vicki Bennett in performance

Supper

SCREENING (8-10)

Alan Berliner (alanberliner.com), “From ABC Audio Archivist to Independent Documentarian: Selected Shorts by Alan Berliner”

Bill Morrison (decasia.com) New York-based filmmaker introduces his new film Decasia (2002), with original music composed by Michael Gordon.

Saturday September 28

SCREENING (9-10)

Greg Pierce (Orgone Cinema and Archive) shows All Personal Sound Movies (1949-63), All Golf Films (c.1973) and more by amateur Auricon cineaste Fred McCleod (Oakmont, PA).

AMATEUR (10:15-12)

Jesse Lerner (Pitzer College), "Superocheros: Mexico's Super8 Film Movement,” with José Agustín’s Luz Externa (1973) presented with a restored soundtrack.

Russ Suniewick (Colorlab Corp), "Digital Telecine Mastering of 9.5mm and 8mm Film" (including a 1920s road movie)

Steve Davidson (Florida Moving Image Archive), “African-American home movies of the 1950s and 60s”

Lunch

LOST VOICES OF THE DOCUMENTARY (1-2:45)

Margarita de la Vega (International Film Seminars), “Restoring 50 years of Audiotapes from the Robert Flaherty Film Seminar”

Sam Bryan (Pratt Institute and the New York International Film Foundation), “Julien Bryan’s Film Documentation of the Stalin-era Soviet Union”

Dana White (Emory University), “The Crusading Housing Reform Films of Atlanta’s Charles F. Palmer, 1934-1946”

THE VOICE & MUSIC OF THE DOCUMENTARY (3-4:45)

Ross McElwee (Harvard), “Voice-over Narration Practices,” with a preview of his new film Bright Leaves and outtakes from his 1986 masterpiece Sherman’s March

Les Blank (Flower Films), “Narrating with Music: Some Unheard Takes from Masters of Roots Music”

Cocktails & hors d'oeuvres

MUSIC FOR LOST FORMATS (5:15-6:45)

Libby Burke (Visual Archives of American Music and University of Washington), “Snader Telescriptions: Musical Film Filler for Early Television”

Mark Cantor (Celluloid Improvisations, Los Angeles), “Jukebox Movies from the 1940s”

Supper at the Clarion Hotel,
seguing into

ORPHAN 'POTLUCK' (7:30 til ?)

A wrap party event, back by popular demand.
Bring a fun/interesting/odd/rare short or clip to share after our dinner together. We bring the food and drink, you bring the films. All orphanistas are invited to give a quick introduction to a favorite piece of orphan film or video (16mm or VHS please). Informal, engaging, fun.

Also note:
Margaret Compton (University of Georgia Media Archives & Peabody Awards Collection), “The Orphan as Filmmaker: Juvenile Series Fiction, 1912-1935," a curated exhibition of books on display throughout the symposium.

late updated: 7/13