Thanks to all symposium participants and volunteers for making the Orphan Film Symposium an enormous success!

Listen to the NPR story on Orphans III.

The University of South Carolina Film Studies Program announces its third symposium devoted to the study, preservation, and use of "orphan films." Participants have begun to declare this interdisciplinary project a "movement." Orphans III will again bring together an eclectic mix of cinema scholars, moving image archivists, curators, technology experts and media artists who work with orphaned material. Selected speakers will lead three days and nights of presentations, screenings, and discussion.

The central (but not exclusive) focus of Orphans III is the element of sound. What can we learn by listening to orphan films? How is the study of moving images altered by looking at their soundtracks? Topics might include: audio restoration; theories of sound; music in film; obsolescent recording technologies; film narration practices; copyright and recording rights; mp3; film scoring; production techniques; motion picture recordings of vocal and music performance; early sound films; "silent" era accompaniment; radio and recording industry histories; benshi; uses of "found" sound; home recording; innovation and experimentation in analogue, electronic and digital sound; digital archiving and distribution; secondary audio programs; histories of music, language, and spoken words as captured by moving images
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