The 8th Orphan Film Symposium, presented by New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts' Department of Cinema Studies in partnership with the Museum of the Moving Image, begins April 11 and runs through April 14, 2012.

New York University to Present the 8th Orphan Film Symposium with the Theme “Made To Persuade”

Symposium to Convene April 11–14 at the Museum of the Moving Image, Astoria, NY

The 8th Orphan Film Symposium, presented by New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts' Department of Cinema Studies in partnership with the Museum of the Moving Image, begins April 11 and runs through April 14, 2012.  The international event features 80 speakers who will screen and discuss orphan films.

Entitled Made to Persuade, this year's symposium will examine the impact neglected moving images have had on thought, opinion, and behavior. The program includes advertising films, political campaign spots, television commercials, newsreels, sales films, military productions, advocacy pieces, propaganda, training films, and more. 

Featured will be dozens of rare, rediscovered, and recently preserved works from around the world and will include: formerly "lost" films, such as A People's Convention, a 1948 campaign film for the Progressive Party, and New York University, an early 1960s recruiting film by the noted documentary director Willard Van Dyke; new preservation work, including Hollywood legend Sam Fuller's How to Light a Cigar (1945) as well as six films made by computer art pioneer Lillian Schwartz at Bell Laboratories in the early 1970s; curated programs from the national film archives of Mexico, the Czech Republic, Germany, the Netherlands, and Ireland; and excerpts from Hamile: The Tongo Hamlet (1964), the first feature film made in Ghana.

The Museum of the Moving Image will showcase the 8th Orphan Film Symposium within its newly renovated and expanded spaces, which include a state-of-the-art 264-seat theater, a 68-seat screening room, new galleries, and an education center.  On Sunday, April 15, the Museum will present public screenings of orphan films.  The schedule will be announced on online at www.movingimage.us.

On Wednesday, April 11, the symposium opens with restoration experts Thomas Lang (ABC and Tanus Film) and Anke Mebold (Deutsches Filminstitut) and scholar Tom Gunning (University of Chicago) introducing the newly restored German silent film, Die Hochbahnkatastrophe aka The Elevated Train Catastrophe (1921). World-renowned pianist Dennis James will provide the musical accompaniment.

The Orphan Film Symposium is a three-day, four-night event known for stimulating dialogue among filmmakers, scholars, archivists, curators, collectors, distributors, and others devoted to moving image archiving, preservation, and history. For more information, including the entire schedule, visit www.nyu.edu/orphanfilm.

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