As part of an annual collaboration between Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the NYU Orphan Film Symposium, two animated films by Richard Protovin, founder of the animation unit at the Tisch School of the Arts, will be showcased at the “Orphans at MoMA” film preservation event tonight, Tuesday, November 24, 2015.
As part of an annual collaboration between Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the NYU Orphan Film Symposium, two animated films by Richard Protovin, founder of the animation unit at the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU, will be showcased at the “Orphans at MoMA” film preservation event tonight, Tuesday, November 24, 2015.
Academy Award–winning filmmaker John Canemaker, current head of the Tisch Animation Program, will introduce the films Straw Pib (1979), preserved in 16mm by the New York Public Library, and Fan Film (1985), a 35mm print from MoMA's collection.
This year the annual collaboration between MoMA and the Symposium also celebrates the 50th anniversary of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. Alumni, students, and faculty of various Tisch programs will take part in the event, including Cinema Studies, Film & TV, Animation, and Moving Image Archiving and Preservation (MIAP).
MIAP program graduate Kimberly Tarr (Media Preservation Unit, NYU Libraries) and Kate Donovan (NYU Tamiment Library), will present photos and newly preserved 16mm films (1937-38) shot behind the lines during the Spanish Civil War by Sgt. Harry W. Randall Jr. An American volunteer in the storied Abraham Lincoln Battalion, Randall was head of the photographic unit for the anti-fascist 15th International Brigade. The remarkable footage was preserved with the support of Rickard Jorgensen and Carol-Jeanette Jorgensen. The collection of Harry Randall: Fifteenth International Brigade Films and Photographs is part of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (ALBA) at NYU.
The Smithsonian's new National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) premieres two 16mm restorations. Eminent film historian and NYU Cinema Studies alumnus Charles Musser and Walter Forsberg will introduce the recently uncovered Count Us In (1948), a presidential campaign short for the Progressive Party, produced by Carl Marzani's leftist collective Union Films.
MIAP alumnus Blake McDowell, of the NMAAHC, will introduce a rare amateur surrealist erotic film, Venus and Adonis (1935), shot around New York City by young filmmakers Harry Dunham and Jules Bucher. While researching his master's thesis on Bucher, McDowell found that MoMA possessed a 16mm print, which includes the soundtrack Paul Bowles composed for the work. The Library of Congress National Audio-Visual Conservation Center digitized the material for the ‘Orphans at MoMA’ screening, the first time Venus and Adonis has been seen in nearly 80 years. Co-director Harry Dunham went on to make China Strikes Back (1937, edited by Jay Leyda, later an NYU Cinema Studies professor, and mentor to Charles Musser), and to shoot Too Much Johnson (1938) for Orson Welles.
The program concludes with a second film edited by Jules (J. V. D.) Bucher. Men and Dust (1940) is a stylistically fascinating labor exposé made by the wife and husband team of Lee and Sheldon Dick. Named to the Library of Congress National Film Registry in 2013, Men and Dust has had few screenings, but the National Archives and Records Administration has preserved the film and provides a 35mm print for screening tonight. NYU Cinema Studies PhD student Tanya Goldman, who has researched the career of the elusive pioneer woman documentarian Lee Dick, will introduce Men and Dust.
Dan Streible, director of the Orphan Film Symposium, will host the program together with Katie Trainor, MoMA Film Collections Manager. Streible will also present the recent Library of Congress reconstruction of the oldest surviving copyrighted motion picture, Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze, Jan. 7, 1894.
“Orphans at MoMA’ will be held Tuesday, November 24 at 7 p.m. at the Titus 2 Theater at the Museum of Modern Art, located at 11 W. 53rd Street. For more information, visit bit.ly/1OcheEy.
About NYU Tisch MIAP
Founded in 2003, The Moving Image Archiving and Preservation (MIAP) Program is one of only three graduate programs in the United States devoted to training the next generation of audiovisual archivistsThe MIAP program is unique in its emphasis on training specialists to manage mixed collections of film, magnetic media, and digital media in a variety of organizations such as archives, museums, and specialized repositories. For more information, visit bit.ly/1PKJ9wM.
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