Friday May 13 - Saturday May 14, 2011, 7:30 pm

The UCLA Film & Television Archive, New York University, and Los Angeles Filmforum present

Celebrating Orphan Films: The Orphan Film Symposium West

In-person: Dan Streible, founder, Orphan Film Symposium, plus 25 experts showing more than 40 seldom-seen films!

At the UCLA Film & Television Archive, Billy Wilder Theater

For more details, please see the UCLA Film & Television website. To purchase passes, click here.

UCLA Film & Television Archive is pleased to partner with Los Angeles Filmforum and New York University's Orphan Film Symposium to present an eclectic mix of screenings and discussions at the Billy Wilder Theater.

The Orphan Film Project consists of ongoing collaborations among archivists, lab and technology experts, scholars, filmmakers, curators and collectors with a shared passion for saving and screening neglected films from outside the commercial mainstream: home movies, outtakes, news film, sponsored works, silent-era cinema, fragments and experimental films.

Join archivists, film historians, artists, technical experts and scholars as they discuss their efforts in finding, researching and presenting these rare gems.

Passes are only $10.  **NOTE** One pass admits you to all "Celebrating Orphan Films" events throughout the weekend.

Partial Program

(Program order subject to change—more to be added; check back for frequent updates.)

Friday, May 13, 2011, 7:30 pm - 11:00 pm

* Selections from the University of South Carolina Moving Image Research Collections, including Fox Movietone newsreel outtakes and Light Cavalry Girl, a Chinese propaganda film featuring a troupe of young women on motorcycles.

* Heidi Rae Cooley (University of South Carolina) presents The Augustas (ca. 1930s-'50s), a remarkable compilation from Augusta, Georgia by amateur filmmaker and traveling salesman Scott Nixon.

* Experimental films preserved by BB Optics and NYU Moving Image Archiving and Preservation students, including works by pioneering computer artist Lillian Schwartz.

* Muzak (1972), a sponsored film featuring interviews with executives of America's "efficiency through music" corporation. Courtesy of the Reserve Film and Video Collection of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

* And Then They Forgot God (1971), an outré religious telefilm featuring Joseph Campanella, Beverly Garland and Adam West, presented by writer Paul Cullum.

Saturday, May 14, 2011, 10:00 am - 1:00 pm

* A presentation on graphic designer and filmmaker Saul Bass by Jan-Christopher Horak (Director, UCLA Film & Television Archive).

* Home movies shot in Hawaii in the 1940s and '50s by African American aviator and entertainer Marie Dickerson Coker. Presented by Leah M. Kerr (Director of Collections, Mayme A. Clayton Library and Museum) and Trisha Lendo (UCLA Film & Television Archive).

* Newly preserved Super 8 films by animator Helen Hill, shot around New Orleans before and after Katrina (2004-05), presented by Center for Home Movies.

* A rare presentation of 28mm films: home movies, circa 1920, found in New Hampshire, and projected on an authentic 1918 motor-driven Pathéscope New Premier 28mm projector. Presented by Dino Everett (Archivist, Hugh M. Hefner Moving Image Archive, University of Southern California).

Saturday, May 14, 2011, 2:00 pm - 6:00 pm

* Orphan films An overview of 1960s newsreels from private collections, including a screening of the last theatrically released Hearst Metrotone Newsreel. Presented by Blaine Bartell (UCLA Film & Television Archive).

* New York Street Scenes (Hearst Metrotone News, 1960) preserved by UCLA Film & Television Archive, presented by Roger L. Brown (UCLA Moving Image Archive Studies), with NYC Street Scenes and Noises (Fox Movietone News, 1929).

* Rare local television screenings presented by the panel of Dan Einstein (UCLA Film & Television Archive), Stephanie Sapienza (The American Archive) and Mark J. Williams (Dartmouth).

* A panel featuring preservationists Bill Brand (BB Optics), Ross Lipman (UCLA Film & Television Archive) and Mark Toscano (Academy Film Archive) and a screening of the David Wojnarowicz’s A Fire in My Belly (1987) from NYU Fales Library.

* A screening of the 1960s-era UCLA student film Patient 411. Director Ronald Raley will introduce and discuss the film’s cinematography by famous UCLA film major, Jim Morrison of the Doors.

Saturday, May 14, 2011, 7:30 pm - 11:00 pm

* The missing reel from The Passaic Textile Strike (1926), rediscovered in NYU Tamiment Library's Communist Party USA Collection.

* The Unshod Maiden (1932), a butchered reduction of Lois Weber’s Shoes (1916), presented by Shelley Stamp (UC Santa Cruz).

* Color (1958) by Lidia García Millán, the first color experimental film made in Uruguay.

* Ron and Chuck in Disneyland Discovery (1969), a queer courtship narrative covertly filmed in Disneyland, guerilla-style, by pioneer filmmaker Pat Rocco. From the Outfest Legacy Collection at UCLA Film & Television Archive.

* 50th anniversary screening of Sunday (1961), directed by Dan Drasin. A stunning document of the police crackdown on a peaceful demonstration of folk singers in Washington Square Park in 1961.  Restored by UCLA Film & Television Archive, with funds from The Film Foundation. Listen to NPR's recent interview with director Dan Drasin.

* Much more to be announced! Check back for frequent updates.

See some clips from Orphans West, assembled by UCLA’s Mark Quigley:

Note: Passes will be available for pick-up beginning Friday, May 13 at 6:30 p.m. at the Billy Wilder Theater box office. Admission to any event in this series is pending space availability. Passholders should be seated 15 minutes prior to event start time. After this time, remaining seats may be released. Passes are non-transferable and non-refundable. ID will be checked at the box office when the pass is picked up.

This screening series is supported, in part, by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission; the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles; and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.  Additional support is generously provided by the American Cinematheque.

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