Frame from home movies shot by Helen Hill in her New Orleans neighborhood, ca. 200-2003. Super 8 film degraded by floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina (2005). Scanned by BB Optics for NYU MIAP Program, Harvard Film Archive, and the Hill estate. Courtesy of: https://wp.nyu.edu/orphanfilm/
ORPHANS 2022: COUNTER-ARCHIVES
Concordia University (Montreal, Quebec, Canada)
June 15-18, 2022
Concordia University and the NYU Orphan Film Symposium join forces to present Orphans 2022: Counter-Archives. The 13th edition of the Orphan Film Symposium will be hosted by Concordia University and held in downtown Montreal, June 15-18, 2022.
This biennial event brings together an international group of archivists, scholars, artists, curators, preservationists, librarians, collectors, distributors, documentarians, students, researchers, and others devoted to saving, studying, and screening all manner of neglected moving image artifacts.
What is an orphan film? “Narrowly defined, it's a motion picture abandoned by its owner or caretaker. More generally, the term refers to all manner of films outside of the commercial mainstream.”
Orphans 2022: Counter-Archives is partly supported by Archive/Counter-Archive (A/CA), a major research project “dedicated to activating and remediating audiovisual archives created by Indigenous Peoples (First Nations, Métis, Inuit), Black communities and People of Colour, women, LGBT2Q+ and immigrant communities. Political, resistant, and community-based, counter-archives disrupt conventional narratives and enrich our histories.”
We will be especially interested in screening film content that advances awareness, visibility, debate, and discussion of materials similarly devoted to neglected and marginalized communities in Canada and internationally. We aspire to include orphaned films redressing historical injustice in its many forms and contexts, and to embrace films that offer marginalized communities a voice and visibility within and beyond the Orphans platform.
Save the dates! We will be circulating a full Call for Presentations later this Spring.
Matt Soar, Orphans 2022 primary interim contact: orphanfilm@concordia.ca
Archive/Counter-Archive: https://counterarchive.ca/
NYU Cinema Studies / Orphan Film Symposium: wp.nyu.edu/orphanflim
Dan Streible, Orphans founder: dan.streible@nyu.edu