Where in the World Must Films Be Preserved?
posted October 28, 2016
While countries commonly require that books be deposited in a national library, upon publication, that appears to be less the case with films and other audiovisual publications. To get a sense of how common such requirements are, and where, is the goal of a new project: an ambitious survey of audiovisual-deposit laws around the world.
FilmStruck, a Streaming Service for “Film Nerds”
posted October 20, 2016
To the growing stable of online, streaming film services, add one more – one that the Wall Street Journal has dubbed “Netflix for film nerds.” FilmStruck, a collaboration of Turner Classic Movies and the Criterion Collection, at least initially available only in the US, will emphasize art and cult films from independent film companies, but will also offer some Hollywood studio products.
Home Movie Day: in Your Town, or Others
posted October 10, 2016
If your city has Home Movie Day 2016 events, they are likely to be taking place in the next week or two. If your town does not celebrate Home Movie Day, the Center for Home Movies can show you how to change that.
Western Balkans Film Archives Need Help
posted September 27, 2016
Since 2012, the Albanian Cinema Project has been working to save the little-known legacy of Albanian film. Now it is expanding to help preserve the moving-image record of the whole of the Western Balkans, and is building regional partnerships among moving-image archives by holding workshops for archivists, the first during October, in Tirana, Albania. And it needs help to buy a film scanner that will stay in the region and enable high-resolution scanning of threatened films.
The Oddball Worlds of Film Collectors
posted September 26, 2016
Inside their “strange, wonderful, cluttered little film worlds,” America’s oddball film collectors hoard possessions apparently dearer to them than any human, write Dennis Bartok and Jeff Joseph in "A Thousand Cuts: The Bizarre Underground World of Collectors and Dealers Who Saved the Movies."
The System that Does or Does Not Prevent Online Posting of Copyrighted Moving Images
posted September 20, 2016
The “notice and takedown system” that can be used to challenge online posting of copyrighted material — on YouTube, for example — is “under strain.” While no easy fixes are in sight, regulatory reform is needed, argues a helpful study.
Restoring the One-Eyed with Blinkers On: The Curious Case of Marlon Brando’s Muddled Apprenticepiece
posted August 24, 2016
"One-Eyed Jacks" was the only film Marlon Brando directed, and he made it, in 1961, only because he and a young Stanley Kubrick, its intended director, had so many “creative differences” that Brando decided he would take on the job, himself. Now the film has been lavishly restored, and its oddness can be gauged anew.
Nitrate Film to Light Up the Egyptian Again
posted August 17, 2016
In the early years of motion pictures, movies were conveyed on nitrate film stock. That medium had a major shortcoming: it could burst into flame during projection. The Egyptian Theater in Hollywood is undergoing renovations that will make it possible for the facility to screen nitrate film regularly for the first time since the early 1950s.
“Race Films” – Little-Known Screen Gems
posted August 12, 2016
“Race films” were made with African American actors and crews, and for the most part by African American directors and producers; they were popular with African American audiences from the 1920s to the 1940s, but are little known, now. That may change through the efforts of several moving-image archives and the distributor Kino Lorber.
The Mysterious Videos of Bill Domonkos
posted August 8, 2016
Bill Domonkos is taking stock-footage filmmaking in an entirely different direction, moving into the dream world of the unconscious, writes Wheeler Winston Dixon. Using Public Domain found materials, almost exclusively in black and white, mostly from the Internet Archive and The Prelinger Collection, Domonkos creates a dream world of phantasmal and sometimes sinister images that transport the viewer to an entirely different place and time, when black and white was the dominant form of filmmaking, and the repressive values of the 1940s and 1950s went unquestioned.