Kevin Brownlow’s Life in Film
posted March 7, 2011
Film preservationists and restorers often labor in obscurity, and certainly rarely win awards as prominent as the Academy Awards. But the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has recognized archivist, film historian, preservationist, and film maker Kevin Brownlow for his many years of contributions.
Cinefest: Silent Rarities Lovingly Presented
posted February 12, 2011
Fans of animation have their Comic-Con, sure, but for cineastes there are geek-chic events like Cinecon, Slapsticon, Cinesation, Cinevent, and – over four days each March in wintry Syracuse, New York – Cinefest.
What Illness Looks Like
posted January 17, 2011
Thanks to a small band of advocates, the fields of medical and public-health history have been paying increasing attention to the visual – to the vast assortment of still and moving images that illustrate and in many cases constitute those histories. In a new book, Imagining Illness: Public Health and Visual Culture (University of Minnesota
Public Broadcasting’s Future and Its Contributions to Broadcasting’s Future
posted January 5, 2011
The new day is all digital. Motivated by that ongoing revolution, public-broadcasting planners have undertaken a broad survey of prospects and challenges.
Storing the Story of Dom DeLuise
posted December 30, 2010
Nat Segaloff, the Los Angeles-based archivist for the Estate of Dom DeLuise, reports on the disposition of the great comedian’s collections, including the forthcoming donation of TV material to the UCLA Film & Television Archive.
Bill Morrison Revivifies Dying Filmstock
posted December 29, 2010
Renowned experimental filmmaker Bill Morrison has an unusual relation to the world of moving-image archives: He uses decaying film stock as his raw material. He uses the qualities of deteriorating nitrate film stock for various artistic, expressive ends. He speaks here with MIAN.
Digging the Jazz Icons from TV Archives
posted December 2, 2010
Some of the greatest filmed recordings of jazz might have sat collecting dust for decades, or forever, had it not been for the curiosity and dedication of one company and its Jazz Icons series. Since 2006, the American company, Reelin’ in the Years Productions, has found footage in the vaults of television stations and networks, most in Europe.
Framing German Wartime Suffering
posted November 21, 2010
The more comfortable you are with the notion of retributive justice – and with its gory manifestations – the less bothered are you likely to be with what happened to German citizens in the closing phases of the Second World War. Some cultural and film commentators are revisiting those events, the way they continued to haunt individual and collective German memories, and how those traumas have found expression (often of an appallingly unreflective kind) in feature films.
Taking Stock of Cinema Treasures
posted November 4, 2010
All but about 17 movie fans in all of creation have had a favorite cinema – the one where they learned their love of the moving image, or the taste of their first love’s lips; the one that smelled of the sea and only half-blocked the rush of passing traffic; the one where they heard dropped Milk Duds roll from the back to the front of the house; the one where they sat, gobsmacked, at the rippling pecs of George Lazenby, or at the undress of Ursula Andress – in her breakout Dr. No (1962), or perhaps later, in Mountain of the Cannibal God (1978).
What Researchers Are Saying About Charlie Chaplin, and a Rare Chaplin Film is Rediscovered
posted August 27, 2010
It remains shocking to many film enthusiasts that the reception of Charlie Chaplin in America does not compare with the reception of Charlie Chaplin in, say, the United Kingdom, Europe, or even Japan. Even in the 1960s, children in many other nations grew up watching the Little Tramp and Chaplin’s other alter egos. Not so, in the United States, although a schooling in other greats of the silent era – Fatty Arbuckle, or Buster Keaton, say – has been, and remains, even more lacking. Still, a slowing of Chaplin-related publications, American or not, seems highly unlikely.