Moving Image Archiving and Preservation

Alas, no e-version of the Sklar book available. The 1994 edition available via https://archive.org/details/moviemadeamerica0000skla_o8y4
is not available since Hachette v. Internet Archive went against the defendant. (Judges heard oral arguments in the appeal last month. Might be 2025 before they rule.)

300,000 congratulations to alum Siobhan C. Hagan ( MIAP ‘10).

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/5iUUpb4XTm45Z7jm/?mibextid=WC7FNe

MARMIA) is pleased to announce that we recently received $300,000 from the Mellon Foundation. support will fund a two-year project, Interface: Expanding Personal and Community Archiving in the U.S. Mid-Atlantic, aimed at empowering individuals and institutions with the knowledge and resources necessary to help ensure the longevity of the audiovisual materials within their collections. More info on our blog at the link in bio.

Premiere of rediscovered Roman Vishniac films;
1930s amateur films by UK physicians;
Japanese movies made on PAPER preWWW 2;
Multicolor nitrate tests 1929;
16mm film from Nintendo FPS arcade games, 1970s;
And that’s just the morning.

The whole shmear. . . .

wp.nyu.edu

To convert that MOV or MP4 file (1080p) to DCP for the projectionist, what's the best method for neophytes?

Assume simple specs: mono or silent; short duration.

dcpomatic.com/ is OK?

DCP-o-matic DCP-o-matic is used across the industry by film-makers, projectionists, film festivals, subtitlists and cinema technicians.

Excerpt from a 2008 MIAP newsletter.

"A true measure of the success and abilities of our MIAP students is the fact that all of this year's graduates stepped into full-time jobs of their choosing straight away. Lauren Sorensen followed her passions for experimental film back home to San Francisco, where she works for Canyon Cinema. Los Angelina Loni Shibuyama also returned home, where she is an archivist for the ONE National Gay & Le***an Archives, which is affiliated with the University of Southern California. Joshua Ranger accepted a Mellon Fellowship to work with the staff of NYU Bobst Library's preservation and conservation department. And Sarah Resnick turned her thesis project into a full-time position as musician David Byrne's AV archivist."

Here are the class of '07 at a special conference on the future of education in AV archiving, April 2007. Nederlands Filmmuseum, Amsterdam.

Apply to MIAP by Monday, February 12th for Fall 2024 admission.

https://apply.tisch.nyu.edu/apply/

To Save and Project: The 20th MoMA The Museum of Modern Art International Festival of Film Preservation is opening its Jan. 11 - Feb. 4 run. (It's big and long. From Fairbanks to DEVO, from Warhol to Prelinger.)
https://www.moma.org/calendar/events/9299

Hope to see you on Saturday, January 27th, 1pm, for "Orphans at MoMA" (as they call it). An all 16mm show. Eight films. Introduced by Chon Noriega Bill Brand Larry Gottheim Tanya Goldman, Elena Rossi-Snook and Dan Streible Thanks to curator Josh Siegel.

On Jan. 18, my Cinema Studies at NYU colleague Michael B. Gillespie introduces two screenings of films by Skip Norman.

Jan. 14, Rick Prelinger present two sets of sponsored films.

Orphans at MoMA: Sixteen Tons—Working with 16mm | MoMA Our collaboration with the NYU Orphan Film Symposium continues with an eclectic mix of newly preserved films, programmed by Orphan Film Symposium director Dan Streible in celebration of the centenary of the 16mm film gauge. 16mm was the longtime workhorse for documentary, student, independent, and e...

I would be remiss if not wishing you a Happy Sneeze anniversary.
(It's Fred's world; we just live in it.)

Fred Ott Sneezes, 130th anniversary – Orphan Film Symposium Fred Ott Sneezes, 130th anniversary January 7, 2024 By Dan Streible January 7, 2024: Happy 130th Fred Ott Day.  January 7 because W. K. L. Dickson registered the title for copyright as Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze, January 7th, 1894. Below is an abbreviated version of last year’s post (...

Join us at the for a retrospective celebrating the work of acclaimed Chilean actor Alfredo Castro. The series will take place November 3-8, with the actor in person for select Q&As on opening weekend. Special discount for NYU students.

“Marking the 50th anniversary, this September 11, of the military coup against President Allende in Chile, this retrospective is dedicated to Alfredo Castro, the internationally acclaimed Chilean actor whose work is essential to a deep exploration of the cruelty of the dictatorship led by Augusto Pinochet (1973-1989). Inspired by the French playwright Antonin Artaud, Castro has theorized the ‘third body,’ a key concept in the study of unknown and unconfessed human drives. In this retrospective, we privilege Castro’s close, decades-long collaboration with the Chilean director Pablo Larraín.”—Series curators Javier Guerrero and Juana Suárez. Javier Guerrero and Juana Suárez Curators, Part of “Chile 1973-2023, Art, Film and Literature after the Coup”

Schedule of screenings and conversations with the actor here: https://metrograph.com/category/alfredo-castro/

Hoy.

Any news updates? Seeking owners of 10,000 orphan films (elements) that Japan film lab will discard very soon.

Tokyo Laboratory Shuts Down in November, Works to Return Film Originals Company was founded in 1955 // Tokyo Laboratory (Tokyo Genzōsho, or Togen) announced on Wednesday that it will shut down after 68 years at the end of November....

Interesting working with students now that we have the two newsreel archives to compare Metrotone; and Movietone. Then add the A.I. variable. One student brought this video to our attention.

The video tells us about its own making of enhancements and alterations to a 1930 newsreel item. The YouTuber began with the USC MIRC standard def video of the 35mm b/w Fox Movietone original. Tells how the audio and picture were changed. Also adds English subtitles.

Three points:

1. The YouTuber, DGSpitzer (who is Chinese) says the 2021 AI tool used to enhance to the faces was developed by a Chinese team and does a better job on Asian faces.

2. The detail in the costumes is treated with more delicacy than other colorization I’ve seen. The color palette is richer and more apt— and in this instance adds something beautiful. My reaction to most all other AI colorization of historical footage is yuck. (Students agreed this one is distinctive.)

3. The same student found that the identical footage exists in the UCLA Hearst collection (but with a title card and intro music added). Title card says Hearst Metrotone. Hard to verify with certainty but the camera crew was likely Fox Movietone. (The 2 companies shared footage during early synch-sound era. )
NOW the UCLA footage is streaming at newsreels.net. From a 4K scan.
What would DGSpitzer do with THAT ?

https://youtu.be/K8xzXfWQxa0?si=SgyijsLj2HRCRZiK

Bonus points: singer Mei Lan-Fang was quite well known, a master of the form. That he always dressed to play female characters in Chinese opera and trained his voice to a high register, these make this film recording a rich case regardless of all the technical alterations.

Bonus bonus point: DGSpitzer respected the aspect ratio. No cropping!

【AI Colorization】1930, Legendary Chinese Opera Actor, Mei Lanfang Hey everyone, this is DGSpitzer!Today’s restored video is the outtake of Mei Lanfang.This footage is about his performance in the US, 1930.He is a legendary ...

Congrats to Louis Pelletier and Rachael Stoeltje and FIAF.

And thanks to LoC for letting me horn in on this object, something Paul Spehr hepped me to 5 years ago. And Mike Mashon put into play. And Simon Lund at Cineric realized.

Any and all errors in the article are mine.

Congratulations to our Thesis Week presenters! Thank you to thesis advisors, faculty, staff, and friends and family for their support. Photo by Admin Aide

That NAVCC feelin’ 😎 visiting the Packard campus for the annual visit, in-person again!

This Friday at 6pm, Michelson Theater at 721 Broadway, 6th Floor. Join author Dan Erdman in conversation about his book on the stag films of the 20th century underground p**n industry with Lindsay Miller (MIAP ‘22) and Oscar Becher (MIAP ‘23), moderated by MIAP Director Juana Suárez. Erdman graduated MIAP in 2013 and is the senior video archivist at Media Burn Archive. This event is free and open to the public. RSVP in link in bio!

From 35mm film to paper to 16mm film to MP4. It's "Fred Ott's Sneeze" of 1894. Full-length version from the Library of Congress, now online for the first time.

Happy January 7th!

Fred Ott Sneezes, Twice Happy January 7th!  Two thousand twenty-three beings with a film premiere of sorts for Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze, Jan. 7th, 1894. The day is an anniversary for the milestone of ci…

Don’t forget, you can apply to MIAP through Jan. 15th, 2023 for Fall ‘23 admission! Email [email protected] with your admissions questions or to set up an appointment. Check out https://tisch.nyu.edu/cinema-studies/miap/prospective-students/miap-application to connect to our admissions page. We can't wait for your application!

MIAP Application Guidelines Our application deadline has been extended to January 5, 2018, for admission in Fall 2018.

Sarah Resnick ('07) has published this essay on "the array of projects" under the 'cryptocurrency' umbrella."

"Walk Away Like a Boss: Postcard from the Cryptosphere,"
in issue 42 (Vanishing Act) of N+1 magazine (2022).

Walk Away Like a Boss | Sarah Resnick How tragic, I thought, to reduce life to a procession of microtransactions or contracts. How naive to believe that some agreed-upon set of values could be formalized into code, or that the problems of politics could be made irrelevant by computation.