CFA heads to Bloomington, Indiana to take part in “An Evening of Music in Orphan Films” – a screening of musical wonders curated by archivist and musician Kelli Hix (Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum). This Saturday night screening acts as the finale for the 2013 Orphans Midwest Film Symposium – a gathering of scholars, archivists, and artists with an interest in“Orphan films”or neglected cinematic artifacts.
Admission is free for registered conference attendees. Register here.
Live musical improvisation from the bands Lylas and Garden Gates (members of the bands Tammar and Morrow) will accompany silent films and soundies selected from regional archives and private collections of the American Midwest and South.
The program tentatively includes:
● Makin’ Music: Kincaid (Tennesse Archive, circa 1985, music video, Knoxville, TAMIS)
Presented by Brad Reeves
● Hong Kong Blues (1941, Hoagy Carmichael, IU Archive of Traditional Music) Presented by Andrea J. Kelley
● Hoosier Promenade (Janet R. MacLean, IU’s Audio Visual Center, 1957, IU Libraries Film Archive)
Presented by Andrew Uhrich
● Close to You by The Carpenters (Chicago Film Archives)
Presented by Anne Wells
● Lazybones (1941, Hoagy Carmichael, IU Archive of Traditional Music)
Presented by Andrea J. Kelley
● Collage of Science and Nature Films (IU Libraries Film Archive)
● Blanche’s Recital (Arthur H. Smith, 1977, Center for Home Movies)
Presented by Andy Uhrich
● Dolly Parton/Porter Wagoner Home Movies (Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum) Presented by Kelli Hix
● Chic-A-Go-Go Highlights (Rocktober, 1996-2013)
Presented by Jake Austin
● Cheat You Fair (1980, Media Burn Archive)
Presented by Sarah Chapman
● George Thompson: Street Cleaner (Appalshop)
CFA films also make an appearance earlier that day (3:45 to be exact!) at the Curatorial Challenges: Contextualizing and Recontextualizing Bits and Pieces session. Here, CFA friend & colleague, Andy Uhrich (Indiana University), will be using films from CFA’s Film Group and Chuck Olin collections to examine the contested and productive connections between political documentaries and TV commercials in the late 1960s. Many well-known documentarians also made industrial films and television ads, but this work has usually been considered as impure and mainly a means to fund documentary films. However, this view, while perhaps accurate from a standpoint of one’s political views, overlooks the transformative interplay between these two genres of filmmaking. In the 1960s, new forms of advertising and documentaries were shaking off the staid voice of their predecessors as a way to address the loss of traditional authority. Both documentaries and TV commercials used lightweight cameras and portable sound recorders for a new observational style that purported to show real life as it happened. But how did each use this new style – direct cinema or cinéma vérité – to make truth claims? Just how radical could TV ads get? Were political documentaries trying to sell something?
Films and ads being screened at the session:
AB Dick Copier, “Salesmen,” unknown ad agency, 1966, 60 seconds (Chuck Olin Collection)
Chicago American, “Trucks,” unknown ad agency, 1967, 60 seconds (Chuck Olin Collection)
American Revolution 2 trailer, 1969, 3 minutes (Chuck Olin Collection)
Aunt Jemima, “Farm Family,” J. Walter Thompson, 1967, 60 seconds (Chuck Olin Collection)
People’s Gas, “Youth Motivation,” Foote, Cone & Belding, 1972, 30 seconds (Chuck Olin Collection)
Black Panther (aka The Murder of Fred Hampton) trailer, 1969, 5 minutes 15 seconds (Chuck Olin Collection)
Blue Cross Blue Shield, “We Need Each Other,” Edward H. Weiss, 1972, 60 seconds (Chuck Olin Collection)
Alert Soap, “The Perfect Bar of Soap,” McCann Erickson Swift, 1969, 60 seconds (Chuck Olin Collection)