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Archive for August, 2010

What Researchers Are Saying About Charlie Chaplin, and a Rare Chaplin Film is Rediscovered

posted by MIAN on August 27, 2010

Charles Chaplin; illustration by Jakob Zoepfl

Charlie in the Heartland: An International Charlie Chaplin Conference

October 28-30, 2010

Ohio University Zanesville, Zanesville, Ohio

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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, says Charles J. Maland, a professor of English and cinema studies at the University of Tennessee.

“People who are great artists, who have careers that evolve in interesting ways and who also live interesting lives, and Chaplin did both, will continue to get biographies written about them for a long time,” says Maland, who is working on a book about the production history of Chaplin’s City Lights. Like other modern-day Chaplin scholars, he is able to make use of many primary documents that are among increasing stores of material available to researchers – at the Cineteca di Bologna in Italy; at the city archives in Vevey, the Swiss town where Chaplin spent his last years; and elsewhere. …MORE >>

Categories: Main FeaturesOf Special Interestblogevents

Detecting the History of Sound-on-Film

posted by MIAN on August 24, 2010

By Peter Monaghan

Eugene Lauste

A short test strip that is one of the earliest surviving recordings of sound-on-film, made by Eugene Lauste between 1910 and 1912, merely hints at the revolution that was to come.

Only 24 frames long, it belongs to an American collector, Rocco Accetturo, who bought it at an estate sale along with other items from Lauste’s undeservedly obscure career. Alongside the frames, which show nondescript images of plants, lies a series of black squiggles that encode sound – perhaps the first sound ever simultaneously reproduced with moving images on the one medium.

It is not particularly impressive sound, to be sure. That was evident on the July 5, 2010 edition of the PBS program, History Detectives, where the footage was featured. (The segment can now be viewed online.) …MORE >>

Categories: Main Featuresblog

Going Dutch on a Moving Image Archiving Degree

posted by MIAN on August 17, 2010

EYE, Film Instituut Nederland

If you’re contemplating completing a master’s degree in moving-image archiving, you could hardly find a more appealing place to do so than Amsterdam.

Apart from everything else – bike-friendly, crisscrossed with scenic canals, liberal beyond American dreams – it is home to world-class film collections and institutions that excel in restoration, research, and educational programs, and several of those have been involved in the University of Amsterdam’s archiving program since its inception in 2003.

The program, in its seventh year, boasts an impressive record of combining solid schooling in the skills of the trade with a firm grounding in film history and related subjects.

In Amsterdam’s master’s-degree program in the preservation and presentation of the moving image, which is taught in English, students spend their first year learning about the history and theory of media, and how audiovisual materials including film, video, and digital media have been archived in institutional contexts. In their second year, they put their lessons into practice during 10-to-14 week internships.

Several archives, film museums, festivals, distributors, and broadcasting companies host interns. Among them are the highly regarded Eye Film Institute Netherlands, which holds a world-class film collection and also excels in restoration, research, and educational programs. (Eye came into existence early in 2010 as an amalgamation of the Nederlands Filmmuseum, the Dutch Institute for Film Education, the Filmbank, and Holland Film.) …MORE >>

NHPRC Project Archivist

posted by MIAN on August 6, 2010

The Autry and Braun Research Libraries at the Autry National Center of the American West, in Glendale, Los Angeles, California, are seeking an  NHPRC Project Archivist starting October 4, 2010. The appointment is for two years, full time, with benefits.

The institution, which holds one of the world’s most comprehensive research collections pertaining to Native American cultures and the history of the Western United States, is looking for someone to help increase access to such collections as the personal papers of Gene Autry and the institutional archives of the Southwest Museum of the American Indian and the International Gay Rodeo Association.

The position is funded through the NHPRC which, as part of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), supports projects that promote the preservation and use of America’s documentary heritage.

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