Notes on archiving, collecting, and whatnot
posted April 13, 2014
Among all the things anyone thinks to preserve, catalog, and exhibit, what would be the last? The answer is among these notes on archiving and related issues and developments that are currently in the news.
A Secret Ceremony, Preserved on Film
posted April 1, 2014
A film so rare that its like may never again be made is now stored in the moving-image archives of Australia’s national research and collecting institution of Aboriginal life.
Cinema from the Sun
posted March 17, 2014
The South Wales-based but eminently mobile Sol Cinema lays claim to the title “the world’s smallest solar movie theatre.” Its operators built it in 2009 from an abandoned trailer home that they found derelict in a field, bought for £50, gutted, and installed with the best theatre fittings that having little money afforded.
The Guilty Pleasure of Wallowing in Quasi-Archives Constructed in Thoroughly Disapproved Ways
posted March 12, 2014
In archiving film or any audiovisual material, it’s like your mother always said: “Will you please tidy up after yourself.” And just like then, you may well completely ignore her.
“Cousin Jules”— A Rural Life
posted February 26, 2014
In "Cousin Jules" (1973), Dominique Benicheti depicted an elderly blacksmith and his wife living low to the earth in Burgundy. He also created a documentary film that was remarkable in its day, and remains so, now.
FCC Announces New “Rules” for Closed Captioning
posted February 22, 2014
The FCC has adopted new rules that will require broadcasters to perform much better closed captioning with television and Internet programming. Performance Tom Wheeler, the recently appointed chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. And that is a fundamental failure of the telecommunications industry and federal regulators, he implied: “Reliable and consistent access to news and information for deaf and hard-of-hearing communities is a right,
China Girls, Leading Ladies, Actual Women
posted February 21, 2014
From the days before color film until the early 1990s hundreds of anonymous women graced more motion-picture film reels than perhaps any film star. And yet movie-goers never saw them; they, and their purpose, were known only to film-lab workers and projectionists.
They don’t make ’em like this…
posted February 3, 2014
Imagine if this had been lost to posterity. They don’t make em like Reg Kehoe and his Marimba Queens, any more. Here they are sometime in the early 1940s on a Soundie in the extraordinary Prelinger Archives (on the Internet Archive @ archive.org). You can select from three versions there, depending on what you have
SPEAKING IN PALINDROMES
posted January 6, 2014
Caylin Smith asks Thomson & Craighead (Jon Thomson and Alison Craighead) about their goals in repurposing "found" online data and video to create artworks for the Digital Age. How are they using online networks and social-information vehicles. And how are they handling the tricky business of preserving "born digital" audio-visual art works?
“The Daughter of Dawn” Will Never Go Dark
posted January 4, 2014
After "The Daughter of Dawn" was shot in Oklahoma during the summer of 1920 and then released in October of that year, it was shown only a few times — in Los Angeles, Kansas City, Tulsa, and a handful of other cities— but then seemed to have disappeared. Now, rediscovered, it has been restored and honored with a national guarantee of preservation in perpetuity.