More Skirmishing in the Copyright Wars
posted June 4, 2013
More on the thorny issue of copyright as it affects moving-image products.
Is What’s Mine Also Yours?
posted June 4, 2013
Is what’s mine also yours? When it comes to using film and tv clips, shouldn’t the answer be: Uh, no…?
Surprises Down Nightmare Alley
posted May 27, 2013
Sure, the film noir features wise-cracking detectives and alluring femmes fatales. It even extols these characteristics as enviable personality traits. But is that the real point of the genre? A recent book interrogates a suspect notion.
The Archival Successes and Tribulations of Three Authors
posted May 20, 2013
Exploring archives and other sources of research material can be a pleasure, or a mighty challenge. Three authors of recent books describe the range of experiences they had as they prepared their books, published over the last few months.
Amateur Newsreel Footage Brings It Home
posted April 22, 2013
There's nothing quite like the joy of viewing recently rediscovered and beautifully preserved footage of local life.
Video of the Day: Films from the Home Front
posted April 18, 2013
With an image of a nurse caring for a man swaddled in bandages, voiceover says: “These boys must live for a long time among us, sometimes for years.” The patient is a soldier. After initial stabilization, the voice-over relates, “one of the wounded, a flier pulled from a crashed fighter plane, moves into a general
Scorsese Uses Jefferson Lecture to Plead for Archiving
posted April 17, 2013
When it comes to saving the world's cinema legacy, an apocalypse is near, Martin Scorsese argues in his 2013 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities.
Rediscovering Films, The Film Foundation, and Martin Scorsese
posted April 2, 2013
“A barn. A warehouse. A closet at a mental institution. These locations have something in common: They all contained films or parts of films that were missing and presumed lost forever.” In the March/April issue of Humanities: The Magazine of the National Endowment for the Humanities, Marilyn Ferdinand, who blogs at Ferdy on Films (www.ferdyonfilms.com)
Martin Scorsese Delivers Jefferson Lecture – Today
posted March 31, 2013
Today, Monday April 1 2013, acclaimed director Martin Scorsese delivers this year’s National Endowment for the Humanities 2013 Jefferson Lecture. And the event will be streamed live and free of charge at 7:30pm, US East Coast time. Viewers can also join the conversation about film and the humanities via Twitter at #JeffLec2013. The Jefferson Lecture
Video of the Day: Archive of American Television
posted March 28, 2013
In 1955, in the first on-screen appearance of his memorable career in television comedy, Andy Griffith appeared in a U.S. Steel Hour episode entitled “No Time for Sergeants,” a television version of his first stage success on Broadway, later the same year. Born Andy Samuel Griffith in Mount Airy, North Carolina, in 1926, the fine