Orphans at MoMA: Animation and Activism

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Held on Tue, Nov 24, 2015, 7:00 p.m.

Introduced by John Canemaker, Dr. Rhea L. Combs, Charles Musser, Dan Streible, Katie Trainor, and others

MoMA, Floor T2, Theater 2

The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 2

[Footage of Bedford-Stuyvesant Youth in Action]. 1965. USA. Director(s) unknown. Courtesy The National Museum of African American History and Culture

Orphans at MoMA, the annual To Save and Project collaboration between MoMA and the NYU Orphan Film Symposium, features an eclectic variety of rediscovered films. This year’s program also celebrates the 50th anniversary of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and several of its academic programs—cinema studies; film and TV; animation; and moving image archiving and preservation (MIAP)—are represented by alumni, students, and faculty. Highlights include work by experimental animator Richard Protovin, presented by Academy Award–winning filmmaker John Canemaker, and, for the first time in 80 years, Venus and Adonis, an amateur surrealist work by Harry Dunham and Jules V. D. Bucher, with music by Paul Bowles. The Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture premieres two 16mm restorations: Count Us In (1948), a presidential campaign short for the Progressive Party, produced by the leftist collective Union Films, and 1965 footage from the Bedford-Stuyvesant Youth in Action community workshop. Documentaries on the program include Sgt. Harry Randall’s rare film of the legendary Abraham Lincoln Battalion during the Spanish Civil War War and the remarkable Men and Dust (1940), Lee and Sheldon Dick’s labor advocacy exposé, with innovative editing by J. V. D. Bucher.

Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze

USA. Directed by W. K. L. Dickson. With Fred Ott. Restored by The Library of Congress. 2 min.

Straw Pib

USA. Directed by Richard Protovin. Restored by The New York Public Library. 8 min.

Fan Film

USA. Directed by Richard Protovin. Restored by The Museum of Modern Art. 12 min.

[Photographic Unit of the 15th International Brigade]

1937–38. Spain. Filmed by Harry W. Randall. With Ernest Hemingway. Restored by NYU Libraries. 10 min.

Count Us In

USA. Produced by Union Films. Written by Bob Claiborne and Adrienne Claiborne. With Bob Claiborne, Henry Wallace, Pete Seeger, Paul Robeson. Restored by the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. 10 min.

Bedford-Stuyvesant Youth in Action home movies

c. 1965. USA. Director(s) unknown. Restored by the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. 10 min.

Venus and Adonis

USA. Directed by Harry Dunham. Restoration in progress by The Museum of Modern Art and The Library of Congress. 10 min

Men and Dust

USA. Directed by Lee Dick. From the National Archives and Records Administration. 16 min.

Program approx. 100 min.

This film accompanies To Save and Project: The 13th MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation.

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