NFPF-preserved films at the Orphan Film Symposium
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Like this man, attendees of the Orphan Film Symposium will learn The Four Pillars of Income (1939).
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The Orphan Film Symposium will be held April 8-11 at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio. As always, this event will bring together scholars, archivists, curators, media artists, preservationists, and collectors. This year’s theme is “Crisis and Community,” and each day of the symposium includes the presentation of a film preserved through NFPF grants.
The very first screening on the first day, presented by Ashley Dequilla from the Filipino American Historical Society of Chicago, is of five films made between 1936 and 1955 by amateur filmmaker Nicholas Viernes that document Filipino American families and their midwestern communities. On day two John Morton of the Tennessee Archive of Moving Image and Sound, a part of the Knox County Public Library, will present The Four Pillars of Income (1939). Sponsored by a bank in Clarksville, Tennessee, the film expounds the benefits of crop rotation to local farmers.
Day three brings filmmaker Jacki Ochs’ presentation of Letters Not About Love (1998), her experimental documentary regarding the exchange of letters between American poet Lyn Hejinian and Russian poet Arkadii Dragomoshchenko. The film was preserved by New York University. The last day features “The Smithsonian Plays Itself,” a program presented by Walter Forsberg of the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives, which includes Census: Accounting for the Nation (1974), an animated film on the census’ history, created by Smithsonian employee Karen Loveland, one of America’s most prolific female filmmakers. If you’d like to register for the symposium, click here. Our congratulations to the archivists who guided these preservation projects to completion and presentation!