Orphan Film Symposium
Introduction
I had the wonderful opportunity to attend the Orphan Film Symposium: All-Television Edition hosted by NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and the UCLA Film & Television Archive. It was a two-day event that featured six different segments showcasing orphan television programs. The UCLA library defines orphan works as “neglected works, many previously unpreserved because their owners have abandoned them, or because no copyright holder could be found” (UCLA Film & Television Archive). Through the hard work of many film and television archives, these once considered abandoned and copyright-complicated works can live on and find new audiences. Many of the clips at the symposium had never been seen or screened before.
Four Arguments for the Preservation of Television
The program began with an introduction by May Hong HaDuong, the Director of the UCLA Film & Television Archive. Dan Streible, professor of NYU’s Cinema Studies then led an introductory discussion on television with the question: Is streaming television? We often think of shows and series on streaming platforms as T.V. shows but if they are not broadcast over the air or live, should they still be considered television? The symposium was set up in homage to the “Television Party Fad of 1949” where people gathered in groups to watch television programming. This opening segment titled Four Arguments for the Preservation of Television was a play on words based on the 1978 book by Jerry Mander, Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television. Mander’s (1978) four arguments to cancel television include:
Television deprives humanity of their senses
People use television as a scapegoat
Television promotes Capitalism
All of the above
The segment then proceeded with four presenters showcasing programs that reveal the importance of television preservation.
Jeffrey Bickel from the UCLA Film & Television Archive screened newly digitized clips from the Hearst Metrotone News Collection. This collection is made up of 27 million feet of newsreels. The archive is currently in the process of a mass digitization effort with 4K scans of the collection. They have currently digitized 15% of the collection which can be browsed, searched, and streamed for personal and educational use here: https://newsreels.net/ Accessibility is their main goal with this important collection.
Mark Quigley of the UCLA Film & Television Archive showcased promotional clips from an episode of Playhouse 90, a CBS drama with many notable Hollywood stars. Mike Mashon from the Library of Congress brought four television pilot shows. He revealed that television rights are a mess with so many components making it difficult to stream and upload online (Mashon, 2023). Many of the known pilots out there are donated from private collectors. Though something could be considered missing, anything could show up at any time through donations. The highlight of these pilots was the screening of an entire pilot episode titled It’s Joey. This ABC pilot from 1954 is reminiscent in style to I Love Lucy and Leave it to Beaver but adds the element of a full-on musical. It features lead Joel Grey as a young adult navigating the struggles of everyday life while dreaming of the move to New York City to become a big Broadway star (not unlike Lucy). The songs and musical numbers, including one about not having the skills for any job in the wanted ads, were fabulous and one of the best things I have ever seen. I am hoping for a way that the Library of Congress can stream this in the future. Also notable was a trailer for a pitched show titled Some Like It Hot, which is based on the Billy Wilder film of the same name. It takes place where the film left off and tells the story of how Joe and Jerry run from the Mafia after plastic surgery.
This segment concluded with a presentation by Ruta Abolins from the University of Georgia, Brown Media Archives & Peabody Awards Collections who brought a clip from WJCL Savannah. This local 1971 broadcast from the program Community Profile revealed an authentic interview between a young black man who interviewed musical icon James Brown. It was chilling to see an authentic local interview which showcased Brown as he really was. At one point, Brown was not happy with the interviewer because he was “not asking the right questions.” It turned into almost a lecture and reverse interview for this young black man because Brown wanted to make sure he acknowledged his own struggles he faces as a person of color in America. James was pushing for even greater equality and human rights. Although he was tough, he ended by telling the interviewer “You’re beautiful, and I love you,” which became a closing statement for many of the segments of the symposium. These types of local interviews have the power to show another side of celebrities through a smaller, more -down-to-Earth format.
Early and Local Televisions
This segment began with Daniela Currò from the University of South Carolina, Moving Image Research Collections. Currò brought clips from the Fox Movietone News collection https://digital.library.sc.edu/collections/fox-movietone-news-collection/ which feature many films on technological pioneers. One of the standouts of these was a two-way television program by Bell Laboratories from May 1930. Through their technology, they were able to do a person-to-person chat viewable on a television. This is one of the original zoom calls or Facetime sessions and shows just how advanced technology was back then even though it took nearly a century to become commonplace. Film and television pioneers were certainly visionaries.
Margaret A. Compton from the University of Georgia, Brown Media Archives & Peabody Awards Collections brought a clip from a Purex Block-Buster Show made for WAGA Atlanta in 1958. One of the funny things of this clip was that it had “Air-Check: Not to be shown” written on the reel. This shows that footage that was never meant to be seen could be used for valuable research later making television archives important. One of the things Compton stressed was that advertisements and commercials were heavily targeted to women of this era since they were the stay-at-home mothers consuming this content. This clip shows a man phoning typical housewives and asking them severely simple questions for the time (One question: What was Irving Berlin’s famous Easter song? Answer: Easter Parade), and after they won would receive free Purex laundry detergent. If they already had a bottle in their home, they would be the “talk of the street” because everyone on the block would receive a free bottle.
One of the highlights of the entire symposium was Caroline Frick’s (University of Texas at Austin) and Laura Treat’s (University of California Santa Barbara) presentation titled Local News Preservation: A Legacy of Salvage & Loss. They present the argument that the top challenge in the country for moving image collections is local news content. Frick & Treat (2023) reveal that 90% of all local television content produced before 1995 is either missing, has been disregarded, or destroyed. On top of that, only 25% of all local stations have retained or donated footage to archives, and at least three states do not collect any content at all (Frick & Treat, 2023). Frick & Treat provide three challenges to local news preservation:
Funding: it is expensive and time consuming to digitize content
Obsolescence: formats, particularly from the 80s and 90s are difficult to process, and there are not many people who are able to maintain the equipment that can read these formats
Copyright: most local news content has a lack of clarity when it comes to copyright; nobody wants to get in trouble, so it is easier to ignore the content
Information: many times there is no information or records stored with the clips and they are often labeled incorrectly
After challenge 4 was the perfect time to show a clip they found titled Batman. It ended up being a woman trying to rescue her cat named “Batman” who was stuck in a tree. Although humorous, it was an impactful way to showcase the struggle with figuring out how to manage and add metadata to this wealth of content. How can somebody find it is they do not know is exists? Some of the local news content that is worth preserving includes political campaigns, local broadcasting specials, and sports which are complex due to the trademarks involved. Frick & Treat ended their segment with a screening of a 1996 local San Antonio casting call for the movie Selena which showed many Hispanic hopefuls interviewing for a chance to be cast in the film. They ended their presentation with the plea that local news preservation is important because local car commercials have the ability to bring the nation together (Frick & Treat, 2023).
Women Make Television
https://carollaneproject.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=578aad3d851746909c6c5a83da691f13
This segment featured different ways women have helped television become what it is. AV Archivist Melissa Dollman brought a clip of a Carol Lane Tourette called Traveling with Children. Carole Lane was a nationwide program by Shell Oil featuring different regional women who provided travel tips including a Tourette. “’Tourette’ is a term Carol Lane used for short two-day, or weekend, trips by automobile” (Dollman, 2021). A Tourette is any short trip that is 200 miles or less from home and one that can be budget friendly. In many ways it was the precursor to the staycation where one travels not too far from home and discovers that which is in their own backyard.
Maya Montañez Smukler from the UCLA Film & Television Archive brough a clip of Mary McAdoo at Home from NBC in 1953. Mary McAdoo’s television program featured content that appealed to the average American homemaker, not housewife. This particular clip featured Mary with special guest Edith Head, one of the most famous costume designers from the Golden Age of Hollywood, teaching women how to dress whether they are ‘short, tall, skinny, or fat’. Though this does not age as well as some other clips, it really reveals how women were viewed during this era.
https://barbarahammer.com/performances/t-v-tart/
Amy Villarejo from the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television brough Barbara Hammer’s T.V. Tart from 1988. This was an experimental performance film that focuses on eating, body politics, perception, and distortion. “The video critiques excessive sugar intake and the similarities of empty calories in sweets and TV programs” (Hammer). Television is like sugar because it is full of exploitation & destruction but is also shiny & colorful. (Villarejo). This experimental program is an important work for feminist Hammer who was also film pioneer for queer cinema.
Juana Suárez from NYU’s Moving Image Archive and Preservation Program brought clips from the documentary film series Yuruparí directed by Gloria Triana. This series features 64 documentaries (48 in 16mm and 16 in U-Matic). They are in the process of digitizing the entire series thanks to a grant from FIAF/IFTA and in partnership with Proimágenes Colombia. It has been a struggle because they are working alongside the Colombian government, currently in turmoil, for the preservation. They are also cataloguing the segments of each episode alongside the community and letting them decide what happens to the material out of respect for the Colombians depicted.
L.A. Indie TV
Shawne West of California State University, Dominguez Hills & Mark Quigley of the UCLA Film & Television Archive showcased a clip from the UCLA Tom Reed Collection of the show Tom Reed’s For Members Only which was broadcast weekly on KSCI UHF Channel 18 from 1981-2011. This series has recently been digitized & catalogued and showcases black-themed music and news. It is an important historical record for the black experience in Los Angeles.
https://www.frieze.com/article/tenemos-asco-oral-history-chicano-art-group
Chon Noriega from the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television showcased a local Los Angeles film program that was part of Asco, an East Los Angeles Chicano art movement which was “inspired by the Chicano civil-rights movement and reacting to police violence against people of colour in 1970s and ’80s Los Angeles” (Carrillo et al. 2022). These programs were quickly shot, edited, and ready for broadcast in just under 48 hours. Because of this quick pace, very few of these programs survive and many of them were left behind, erased, or stolen. Imperfecto from 1983 was screened with actor Humberto Sandoval in the audience and director Harry Gamboa, Jr. who joined Chon on stage for a panel discussion afterward. Mr. Gamboa (2023) states that archives with these types of television programming are essential for preservation to pay respect to history. The Asco Chicano arts movement helped give a voice to the Hispanic population in this difficult era of Los Angeles history.
Television at the Smithsonian
The Smithsonian Institution is made up of 21 museums whose records are all housed under the Smithsonian Institution Archives division. Under this division, an Audiovisual Media Preservation Initiative (AVMPI) has been established with the inclusion of a 5-year plan (2021-2026) to prioritize digitization. Five goals (Smithsonian Institution) were also established alongside this strategic plan and include:
Develop a centralized space dedicated to the conservation and preservation transfer of Smithsonian audio, video, and film collections
Prioritize audiovisual collections for preservation based on format degradation and content value
Create standard, pan-institutional workflows for the management of AVMPI to maximize the use of resources
Ensure institutional preparedness for digital preservation and increased storage needs
Promote the overall mission of the Smithsonian Institution by increasing access to digitized audiovisual collections
Franklin A. Robinson, Jr. from the National Museum of American History brough a clip of Meet Me at Disneyland from the Smithsonian Archives which was a live broadcast from KTTV from 1962. This is the only known survivor of a 13-episode run that features rare footage from Disneyland including a cameo by Fred MacMurray joining the saxophone quarter with his saxophone. As a current Disneyland cast member, it was chilling to see footage of Walt Disney that has never been seen since its original broadcast.
Blake McDowell from the National Museum of African American History and Culture brought a selection of clips from the archives including promo titles, animations, a rare interview with poet Sonia Sanchez and A Dialogue Between a Black and a Jew featuring Zev Putterman and Ishmael Reed. It was illuminating to hear of the struggles that each have felt being Jewish and black in America while comparing and contrasting their experiences.
Black Women’s Genius
Ellen Scott from the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television presented an episode of The American Parade, a TV Mini Series produced between 1974–1976, in celebration of the Bicentennial of the United States. The episode chosen was Sojourner, which tells the story of Sojourner Truth who travels the country for the abolition of slavery. Though this series was considered a youth program, writer Bill Gunn crafts a moving performance by Vinnette Justine Carroll making it an unforgettable essential body of work. This episode is also a fine example of intersectional feminism. It is with further research that I learned Vinnette Justine Carroll was also the first African American woman to direct on Broadway. During the screening, a brief snippet of the cut to commercial break was left in to show the intentional stark contrast between the content of the show and its advertising. These contrasts were/are often intentional and are heavily considered during broadcast to make a statement.
Josslyn Luckett of NYU’s Cinema Studies brough clips from Black Power Television that were directed by visionary Stan Lathan, who was in the audience. The episodes featured were Alice Coltrane: Black Journal 26 (1970) and Abbey Lincoln, Black Journal 23 (1970) originally broadcast on WNET. Lathan was one of the first people to give black women a voice. Through these clips, it is easy to understand Alice and Abbey and become absorbed with who they were as artists, wives, mothers, family members, and their relationships with religion and spirituality. Black independent television allowed black women to be “authentically themselves” (Luckett). The symposium concluded with a performance of Nona Hendryx, Sarah Dash, and Patti LaBelle from 1972’s Shades of Soul, Part 2.
Conclusion
It was wonderful to be able to see so many rare television clips from film and media archives across the country. It also felt exclusive, yet strange to see so much content that nobody has ever seen. The clips showcased content from any area imaginable including local tv news, commercials, newsreel outtakes, failed network pilots, black history, women in television, and Chicano tv among many others. Like all archives, film & television archives matter because people matter. They also have the same issues of budget, lack of funding, small staff, format obsolescence, and lack of description as other archives. Television is to be able to represent marginalized groups much better than other film outputs because it allows people to tell their stories in different ways. This could be because it is cheaper and more accessible to create content that is originally not intended to live beyond original broadcast. It is also easier to reach a wider audience quickly. Because the content is often produced with smaller budgets and less time, the content is likely to be disregarded or lost. This makes it essential to put budgets, time, and energy into ensuring the survival of orphaned television works. These orphans can bring people together by teaching the past. In this modern world, it seems we are moving back in time, but watching all these wonderful clips gives me hope that if we can study and preserve these works, there is hope moving forward for a brighter future. The other biggest challenge facing these works is copyright. Many of these works cannot be streamed or put online due to complex copyright. If copyright law were reformed, it would allow these works to have a home and no longer be lost. Overall, this symposium allowed me to understand the true value of film and television archives with a greater appreciation by seeing a variety of works I would never even thought existed.
References
Carrillo, S., Gamboa, H., Jr., Herrón, W., Nicandro, G., Sandoval, H. Terrill, J., & Valdez, P. (2022, January 4). ¡Tenemos asco!: An oral history of the chicano art group. Frieze. https://www.frieze.com/article/tenemos-asco-oral-history-chicano-art-group
Dollman, M. (2021). Changing lanes: A reanimation of shell oil’s carol lane. Carol Lane Project. https://carollaneproject.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=578aad3d851746909c6c5a83da691f13
Frick, C. & Treat, L. (2023, April 21-22). Local news preservation: A legacy of salvage & loss. (Conference presentation). Orphan Film Symposium: All-Television Edition, Los Angeles, CA, United States.
Gamboa, H., Jr. (2023, April 21-22). L.a. indie tv. (Conference presentation). Orphan Film Symposium: All-Television Edition, Los Angeles, CA, United States.
Hammer, B. (n.d.). T.v. tart. Barbara Hammer. https://barbarahammer.com/performances/t-v-tart/
Luckett, J. (2023, April 21-22). Black women’s genius. (Conference presentation). Orphan Film Symposium: All-Television Edition, Los Angeles, CA, United States.
Mander, J. (1978). Four arguments for the elimination of television. William Morrow Paperbacks
Mashon, M. (2023, April 21-22). Four arguments for the preservation of television. (Conference presentation). Orphan Film Symposium: All-Television Edition, Los Angeles, CA, United States.
Smithsonian Institution (n.d.). Audiovisual Media Preservation Initiative. Smithsonian Institution Archives. https://siarchives.si.edu/what-we-do/avmpi/goals
UCLA Film & Television Archive. Celebrating Orphan Films. https://www.cinema.ucla.edu/events/2011-05-13/celebrating-orphan-films
Villarejo, A. (2023, April 21-22). Women make television. (Conference presentation). Orphan Film Symposium: All-Television Edition, Los Angeles, CA, United States.