Simon Tarr and Patricia R. Zimmermann of cinema and photography have been invited to present their joint research in theory, history, and filmmaking practice at the prestigious Orphans of the Storm international symposium in March 2004.
Tarr and Zimmermann's study was part of the campus-wide interdisciplinary initiative entitled the In/Visible Histories Project.
The University of South Carolina hosts its fourth symposium on the preservation, study, and use of orphan films. Orphans '04 -- "On Location: Place and Region in Forgotten Films" -- will take place Thursday, March 25 through Saturday, March 27, 2004, in Columbia, South Carolina.
The Orphans of the Storm symposia create an intensive think tank environment for university based academics and archivists and programmers from major institutions such as the Smithsonian Institution, Universal Studios, Hollywood Entertainment Museum, British Film Institute, Getty Museum, Anthology Film Archives, and the Museum of Modern Art. It seeks to investigate and analyze orphan films, a category established by Congress to identify media works produced outside of corporations or national cinemas.
The symposia bring together an eclectic mix of moving image archivists, cinema scholars, preservation experts, curators, and filmmakers who work with orphaned material. Select speakers will lead three days of presentations, screenings, and discussion. The international symposium includes speakers from Wales, Norway, the United States, England, the Netherlands, Mexico, and Canada
Tarr and Zimmermann will discuss the video documentary Passin It On -- the film they produced in spring 2002 with a collaborative team of Ithaca Southside residents and students. This project presents a networked model of critical historiography, community media, and collaborative documentary. They will also discuss how the award-winning film project has generated a new way of thinking about the archive as an on-going open project of community empowerment both in analog and digital forms.
Passin It On, supported and produced in collaboration with the Office of Multicultural Affairs, the Center for the Study of Culture, Race and Ethnicity, and the Office of the Provost, galvanized a larger, on-going interdisciplinary project that will span special collaborative media production classes, K-12 outreach, and an Internet archive called the In/Visible Histories Project at Ithaca College.
The project, now in its second year, chronicles the unknown and unseen histories of underrepresented groups in the upstate New York region. It includes an interdisciplinary team of faculty from cinema and photography, sociology, anthropology, history, and television/radio and administrators from the Office of the Provost, Office of Multicultural Affairs, Division of Interdisciplinary and International Studies, and the Center for the Study of Culture, Race and Ethnicity.
More information on the symposium: Orphans 04
Contributed by Patricia R. Zimmermann
https://www.ithaca.edu/intercom/article.php/20031123170030107