Northeast Historic Film Summer Symposium
July 20-22, 2017
Bucksport, Maine, USA
Regional Moving Image Collections and Archives in the 21st Century
Twenty-first century regional moving image archives discover and collect increasingly diverse audiovisual artifacts. Join us for an international gathering featuring two days of screenings and discussions on the coast of Maine.
Each session is about 30 minutes, with discussion directly following. All presentations take place in the cinema and emphasize moving images, knowledge sharing, and community collaboration among archivists, librarians, media makers, community members, and scholars. Since 2000, the Northeast Historic Film Symposium has helped build interest in regional audiovisual heritage. Past themes here.
The Symposium starts on Thursday, July 20, with projection of early film formats by Dino Everett, University of Southern California, and a book launch for Amateur Movie Making: Aesthetics of the Everyday in New England Film, 1915-1960 (Indiana University Press, 2017).
Friday morning, July 21, begins with 2016 William S. O’Farrell Fellow Andrea Mariani, University of Udine, Italy, presenting Bridging the Gaps, Connecting the Dots: Amateur Cinema League and the Emergence of the Cineguf Movement in Fascist Italy, Siobhan Hagan, Mid-Atlantic Regional Moving Image Archive, will discuss No Time for a Hiatus: Reinvigorating Local TV Preservation on the National Level. Jen VanderBurgh, St. Mary’s University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, concludes the morning with Speculative Collections: A Case for Including VHS Recordings of Television in Regional Archives.
In the afternoon, four presentations come to us from the United Kingdom, U.S. Pacific Rim, and New England. Rodney Obien and Zachary Giroux, Keene State College, New Hampshire, offer The Home Movies of Louis de Rochemont. Returning symposiast Michael McCluskey, University of York (U.K.), will discuss Village Biographies: Filmmaking in Rural Britain. Rachel Price and Libby Hopfauf, Moving Image Preservation of Puget Sound, bring us Demystifying Digitization: Videotape Preservation in the Pacific Northwest. Wrapping up the first day is Claudy Op den Kamp, University of Bournemouth (U.K.), Open Sesame: Copyright and “Aesthetics of Access”
Saturday, July 22, starts with a discussion of regional moving images in education, onetime Northeast Historic Film collection manager Gemma Scott, representing Technology Grange, The History of Youth Media Production in Maine. Devin Orgeron and Melissa Dollman from North Carolina State and University of North Carolina, will discuss Regional Film in the Classroom: Carolina Case Studies.
Following lunch, Emily Vinson, University of Houston Libraries, will draw on television series Almanac and The Capitol Report: Preserving Regional News: Creating Access to the KUHT Collection. Symposium veterans Oliver Gaycken, Siobhan Hagan and Caitlin McGrath from the University of Maryland and Greenbelt Theatre dive into Sharing Your Strengths: Models from the Mid-Atlantic. The concluding presenter is John Pettit, Temple University Libraries Special Collections, with Unedited North Philadelphia: Successes and Challenges in a Neighborhood Centered Screening.
Questions? Contact symposium@oldfilm.org or jenkinsj@email.arizona.edu
Northeast Historic Film’s annual Symposium—this is the eighteenth—is known for friendly discussions, the peerless Phil Yates in the project booth, jolly adventures in the area, and the culminating Maine lobster fest.
Bucksport is accessible from Boston by Concord Coach bus or car; the nearest airports are Bangor and Portland, Maine. https://oldfilm.org/content/contact-us#driving_directions
The Program Committee is Chair, Jennifer Jenkins, University of Arizona; Audrey Amidon, National Archives and Records Administration; Liz Czach, University of Alberta; Dino Everett, University of Southern California; Heidi Holmstrom, National Archives and Records Administration; and Devin Orgeron, North Carolina State University.
Northeast Historic Film, an independent nonprofit AV archives, was founded in 1986 to preserve and make available moving images of interest to the people of northern New England (Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Massachusetts). We hold ten million feet of film in 8mm, Super 8mm, 9.5mm, 16mm, 28mm, and 35mm and 8,000 analog and digital video recordings. NHF is located in a 1916 cinema building with purpose-built cold storage and a study center in Bucksport, a town of 5,000 on the coast of Maine. The staff and collections are located behind and above the Alamo Theatre on Main Street, a 125-seat cinema with DCP, 35mm, 16mm, and video projection.
Unable to attend this year? We will miss you! Please help keep the doors open with a contribution to Northeast Historic Film. https://oldfilm.org/content/donate. Thank you!
