Orphans of the Storm III: Listening to Orphan Films

Everyone's eyes were opened to sound at the Orphans of the Storm III symposium in Columbia, South Carolina. With the theme of "Listening to Orphan Film: Sound, Music, Voice," it was truly a lineup of filmic oddities. The term "orphan film" encompasses quite a lot of material, basically all film not under copyright or controlled by a studio. Highlights screened at this year's event included newsreels, Scopitones, cinema advertisements, home movies, art films, documentaries, and sound recordings.

The Orphans symposium is unique in its content-based approach. It is international and interdisciplinary in its cast (and cast), and it is difficult to ask an irrelevant question. Something of a cross between a film festival and a lecture series, it is an intense three-day orgy of images and ideas. Queries that don't make it to the always too brief official question-and-answer sessions are aired during the quick coffee and donut breaks. Participants include filmmakers, archivists, scholars, students, and artists. Major film archives are represented, but so are small archives, historical societies, universities, and libraries. Although some portions of the conference involve technical restoration jargon and/or academic analysis, the symposium as a whole is never bogged down by either.

The symposium began with a 1928 synch-sound Fox Movietone News piece from the University of South Carolina's collection depicting the Jenkins Orphanage Band, a large jazz band made up of African-American orphaned children in South Carolina. The film quickly became the symposium's mascot film and was shown again the following day, in case anyone had missed it. (It was also shown at AMIA's archival screenings in 2002.) The band performs on the sidewalk in front of the orphanage; the little conductors really ham it up, combining dance moves with conducting. One attendee remarked she'd like to start every day by watching this amazing film, and she wasn't alone in that sentiment.

In case the band had failed to wake up anyone, People Like Us's We Edit Life (2002) was up next. An intricate collage of clips freely taken from Rick Prelinger's on-line collection (www.archive.org) with layered audio samples, this video made the vital connection between archival material and art, with a nod to the importance of easy access thrown in. The piece was performed live the next day, when Rick and Vicki Bennet (aka People Like Us) finally got to meet face to face, after a previously virtual friendship.

Naturally, "Listening to Orphan Films" brought to the fore the oft-neglected topic of sound preservation. Ken Weissman talked about the Library of Congress's work restoring De Forest Phonofilms. He discussed the history of some early (1910s to 1920s) sound processes pioneered by William De Forest and Theodore Case. David Pierce of BFI talked about their work on British Phonofilm recordings of the music hall tradition. The favorite was probably Don't Be Cruel to a Vegetabule, which I'd seen a few years ago at Cinefest. Also, one with a vaudeville team pretending to be a ventriloquist and dummy was hard to beat. Pierce's screening of simple farmyard promo films was interesting because of the films' banality; it was funny that such unexciting topics had been used to promote an exciting process of cinema sound.

Robert Heiber of Chase Productions presented "The Sound of Newsreels: Issues for Preservation and Restoration." His talk was a historical overview of the development of sound on film. He also talked about restoration techniques and brought up the importance of rerecording optical sound tracks instead of copying them photographically in the printing process, which proved to be invaluable information for several attendees.

Ray Edmondson, audiovisual archival consultant, formerly of the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia, presented "The Voice of Australia: Cinesound Review," a history of the newsreel in Australia. He screened some gems, including an Oscar-winning...