Film Forum

A compilation of neglected films – or “orphans” -- all shot in and around New York City, spanning much of the 20th century, presented by NYU Cinema Studies Professor Dan Streible and Bruce Goldstein, Film Forum’s Director of Repertory Programming.

The term “orphan films” was first coined for films that have no identified rights holder, therefore nobody responsible for taking care of them. Now it refers to a diversity of works outside the commercial sector. The Orphan Film Symposium (affectionately known as “Orphans”), created by NYU Cinema Studies professor Dan Streible in 1999, is a biennial showcase for neglected films of all varieties, including home movies, outtakes, newsreels, educational films, industrials, and amateur films.

Among the films included in the program are:

○ New 35mm print of NYC Street Scenes and Noises (1929), sound outtakes from Fox Movietone newsreels vividly showing street life in Manhattan, including Radio Row (later site of the World Trade Center) and Times Square. Courtesy University of South Carolina. 
○ EPH 4/27/16, a masterful 1979 memoir by amateur filmmaker Ephraim Horowitz
○ Newly scanned pieces from the Library of Congress Paper Print Collection of early cinema
○ An 1899 film shot from a train crossing the Brooklyn Bridge, restored from a nitrate print
○ The Making of Pelham 123 (1974), featurette on the making of The Taking of Pelham 123, as transit cop Carmine Foresta shows star Walter Matthau the ropes. Courtesy Academy Film Archive (16mm).
○ Broadway by Day (1932) from the Magic Carpet of Movietone series (16mm)
○ What’s Happening in Harlem? (1949) from Communist Party USA
○ Venus and Adonis (1935) a surrealist amateur short
○ Rare newsreels unearthed in Dawson City, Canada, selected by filmmaker Bill Morrison
○ A hand-colored 1906 Edison film restored by the National Library of Norway

Live music for the silent films in the program will be performed by composer/pianist Steve Sterner, Film Forum’s resident silent film accompanist.

This special program is a co-presentation of Film Forum and NYU’s Cinema Studies Department.

Dan Streible is a film historian and organizer of the biennial Orphan Film Symposium. He is associate professor of cinema studies at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and associate director of its Moving Image Archiving and Preservation master's program. His publications include Fight Pictures: A History of Boxing and Early Cinema and the co-edited volume Learning with the Lights Off: Educational Film in the United States. Named an Academy Scholar, he is writing a book about the orphan film movement. 

Bruce Goldstein created Film Forum’s award-winning repertory program in 1986. A specialist on New York location shooting, he has programmed many festivals about the city on film, including NYC NOIR and MADCAP MANHATTAN. His 30-minute film In the Footsteps of Speedy, about Harold Lloyd on location in New York in 1927, is included as a supplement on Criterion’s Speedy blu-ray.

16mm, 35mm, digital | Approx. 120 min.