AMIA Newsbriefs

Preserving the Mirror of Culture: Anthology Film Archive Works to Keep Independent Film Alive

Tucked away in the Bowery on Manhattan’s lower East Side stands Anthology Film Archives. This little institution strives to recover and preserve the films, which have made the independent film industry the reflective lenses of American culture. With careful consideration this small film Archive saves about 15 to 30 films a year. One staff member commented, “Motion pictures are a kind of mirror of our society.”

Read story here

European Parliament backs digital plans

The European Parliament has "approved by a large majority" the Europe Union's Digital Agenda, an action plan designed to boost Europe's economy through the adoption of digital practices. There was also "strong support" from the European Parliament for the further development of Europeana, Europe's digital library, with the commission to draft a policy document on its future, including looking at copryight and orphan works.

Read story here

Video search still a tough nut to crack

While text-based search services such as Google's and Microsoft Bing now come pretty close to consistently serving up what users seek, video search services remain inexact at best, said video archiving experts who spoke on a panel at last week's WWW2010 conference. Yet the panelists agreed that video searching techniques must improve exponentially if people are to use the growing amount of video footage now stored on the Internet and elsewhere.

Read story here

Silent animation online from UCLA Film & Television Archive

The UCLA Film and Television Archive has produced Silent Animation, a section of its website which offers eleven animation films from the silent era for viewing online or download. The films cover all kinds of silent animation productions, including lightning sketches (a ‘lightning’ artist filmed drawing a caricature), hand-drawn animation, stop-frame animation, cut-out animation, animated letters, and films which integrate live action with animation.

Visit website here

After Flooding, Nashville Musicians Assess Losses

Mr. Paisley found out on Friday that most of his touring guitars and equipment were destroyed when flood waters spilled into SoundCheck, a 160,000-square-foot storage and rehearsal site, where more than 600 artists — from A-list country music stars like Mr. Paisley, Vince Gill and Keith Urban, to studio artists and touring musicians — stored their instruments and gear.

Read the story here:  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/08/arts/music/08country.html?src=mv

Ric Burns Says Judge’s Ruling on Film Could Be ‘Killer Blow’

The director said that a judge’s decision to permit Chevron to subpoena the footage from the movie “Crude” could deliver a “killer blow” to how documentary filmmakers cultivate their sources and tell their stories.

Read the story here:  http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/07/ric-burns-says-judges-ruling-on-film-could-be-killer-blow/

Callie Angell (1948-2010)

When I first met her in the early '70s, Callie was a librarian at the newly created Anthology Film Archives, then housed in Public Theater. For much of the '80s, she served as film curator John Hanhardt's assistant at the Whitney Museum and, in the early '90s, returned to the Whitney to oversee the cataloguing and restoration of the vast, largely uncharted film oeuvre that Warhol had bequeathed the Whitney shortly before his death.

Read the story here:  http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2010/05/callie_angell_1.php

The Library of Congress Unlocks the Ultimate Archive System

Our division within the Library of Congress is responsible for the Library’s 6.3 million piece collection of audio-visual and film materials.  I direct the film preservation program, and prior to the advent of the Packard Campus for Audio-Visual Conservation in 2007, we were primarily focused on the nitrate film collection: 140 million feet, dating back to the 1890s.

Read the story here:  http://magazine.creativecow.net/article/the-library-of-congress-unlocks-the-ultimate-archive-system

Wounded Knee Photog Files Copyright Claims

Pearse-Hocker says she spent about two weeks in Wounded Knee, South Dakota during the 1973 siege. A group of Native Americans, including members of the American Indian Movement, took armed control of the town, and during the course of the 71-day siege one U.S. marshal was shot and partially paralyzed and two Sioux were shot and killed.

Read the story here:  http://www.courthousenews.com/2010/05/07/27084.htm

MIT Museum Receives 70 Years of Polaroid History

The archive of Polaroid history and artifacts contains some of the most fascinating inventions and innovations from the 20th century. Rare Polarized glasses dating from the 1939 World’s Fair, original newsprint sketches by Polaroid founder Edwin H. Land, a historic bellows camera the size of a filing cabinet, as well as examples of Land-designed camera prototypes, and SX-70 cameras that defined the instant photography era, are just some of the original items that the MIT Museum acquired. In June, the museum plans to display a few artifacts from this new acquisition.

Read the story here:  http://web.mit.edu/museum/about/pr/2010/polaroid.html