"The Real Indies: A Close Look at Orphan Films"

Orphan films are the focus of "The Real Indies," a series this weekend sponsored by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences and the New York University Orphan Film Symposium.  Screenings take place at the Academy Theater at 111 East 59th Street, on Friday, October 31 and Saturday, November 1.

The final frontier in film preservation, orphan films range from Oscar-winning shorts and features to advertisements, newsreels, cartoons—anything outside the commercial mainstream.  Some have fallen into the public domain, while others are subject to copyright disputes. As a result, these are the movies most at risk of being lost.

"Even neglected commercial films, like our opening film, Jack Hill's Spider Baby," adds Dan Streible, director of the Moving Image Archiving and Preservation Program at New York University and an Academy Film Scholar.   "It's an orphan in the sense that it was made and then not distributed for four or five years later.  And like many exploitation films, it was marketed under different titles, in different versions.  It had a very interesting afterlife."

Starring Lon Chaney, Jr., who sings the title song, Spider Baby was also released as The Liver Eaters and Cannibal Orgy.  Director Hill's career includes exploitation hits like Coffy and Foxy Brown.  He will introduce Friday's screening, and take part in a post-screening conversation with director William Lustig (Maniac Cop).

Other filmmakers will introduce the Saturday screenings, among them Connie Field, Charlie Ahearn, Bill Morrison, and Jimmy Picker.

Spider Baby was restored by the Academy Film Archive, an arm of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.  "Our mission and focus is to preserve films," says Patrick Harrison, the Academy’s Director of New York Programs and Membership.  The series will showcase other Academy Film Archive restorations like Connie Field's Oscar-nominated documentary Rosie the Riveter.

"The Academy is interested in collecting as much celluloid as we can," Harrison adds.  "Celluloid lasts, if it's properly stored in a temperature-controlled environment.  I don't think anyone knows how long digital files will last."

The series gives fans the chance to see these rare films under the best possible conditions.  Not in visually compromised YouTube versions, but on restored 16mm and 35mm prints, as well as new DCPs.

"There's nothing like sitting in a blacked-out room filled with people who are there for the same reason," Harrison believes.  "There's an energy that we feed off each other. You think about production design, makeup, costumes, cinematography. You see the real vision of the filmmaker up on the big screen."

"No matter how good the digital copy is, there'll be differences, a loss in the image quality," Streible says.  "I think everyone who loves film, who's had personal experience watching film prints projected, knows about the luster that they bring."

Saturday's screenings fall into three categories.  At 10:00 a.m., "Pioneering Women" includes films by Aloha Wanderwell Baker from the 1920s-30s, introduced by Academy archivist Heather Linville; Make Out, a 1970 Newsreel collective production preserved by the Third World Newsreel; and Rosie the Riveter.

At 2:00 p.m., "Experimental Views" features Charlie Ahearn, who will introduce the first public screening in 35 years of his 1977 film Mass Guide; Les Blank's Running Around Like a Chicken with Its Head Cut Off (1960); Bill Morrison's Outerborough (2005), accompanied by violinist Todd Reynolds; and the first ever public screening of Bill Brand's Organic Afghan (1969).

"Visions of New York" at 6:00 p.m. features nine decades of films about the five boroughs of New York City, from footage of the 1917 New York Giants baseball team to the Oscar-winning animated short Sundae in New York.

"People who think they are interested only in blockbuster comic-book movies are often surprised by orphan films," Streible says.  "They find out how entertaining, how interesting even anonymous home movies or newsreel outtakes are."

Streible points out that viewers connect with orphan films because they recognize their own family legacy materials.  "They might not have thought that films that their grandfather made and stored away interest anyone other than family.  But seeing these movies might activate them to become more interested in preservation."

Harrison hopes to bring orphan films to more cities.  "But it's up to film fans to help us raise awareness of these neglected titles," he cautions.  "Facebook it, tweet it, go through all your social media platforms and say, 'I saw this incredible film, where can we see more?'"

Tickets for each segment are $5, and can be purchased online at oscars.org and at the Academy box office.