Northside Festival

ORPHANS 8 TRAILER | 1min
Source: 8th Orphan Film Symposium

SUNDAY | Dir. Dan Drasin | 17min| 1961 | 35mm
Source: New York University Film Study Center and Dan Drasin

First-time filmmaker Dan Drasin shot this confrontation between police and amateur folk singers protesting in Washington Square Park, Sunday, April 9, 1961. Drasin had not quite finished high school when he made this early verité work in 16mm. Preserved by UCLA Film & Television Archive for the Orphan Film Symposium, with funds from The Film Foundation.

DAYDREAM THERAPY | Dir. Bernard Nicolas| 8min | 1977
Source: University of California, Los Angeles, Film & Television Archive

UCLA's “L.A. Rebellion” preservation and exhibition project explores this creative movement among Los Angeles-based Black filmmakers working at and around UCLA in the 1970s and 80s.  Filmed in 8mm but surviving only on video, this short represents one of the rediscoveries of the project.

            In his first work as a UCLA student, activist-turned-filmmaker Bernard Nicolas poetically envisions the fantasy life of a hotel worker whose daydreams provide an escape from workplace indignities. The action is accompanied by Nina Simone singing “Pirate Jenny” and concludes with saxophonist Archie Shepp’s “Things Have Got To Change.”

ONE FRIDAY | Dir. Rolf Forsberg | 9min | 1973
Source: University of California, Los Angeles, Film & Television Archive

This provocative classroom discussion film by religious filmmaker Rolf Forsberg imagines an all-out race war violently unfolding in suburbia. Set to a soul song written for the film, this lyrical piece centers upon a tow-headed toddler who roams a picture book neighborhood under siege by mutual armed conflict between African Americans and whites.

THE JUNGLE | Dir. 12th & Oxford Street Film Makers |21min|1967                                                             Source: Jay Schwartz; digitized by The Media Preserve.

With the guidance of Temple University social worker Harold Haskins, a group of African American teenagers and young men in Philadelphia made this hybrid documentary/dramatization of their lives in the 12th and Oxford Street gang.  Shot in an original, naïve style, this unique film was distributed on the 16mm educational market.  The Librarian of Congress named The Jungle to the National Film Registry in 2009.

AFRI-COLA COMMERCIAL | Dir. Charles Wilp | 1 min | 1968
Source: 8th Orphan Film Symposium

UFOS | Dir. Lillian Schwartz | 4min | 1971

GALAXIES | Dir. Lillian Schwartz | 4min | 1974
Source: Ohio State University Libraries / New York University Libraries / BB Optics

Two experimental but innovative computer animations made at Bell Laboratories. Preserved by Colorlab for the Orphan Film Project's DVD Orphans in Space: Films from the Forgotten Frontier (2012).

POSTHASTE PERENNIAL PATTERN | Dir. Jodie Mack | 3.5min | 2010
Source: Jodie Mack

UNSUBSCRIBE #4 | THE SADDEST SONG IN THE WORLD | Dir. Jodie Mack | 3min. | 2010
Source: Jodie Mack

Handcrafted musical and experimental animations.

Scratch and Crow | Helen Hill | 4min | 1995 Source:

A chicken dreams of heaven, death and resurrection. New Orleans-based animator Helen Hill became part of the Orphan Film Project in 2005, after most of her possessions were destroyed or damaged by Hurricane Katrina floodwaters. When she was tragically killed in 2007, age 36, a spontaneous collective formed to preserve and restore her work: people from NYU, the University of South Carolina (where “Orphans” began), Harvard Film Archive, the Center for Home Movies, BB Optics, and Colorlab. Within two months, 9 of her films were fully preserved and new prints back on the festival circuit. Preservation work on her large collection of Super 8mm home movies continues. Scratch and Crow was added to the National Film Registry as an exemplar of the student film.

LIGHT CAVALRY GIRL | Dir. Jie Shen | 9min | 1980
Source: University of South Carolina, Moving Image Research Collections

A journeyman documentary director at China's Central Newsreel and Documentary Film Studio went off book to document this expressive display of a troupe of motorcycle stunt riders. Because the film was made without official permission, Chinese authorities broke up the unit and did not sanction the film. The 16mm print that came to the University of South Carolina as part of the Chinese Film Collection gifted by the Embassy may be the only one that survives.

Q&A with Jodie Mack after the screening