Neal Katyal in oral arguments before the Supreme Court today referenced a "Marshall McLuhan moment" (as in ANNIE HALL).

Halloween is largely about Welles in my first thoughts ever year.

Nam June Paik “Yolguk” 2002. @ Korean Cultural Center New York

1986.

Union Square, after the other marches

Not to distract from the excitement of Orphan Film Symposium proposals pouring in for 2026, but I do love this from Yuri Tsivian. The heart pounding at film history discoveries.

Now is the time: propose !

Pictures not in New York.

1916 Griffith. 1918 Mayakovsky & Brik.

The Skladanowsky 54mm film projector of 1895 use brass grommets to secure the sprocket holes (?). tangiblemediacollection.com/artifacts/sk...

Ohio State University + film preservation. Reminder that proposals for the 2026 NYU Orphan Film Symposium in Columbus (April 8-11) are due OCTOBER 15. wp.nyu.edu/orphanfilm/2... PHOTO Robert Wagner, “Preservation of the Newsreel Films of President Harding,” (1969)

Happy Birthday, Dad.

What the National Board of Review was up to in 1916. Special screening to discuss if nudity can be artful enough to get a license to exhibit a commercial motion pictures. (NYPL collection)

UWLibs Digital Collections: digitalcollections.lib.washington.edu/digital/coll... Sayre Collection, 24,000+ photos of theatrical performers 1900-1955. J. Willis Sayre: critic, journalist, promoter 7,622 photos tagged "Motion Pictures" e.g., 1929, Geraldine Dvorak, Garbo's double

Sure enough.

Happy 90th, composer Arvo Pärt www.facebook.com/share/p/1Fjt...

Lordy, AI art is ugly. Dispiriting.

Geo. Willeman sharing frames on FB from new LOC acquisition: hand-colored 35mm print of THE BURNING STABLE, an 1896 Edison film. b/w file from www.loc.gov/item/00694165

of NOLA vimeo.com/196979559

There are mean things happening in this land (as they sing in the 1940 film MEN AND DUST). Nevertheless, I like what Jordan Peele did in NOPE (2022). Turn the mythologized origin story of Muybridge's horse pictures into a different origin story.

Inviting applications for filmmakers to be recognized at the April 2026 symposium. Apply by October 16. Recipient/s present their work in person. wp.nyu.edu/orphanfilm/2...

6pm Monday FILM FORUM

The Cavalier’s Dream (1898) 2025 music

Uh-huh.

1839 daguerreotype of Samuel F. B. Morse. By William Draper. 1839! As NYU professors they had a portrait studio atop the building on Washington Square East.

Goldman portrait.

Friendly reminder, gentle colleagues. Propose ! Save the dates.

Excellent crowd-sourced filmography ensues.

Video reanimation (Paul Burns). Cover of SCIENTIFIC MAGAZINE, Oct. 19, 1878. 18 "skillfully engraved" drawings from Muybridge photographs. Readers were invited to paste the pictures on paper strips and view them in their own Zoetropes. archive.org/details/scie...

trailer TEST TUBE BABIES (1947-48) All the rough-hewn characteristics of classical exploitation films.

News from SMPTE. James A. Lindner Archival Technology Medal awarded to Reto Kromer for contributions to AV preservation. A computer scientist and film restorationist, Reto advanced “digital workflows—including color space analysis and codec emulation.”

New book by Kirill Goriachok on the making of Man with a Movie Camera. Lots of photos and primary documents I’ve not seen before.

Just published: The second-to last volume in the “Film Theory in Media History” to be published by Amsterdam University Press. The series is moving to a different press, and it’s not Routledge/Taylor & Francis. Stay tuned!

Spring 2020 was High Covid. But the 4-day event rallied. Video of all 10 sessions viewable via the website. NYU.edu/orphanfilm

Don't give Meta the satisfaction of visiting the URL, but note for the record that June 18, 2025, an A.I. tool published an "utimate guide to orphan films." Bothering to assign it the pen name "Sarah Lee."

MoMA, To Save and Project & NYU OFS 2022, Hollis Frampton’s Public Domain (1972); James Baldwin: From Another Place (1973) outs; first student film ever? The Maid of McMillan (1916) Washington U. I Believe in Spring (USSR, 1962), first by Slava Tsukerman; animation by Caroline and Frank Mouris.

Be like Geo. Be in Ohio for the 2026 Orphan Film Symposium. (Orphans 2016: LoC Packard Theater. George Willeman, Stephanie Sapienza, Andrea Callard.

After Robert Altman added songs/recordings from Leonard Cohen's 1967 debut album to McCABE & MRS. MILLER (1971), CBS released three tracks on this 7" disc (1971).

Vamos a Rio. Nitrata en Niterói.

A bit of an Alexander [Hammid} Hackenschmied film, LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (1945) snuck into a 2025 news program. No screen credits on this well-made US OWI film.

Fall '24: watched NINOTCHKA (1939) with students, attuned to the fact that viewers of '39 knew tof Soviet communism. Election Night, watched CASABLANCA ('43), where fighting fascism is all. Touched by this scene, DON'T BE A SUCKER (1945). Felix Bressart (in NINOTCHKA) as the antifa prof vs Nazis.

Thought I knew a lot about my role model, but was this years old when I learned he was a dedicated guitarist. Here with his Gibson L-5.

Opening the National Film Theatre, London, 1957. John Ford, Rene Clair, Gina Lollobrigida, Akira Kursawa, Laurence Olivier. Two sets of outtakes from British Gaumont newsreels, UCLA Hearst Collection. newsreels.net/v/mt47ii

Did you know? If a subletter dies your apt., police seal it. No human can enter without a court order. If the person had no will, you have no standing to request a court order. The seal protects the decedent's effects, not yours. NY law considers your things property of the deceased. See Kafka.

Estonian Film Archive tour.

We know about Scotch tape. Here’s Irish tape. (Estonian Film Archive)