This great little symposium is still taking registrations. See below:









The Fifth Annual Northeast Historic Film Summer Symposium 

Moving Image as Biography

Friday, July 30, and Saturday, July 31, 2004

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The Northeast Historic Film Summer Film Symposium is a multi-disciplinary 

symposium devoted to the history, theory, and preservation of moving images. 

Entering its fifth year, the Symposium is noted for bringing together archivists, 

scholars, and artists in an intimate setting, Northeast Historic Film, located 

in Bucksport, Maine.  The Symposium takes place in Northeast Historic Film’s 

Alamo Theatre, a cinema with 35mm film projectors as well as video and DVD 

projection. 

Screenings presented by Snowden Becker, Bob Brodsky, and Toni Treadway

 

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Local Views, Developing a Larger History of American Cinema 

Charlie Silveus, owner of the 300-seat Eclipse Theatre engaged in the regular 

production and exhibition (1914–1927) of short, nonfiction films that focused 

their collective attentions on the people, places and events of his home 

town, Waynesburg, Pennsylvania.  The resulting footage provided his audience with 

(re)presentations of the local and the quotidian. While such films are 

certainly to be cherished by local historians—and Silveus’ films survive because 

they were judged worthy by the local fire department—they may at first appear 

inconsequential to the larger history of American cinema.  However, out of small 

places grow large issues.  Charlie Silveus’ films, as part of the “local view”

 genre provides contemporary film scholars with a powerful, if often 

frustrating, object of study that raises questions about, and blurs distinction 

between, production and consumption, local and mass, history and memory. Aronson 

will launch from a talk he gave at Orphans 2004 to provoke an exploration of 

community biography, conceptualizing strategies for scholars, archives, and 

communities who are blessed with these artifacts to jointly undertake historical 

investigation. 

Michael Aronson is an Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies at the 

University of Oregon. His research and writing focuses on exhibition and 

reception practices in the silent era.  He likes Maine, a lot.

 

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The Trouble with Merle

Merle Oberon, the Hollywood film star of the 1930s and 40s, claimed she was 

born in the tiny Australian island state of Tasmania – sometimes described as 

the full stop on the Australian map.  However, there were conflicting accounts 

of her birthplace, and after her death it was suggested that she was born in 

India. My recent documentary film The Trouble with Merle (2002) explores 

notions of celebrity, memory, identity, race and class and considers why Merle Oberon

’s origins continue to matter so much to people in Tasmania. Presenting key 

extracts from the film I will discuss my approach to visualising and 

structuring the research underpinning it. How can interviews, dramatisations, archival 

and faux archival contribute to the documentary’s biography of the star? To 

what degree did Oberon’s films such as The Private Life of Henry VIII and their 

surrounding publicity and discourses, present an “official” biography of 

Oberon and also contribute “evidence” of an alternative Tasmanian provenance? 

Maree Delofski is a filmmaker and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Media 

at Macquarie University in Sydney where she convenes the Screen Production 

strand.  Her film productions include The Trouble with Merle (2002) winner of the 

NSW Premier’s History Award and short listed for the NSW Premier’s Literary 

Award; the award winning documentaries A Calcutta Christmas (1999) and 

Philippines My Philippines (1989) and the short drama Every Little Breeze (1993).  

Maree has taught at the Australian Film Television and Radio School (AFTRS) 

where she established the Documentary Department and was the first Head of 

Documentary. She is currently Research Associate at the Centre for Screen Studies 

Research at AFTRS.

 

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Entertaining White America: Biographical Images of Sammy Davis Jr., in Print

and on Film

My presentation will analyze aspects of the biography of Sammy Davis Jr., by 

focusing on written and video representations of his image as a performer from 

the civil rights period of the 1950s and 1960s to his posthumous image today. 

  The many commentaries about his life and career have reflected a changing 

understanding of race and its relationship to mass-mediated entertainment in 

the second half of the twentieth century.  In particular, I will closely examine 

his membership in the Rat Pack in terms of how it has shaped biographical 

images of Davis. By looking at the assumptions of writers and filmmakers in 

depicting the role(s) of Sammy Davis Jr., as he performed for white Americans, this 

presentation will attempt to assess the significance of the long career of 

"Mr. Entertainment" over time.   

Robert Goff was born and raised in Liverpool, England.  I have a B.A. in 

English from the University of Essex and a M.A. in American Culture at the 

University of London.  I came to the United States to study for a Ph.D. in the 

American Culture program at Bowling Green State University, Ohio, and to teach in 

their Department of Popular Culture.  I later taught American Studies and 

popular culture courses at the University of East Michigan, in Ypsilanti, and at the 

University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.  I now live in Providence and 

teach in the Continuing Education programs at the University of 

Massachusetts-Boston and at Providence College.    I am currently researching the career of 

Sammy Davis, Jr., in terms of his influence on American culture.

 

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Displaced Images: Jonas Mekas’ Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania (1971)

The films of Jonas Mekas mix “home movie” footage with an eclectic editing 

style and personal narration. Focusing on Reminiscences, this paper will 

discuss the nodal points between home movies, avant-garde, and autobiography, which 

constitute all his diary films. Reminiscences is particularly interesting, 

because it documents Mekas’ first journey in twenty-five years to his original 

homeland and therefore becomes a meditation on the filmmaker’s identity as a 

former displaced person and as an international artist. His search back in time 

and through time is a search for past identities, for a way to reconcile his 

life as a displaced person in exile with his present day life as an American 

filmmaker. In that sense, the political and the personal are constantly 

intersecting in his films, political realities being displaced on to the personal and 

vice versa.

Jan-Christopher Horak, Curator, Hollywood Entertainment Museum. Previously, 

Archives, Universal Studios; Munich Filmmuseum; Eastman House; Adjunct 

Professor, UCLA, University of Rochester; Munich Film Academy; University of Salzburg. 

PhD. University of Muenster, Germany. M.S. Film, Boston University.  

Publications: Making Images Move: Photographers and Avant-Garde Cinema (1997), Berge, 

Licht und Traum. Dr. Arnold Fanck und der deutsche Bergfilm (1997), Lovers of 

Cinema. (1995), The Dream Merchants (1989), Anti Nazi Filme der 

deutschsprachigen Emigration von Hollywood (1984), Fluchtpunkt Hollywood (1986), Helmar 

Lerski - Lichtbildner (1982), Film und Foto der zwanziger Jahre (1979). Ca. 200 

articles in English, German, French, Italian, Japanese, Dutch, Spanish, Czech, 

Swedish, Hebrew publications.

 

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Dispelling American Cultural Stereotypes with the Personal: El Paso Vietnam

Filmmaker Adele Ray presents her personal short documentary, El Paso Vietnam. 

 Adele’s story tells how, a Vietnamese language teacher, Mary Chi (Adele’s 

mother), meets Tom (Adele’s father), a U.S. serviceman, in El Paso, Texas, 

during the Vietnam War before he leaves for Saigon, Vietnam, which is Mary Chi’s 

hometown.  This ten-minute 16mm black and white short film uses family photos, 

the voices of her parents, and images of the Vietnam War to express a new 

perspective never scene in American media.  A new perspective of a 

non-stereotypical Asian woman, who takes control of her own life, refusing to adopt the role 

we assume in America of the passive Asian “war bride” is compellingly told. A 

discussion will follow the screening with Ms. Ray about the making of El Paso 

Vietnam as well as a talk on how we can use family histories to re-shape 

societal views of diverse people.

Adele Ray is a 27-year old emerging filmmaker residing in Jersey City, NJ. 

She teaches a course called Digital Moviemaking at Eugene Lang College and New 

Information Technologies at NYU (SCPS) in Greenwich Village, Manhattan. She 

occasionally works as a film technician at the New School film department. 

Recently, Adele worked as a film researcher for Re: Search, a film research and 

rights clearance company in Soho.  Adele received her MA in Media Studies from the 

New School, in 2002, where she made El Paso Vietnam, which has been screening 

at various venues in the U.S. and abroad.  www.adeleray.rawcity.com

 

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Moving Images, New Media and Autobiography

New Media, in the form of the personal website, has already prompted a 

significant change in the autobiographical form and the reception of home mode 

imagery.  Unlike in the age of home movies or home video, where a family or a group 

of friends would gather in a living room and have a movie night where they 

would communally watch their own home movies, because of 

the Internet audiences are no longer limited temporally or geographically.  

The images are available for viewing any time and anywhere. Moreover, the 

movies are no longer seen apart from other styles of personal documentation, but 

are rather just one of several types of media available.  This 

presentation will give an overview of the type of amateur moving images 

currently available on personal websites and examine some case studies to see how 

amateur moving images are being woven into larger autobiographical statements.

Dwight Swanson lives in Milwaukee, where he works for the Milwaukee Public 

Libraries and is involved in the creation of the Midwest Media Archives 

Alliance.  Previously he was an archivist at Northeast Historic Film and the Alaska 

Moving Image Preservation Association, and he is a co-founder of Home Movie Day. 

 His primary interests are home movies and amateur film, and current research 

includes the history of American itinerant filmmaking and the 

autobiographical form in the mass media era.

 

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Will the Real Mrs. Rowe Please Stand Up

Amateur travel films often were exhibited to family, friends and community 

organizations with a "live" lecture by the traveler/filmmaker.  Most often the 

notes or script for these live narrations have not survived.  However, in some 

cases, personal journals or unpublished manuscripts accompany these film 

collections. Can these documents be used to recreate a live film showing?

In 1956, John and Mariella Rowe embarked on a car rally adventure from Geneva 

to Bombay; John Rowe filmed and Mariella Rowe wrote a charming journal.  Mr. 

Rowe's notes used for presenting the film no longer exist.  Using excerpts 

from the journal, I, as Mrs. Rowe, will narrate sequences in the film. The 

character of Mrs. Rowe is interpreted through the lens of my experience as a girl 

growing up in the fifties with a mother of similar age to Mrs. Rowe.  This 

presentation is also a personal journey, as well as an exploration, of the 

possibilities and limitations of creating a persona and a live presentation.  

Pamela Wintle, In 1981, Pamela Wintle founded the Human Studies Film 

Archives, Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian 

Institution, and has continued to guide this collection of cultural moving 

images from around the world.  Ms. Wintle is also a founding board member of 

Northeast Historic Film and an active participant in the Association of Moving 

Image Archivists.  Currently, Ms. Wintle is serving a five-year term as AMIA's 

alternate representative on the Library of Congress' National Film Preservation 

Board.  Ms. Wintle graduated over 30 years ago in theater from Ithaca College.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

REGISTRATION

Summer Film Symposium at Northeast Historic Film

The Moving Image as Biography

July 30 and July 31, 2004

 

Please register by July 12

 

$50 for two days; includes coffee breaks and lunches. 

Shore Dinner information to come.

 

 

 

Name __________________________   Address ________________________



City ___________________________    State __________ Zip _____________

 

Phone _________________________    Email __________________________

 

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Mail form & check to Northeast Historic Film, PO Box 900, Bucksport, Maine 

04416

Or fax to 207 469-7875

 

 

 



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For past messages, visit the Screen-L Archives:

http://bama.ua.edu/archives/screen-l.html