April 7, 2008
I spent most of the other week in New York. I arrived around noon on Wednesday and headed out. First, to my bagel place. It doesn't have the best bagels, but it does have a signed photo of Mel Brooks. I then walked over to Bryant Park, which is the backyard of the main branch of the New York Public Library. You know, the one with the lion statues, Patience and Virtue in front. Then I hopped on a subway to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and spent an insufficient amount of time on the Gustave Courbet exhibit. I then meandered through Central Park over to Lincoln Center and had late lunch with a friend. I had forgotten how much walking is required in New York. But it was a good thing I got some walking in, because the rest of my time was spent in a darkened theater (at NYU's Cantor Center to be precise) watching a wonderful array of orphan works during the 6th Orphan Symposium.
What is an orphan work, you ask? Orphan works have essentially been abandoned by their copyright owner. They (the copyright owner) are no longer interested or capable of properly caring for their work. More generally they are works outside of the commercial mainstream. Documentaries, government, industrial, educational, newsreels, stock footage, sponsored films, surveillance footage, underground works and films from the silent era are some of the examples of orphan works. A good place to view such types of films is at the Internet Archive, specifically the Prelinger Archives--though there are other collections that have orphan films.
The highlight of the symposium (other than seeing friends, former professors and being in NY again) was the panel featuring two television shows. One was The Orchid Award which featured Ronald Reagan, the host of the show presenting Liberace with an orchid. I kid you not. The other was Insight, which was produced by the Paulists, a Roman Catholic society and was on the air from 1960-1984. The driving force behind Insight was Father Ellwood Keiser, who managed to talk Martin Sheen, Ed Asner, Louis Gossett, Jr., Bill Bixby, Ann Sothern, William Shatner and Jane Wyman among many others into not only appearing on the show but also signing over their fee to the Paulists. Father Keiser (all 6 plus feet of him) hosted the show--complete with a lisp!--and would introduce the moral quandary of that day's episode, and then the actors would take over. Good times!
