Below are notes for meetings with:

• Elena Rossi-Snook
• Mona Jimenez
• DeeDee Halleck
• Rodger Larson and Michael Jacobson

Meeting with Elena Rossi-Snook

Meeting with Elena

• Community space for the filmmakers ….. having a virtual meet and greet would be really welcomed, everyone knows and stays in contact with one other filmmaker (programming around this)… angle of participation around this… forum space/ comment sections/ conversational space.. more back and forth among users

• access vs digitization… we do provide access not digitization why is the library involved with orphan films? we actually know the filmmakers. phrase “film operating outside of a current legal agreement” orphaned films is understood as outside of a studio, b/c studios exercise their copyright we operate under their legal agreement

• YFF -> *Aspirations -> ask Perry before, legally there is no copyright

orphan - minimizes agency of the people who made it deposited at the academy, not donate … so have to be contacted for copyright

• portal for connecting people to the material beyond it just being this file you just click on
• responsibility as film librarians -> create context, part of library theory … history of the document itself and context
• this isn’t YouTube, a channel with videos with no context
• serious resistance to the context in which they made… isn’t it cute these Puerto Ricans doing drugs/ mandatory reading before you program this film… why it was made and why it was facilitated

Event

• screen films

• Bruno Walter Auditorium (shoot an email about a program … projectionist ~$1000/ reception -> )

• spring 2017 -> reception … ask David about who funds this kind of programming -> NYSCA

• back of the program, offering a way to get data ->

• a way to collect insights/ data about each film/ repository for this stuff/ when people show up and are like.. i know this person/ this place… people remember/ interpersonal/ way to capture this data and participate…. participate in an oral history and put it on the site … storycorp of sort/ manned station for getting back in touch with you about oral history/ identify people when watching

• data collection for this sight…. conduit/ portal to directly being able to interact with people who made the films… about the community makers as much as the films itself

• about access and content..

• wanting to bear witness for a lot of these

• other folks remember their relationships

• Andrew Lamy -> super OCD, elements in Elena’s office

Digitizing films

• academic use -> $400 access fee for one time
• agreement for how it is going to be user/ exactly what is going to be created
• ok from filmmaker (or) statement of liability (will take full responsibility)/ credit to NYPL

Jessica Gordon Borroughts @ Hamilton -> Jaime Barrios

• some stuff at filmmaker co-op
• storing elements with YFDC
• University of Chile

Email Alfonso Barrios -> YFDC

• NYSCA reports on this

Rodger Larson - in 1976

• bankrupt …. how was it they were bankrupt and pull through?
• i want this collection to be an archival collection and accessible … and wants access
• The films are at Fort Lee and MovieLab….
• Alfonso sent out Andrew Lamy to inventory YFF elements and some at Movie Lab and some at Fort Lee

On the site:

• international film foundation.org - Sam Brian -> http://www.internationalfilmfoundation.org/
• Julian Brian minor celebrity in 40s/50s with photography/ internationalist… 1939 late American photographer in Warsaw on photographer/ moving images … Sam Brian is sitting on all this incredible material/ trying to get it to material (turned into doc called Siege, won academy award)…. single unit of leftist thinking NYC filmmakers.. Murrow had a program called This I Believe… audio essays and Juilan was on this show.
• started with Eastman classroom films
• good neighbor policies films…
• section with a filmography/ background info/ bibliographic info/ getting the film list
• Andrew Lamy’s inventory will really help… cross reference with catalogues … paper
• spreadsheet has a start
• list of names… meet the Young Filmmakers
• audio… click into their oral history
• how do you create … flow chart… design competition/ visualizations …. overlapping and multiple interfaces… cross referencing…
• use website to create your own list/ manipulate data (d3)… across geographies, ways narratives are similar and different across place/ by age/ gender/ race
• highlight against vision of “pure” vision of the other… -crowdsourcing … do you recognize this scene? particular narrative? trope?

Ethnographic other

• as if some pure “other” we are seeing
• 12th and Oxford / Park Called Forsyth

Los Sures http://www.uniondocs.org/living-los-sures/

• took pieces and allow filmmakers to take pieces and re-edit it
• crowdsourcing differnet aspects of it
• Christopher Allen - runs Union Docs and started this process
• turned into multifaceted, online education project

Old model for archive

• intake, catalogue
• meeting academics, apply for grants, surface online and then digitize and give them

outside/ inside -> find scenes inside/ outside Young Braves -> shot in front of NYPL … Edith Hedge Mythology book

metadata

• summary of film, summary to colleague

• cataloguing librarian -> moving away from MARC ->

• Tara Kelley - at Rutgers -> talk to her about cataloguing/ moving image archivist at Schomburg for awhile..

• Arlene You - at NYPL -> metadata -> at theatre division

• Pratt/ Rutgers -> library programs… cataloguing

• cataloguing in a present or historical voice … cataloguing as if in era it was made… summary of the films. .. (also have summaries from the catalogue in YFDC, original catalogue entry) … Rodger has them write their own descriptions/

• Seeing -> YFDC -> full front nudity in a foundation covered with blood.. dancing.. orgy… Shamus xxxxx, some other guy … think screen names as well … circulated to a theatre

• dancing around fountains as a common trope (golden age musicals - visual drama)

• action on the rooftops

interpersonal communities

• Jack Smith (Warhol friend).. pops up in a young filmmakers
• Bowery Dawn ( jack also made a film called Jack Smith… but also name of YFDC film)
• network analysis is amazing
• back on the form… what other young filmmakers did you know? work with? get them to chart their own relationships

West Beth - one of Rodger’s classroom -> one of the them teaching animation, just doing a summer animation workshop… Peter Wallach (Eli Wallach)

• allowing kids to express themselves… have to be unafraid of what they come up with… fearlessness about the final product… before Reagan era comes down on it… people are doing it are interested in the free expression and people who want to shut it down haven’t come down on it yet … deep believe in community outreach through films made by the community …. market for films that have no commercial buyers … part technological… more portable, trickles down to communities…
  … both the technology and culture/ politics of the 1960s

Willard Van Dkye across the street from Donnel.. calls and says he wants to help with YFF Bill Sloan - quietly but adamantly for civil rights, into direct cinema and youth and civil rights, writing in 1963… that’s when Rodger goes to teach, Sloan goes to write civil rights essay, also year of Birmingham (TV)

“if we don’t show these films, they won’t be shown at all” - NYPL

• email Elena for article on Bill Sloan/ Civil Rights Act … history of the integration film… films are a particular value./ still part of the collection … Jack Willis .. language of care (coming from 1930s, care is standing in for solidarity/ old left to the new left/ language of the popular front… rebranding…
• Leo Seltzer and crew -> working educational film… go into education after being torn apart in the 1930s.. libraries are the stage/ …
• libraries are one of the few that preserve ideas of lefty “public” …rebrand as “pure democracy”

Meeting is about constituting the community… why the “workshop” … and not just individual/ personal filmmaking…. not just “renting”/ “borrowing” and coming back

Email Elena:

• or article on Bill Sloan/ Civil Rights Act
• Bruno Walter Auditorium
• Alfonso Barrios info
•  Article from Bill Sloan on integration films 
• check on Walter Auditorium for spring event and money from NYSCA 
• Alfonso Barrios contact
• send list of films for digitization 
• Paper Agreements -> September

Grace Notes:

• the films are evidence of preexisting communities... some document the workshops, some document the neighborhood... they are evidence of a social network (one friend is making the film, another is in it)... they are an embodiment of the social network/ community... in that they even get made... they are about of a network and exist because a network made them

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Meeting with Mona Jimenez

We met Mona for a dinner-meeting in Brooklyn.

She posed the following suggestions:

• Provide basic info about the collection

• outline the collection status so others can find out .. make sure to document this info and surface it/ make it visible / might consider interesting visualizations to show how many collections/ archives are (un)processed, etc

• use terminology such as processed or unprocessed

• to what degree is it processed?

• if processed, how far? box level? folder level? collection level?

• Item level info:

• from which collection

• format

• date range

• description

• participatory piece for building/ adding to the database/collection

• work with her to target certain groups/ community archiving communities - she suggested several orgs:

• Portable Channel - Rochester, NY - Visual Studies Workshop

• DCTV (NYC)

• late 70s/early 80s tv - Paper Tiger, cableTV, pubic access. Talked about the relationship between media arts centers and public access. Eco system of public access, media centers, education centers. Media arts centers were suppose to help provide public access/ to democratize video. Rise of education TV at universities. NY State (NYSCA) among the first to fund video.

• ETV - Community video, SUNY-Binghamton, Emergence Video Processing book, more focused on art/ early software tools

• Mediaburn - Chicago

• Ithaca Video Collective

• Yupik material in Bethel - TV Channel/ indigenous media group

• Read Caroline Ruben's thesis (LT asked Caroline on 9/11)

She posed the following questions:

• Where do I go to see/get the item/ collection?
• Where are the items/ collection held?
• Are people going to be able to participate in adding collections/ materials/ metadata? Help us identify PM?

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Meeting with DeeDee Halleck

We met with DeeDee at her home on the upper west side. Her friend (we need the name!) helped us interview her for the site. Other issues that came up:

• Molly Fair - University of Richmond - Worked on the Interference Archive. It is similar to the Rick Prelinger archive. DeeDee recommended we reach out to her. (Lauren has done so.)

• Alaska - The Inuit TV station was brought up. Elizabeth Weatherford is involved in the native film festival called Film and Video Festival. More info here. DeeDee suggested we reach out to her. (It does look like the festival is no longer active. See here).

• DeeDee suggested we reach out to Jaime Mears. She developed the Memory Lab and now works at LOC. She worked on personal digital archiving for DC Public Libraries. For more on the Memory Lab in DC, visit their website and the Lib Guide. Questions this brings up:

• What is the role of a media center in a community? in a library? in building community?

• What is the role of public access today? Should public access use this model/ borrow from it?

• Otisville: DeeDee is trying to find participants. She has had success finding the women involved in Middletown Girls Club. Talked about the level of creativity that can happen in reform schools when there is encouragement. They can be incredibly expressive. Talked about being less punitive and more about rehabilitation.

• Talked about influence of documentary/anthro. She mentions influence of Sol Worth and John Adair on her work. While many of come to critique Worth and Adair, at the time, their work was very exciting and to have good intentions. She also mentioned Peter Adair's work Holy Ghost People. Also talk about Faye Ginsberg, George Stoney, Appalshop women filmmakers, South Caroline Film Commission (and the work of Stan Hurston?), Harlan County, Miners for Democracy/ Michael Abramhson/Magnum/ Florence Peese.

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Meeting with Rodger Larson and Michael Jacobson

• PBS - Young Filmmakers (5 kids/ 5 countries)

• Sloan

• Bill Sloan (later NYPL) first dealing with non-print material library at Pratt

• RL at Pratt. Class of 56

• among first using the term "non-print". His daughter was at Film Club.

• Donnell - all moving images. Sloan was major force behind this. Great real estate - across from MOMA. Sold it for money according to RL. Renting/selling/ prints from Young Filmmakers Distribution Center (YFDC) to Donnell. Maureen Nestas (sic) was also at NYPL. She worked with NEA to get a grant for film preservation/ restoration. It was a seed grant. Carnegie Foundation came in later with $150,000. The YFDC collection was a Fort Lee and YFF stopped paying around 1996/1997. Nestas helped save the collection. Grabbed a UHaul and grabbed all the film. Included outtakes and unfinished work.

• Films/ Students (Talking about films RL remembered/ really liked; LT: My spelling for names could be really off.)

• Your Driving Me Crazy- DIGITAL COPY. Mike Jacobson says he has this digitized. The maker passed away. Mike knows his sister. - "about going into the mind of an adolscent" "make me feel like when I was a kid" (think this is Mike's words). "Remarkably talented but emotionally immature."

• Film Club - MJ says he has a DIGITAL COPY.

• Judy Katz - Trio at 19 - middle class/ 92nd Y

• George Toro - Putting on a Show - most expensive, biggest budget

• Winston Toros - Horror films/ playful (contact)

• Scott Morris - claymation (contact)

• J.T. - Korean - (contact) - According to RL, she was "shy and intimated by technology" and also "very brave". But still, "intimidated by the camera... but authority... by being director". Film takes place in Chinatown where a black boy meets a chinese/korean girl. The guy who plays the cop in the film originally was the wrong race according to RL. Tells JT she needs to get a big, blond white guy. He gets Jim, a teacher for the young kids doing 8mm, to play the role. RL says he always played the white racist. The change made the film work.

• RL - about YFF and filmmaking- "you can really use your mind at this" ... "developmental experience" ... kids are "not imitating movies they like". RL says he wouldn't show masterpieces. Don't need masters. Discover for themselves. Says The End reminds him of 400 Blows (but the students didn't see that). "Never seen these masterpieces." Saying there is a lot of originality in these films.

• Henry Street

• Andy Lamey - Jack Smith. LT can't remember if this was a film or another person. - (Email)

• Alex Roshuk- (Email)

• Bruce Speigel - Ran Henry Street

• Different kids, different films.

• MJ from Queens and part of Henry Street. He found out about YFF/ Film Club through a poster he saw in Jamaica and started attending the summer program. The NY Board of Education ran the summer program - "make movies by teenagers and for teenagers". He already has an interest in film. He already owned an 8mm camera. Tried to go to YFF but already had too many males. (RL says it was because he was oversubscribed.) So, MJ went to Henry Street. The workshop at YFF was primarily Puerto Rican. Not about getting into the film business. Many died from drugs and alcohol. RL says he saw the settlement as primarily for poor kids. RL disagrees and says they wanted different interactions, so tried to recruit more broadly. MJ says he was an outsider and many of the outsiders to the workshops (aka not from the neighborhood) kept to themselves and rarely befriended the local kids. MJ says he was a bit of an exception because he was looking for friends.

• Young Braves - by MJ - says it was "drawing him out"

• YFF

• Young Filmmakers Distribution Center (YFDC) - run by Alfoso Barrios - NYPL major purchaser in major part thanks to Bill Sloan. The money from these sales help subsidize YFF. BFI and NFBC ( National Film Board of Canada) interested in YFDC/ YFF. NFBC brought RL up to talk about Community Film Workshops for a week. Isreal was interested too and bought films.

• Community Action Newsreel

• MetroMedia TV - political - shows on Ch5 WNEW ?

• girls - portapaks (1972) - 15 of the, separated from the boys - Video Rivington

• equipment bank

• Siela Paige, Susan Zeig and Ariel Dougherty - involved with YFF and go on to create WMM (Women Make Movies)

• street fairs at Forsyth and Rivington

• became over extended - NYSCA helps fund building that becomes YFF - equipment bank, community resource, TV studio (only $15/ hour to rent with an engineer) - consolidated into this building in 1972 at 4 Rivington. Have MERC - Media Equipment Resource Center - in there.

• RL says this is about "making" (about workshops/ hardware/ studio access/ etc) as oppose to John Culkin and his focus on "understanding"

Video interviews with MJ and RL. MJ, who kindly helped us film and use his equipment, has the footage and will share with us.