Above: Actress Mary Pickford is interviewed by WHAM Radio with General Pershing looking on.

Opening day of George Eastman House garnered international attention. Events were captured on a newsreel that ran in movie theaters worldwide.

Above: Thomas J. Hargrave, president of Kodak, cuts the ribbon of film on the opening day of George Eastman House, Nov. 9, 1949. Esteemed guests included movie stars Mary Pickford and photographers Edward Steichen and Ansel Adams.

Eastman House was the first institution to celebrate photography as an art form, and to collect and preserve motion pictures long before film preservation was a hot topic in Hollywood.

And in the 60 years since, George Eastman House has been celebrated for its elegant architecture and gardens, visiting movie stars and famous photographers, efforts on behalf of the media that it champions, and—never forgotten—for the generous and successful man for whom the Museum is named. Happy Birthday, George Eastman House – literally and virtually the world’s museum of photography and motion pictures.

Inspired by a bulb order placed by Mr. Eastman over 100 years ago, this yearly offering of flowers in Feburary is a welcome respite from the Rochester winter. It features more than 2,000 tulips, hyacinths, daffodils, freesias, and amaryllis in bloom in the Eastman House conservatory.  

Please think about becoming a member or volunteering at George Eastman House!

Joe Struble demonstrates how NOT to handle a photograph.

Students looking at prints after a GEH collections history lecture.  This may be the only time you will ever see Alfalfa, Russian Jewess and Afghan Girl sequenced together.  The black and white photograph obscured by a student is an Ansel Adams photograph of Yosemite.  What a great example of the breadth and diversity of the collections at Eastman House!

Materials in the collection are vast and include many areas of both film and television. This includes such items as: costumes (including the wedding dress worn by Toni Collette in the film “Muriel’s Wedding”), televisions, projectors, motion picture film, various video formats,  disks, wax cylanders, DVD’s, glass slides, production stills, film posters, film props and my personal favorite: a ‘clap-o-meter’ from a television studio.

The Archive holds it’s materials in four separate locations which can basically be put into these categories: 1). Preservation materials; 2.)Access copies; 3.) Paper and registration (document) materials; 4.) Nitrate collection.  This week I will be given a tour of these separate areas and a brief study of how they are stored.

One such area is involves the audio recording on disks.  Currently, the archive is working on a risk management project of ‘disk flipping;’ that is, taking recorded sound disks and flipping them in their vertical preservation storage containers.  This is to help prevent the the disks own weight from bending and damaging the disks.  This may sound rather odd, but image a disk sitting in the same position for 20 years.  Gravity could take a toll on such material. 

Other areas I will be reviewing include the film and video collection.  Stay tuned for more information!

Trevor Anderson and Reece Black gave me a wonderful tour of the ARC Cinema and projection booths, including the lens collection they have for the Kineton projectors.  They also showed me a time a time captured video of the building of the cinema. It was fascinating to watch as the seats were built into a already existing space. 

I also got a glimpse of the HVAC system for the theatre.  It is truly remarkable, with a diffused system to allow an even exchange of air throughout the theatre.  This give all patrons the benefit of a comfortable environment, and greatly reduces the noise of  heaters and air conditioners turning on and off throughout the film.

Taken from the NFSA website :

Arc’s projection booth is where the magic begins. The cinema is fitted with cutting-edge 35/16 mm changeover projection, using a pair of custom-designed Kinoton projectors chosen for their adaptability as well as for their precision technology. Arc’s Kinotons are amongst a handful of projection systems in Australia capable of screening all manner of historic and contemporary images in a wide range of aspect ratios, with the ability to run silent films at correct speeds.

Arc’s innovative sound system can present many different audio formats, from the earliest days of sound on film to state-of-the-art digital audio. Sound reinforcement for live accompaniment to silent film is also supported, paving the way for ground-breaking silent cinema events.

Arc’s state-of-the-art archival film projection system means that the NFSA will be able to screen rare prints not only from its own collection but from other libraries and archives around the world, opening up access to films rarely seen in Australia.

To read more about this wonderful venue, and see current film listings,  please visit http://www.nfsa.gov.au/whats_on/arc/index.html

Canberra (pronounced CAN-bra, with emphasis on the CAN) is Australia’s only completely planned city, designed around 1911. It is the home to approximately 320,000 Australians, most of whom are civil servants. It is also the home of some amazing museums!
On my first day of walking around the city I briefly passed some of these great sights. This included a view of Black Mountain Tower, which provides magnificent 260 degree views of the city and surrounding country.

The National Museum of Australia is the place to go to learn about the history of Australian settlement. It is on my list of places to visit on the weekends!
http://www.nma.gov.au/index.html

Across Lake Burley Griffin is the National Library of Australia. The folks at the Archive tell me it is worth a look, expecially the Ballet Russes exhibit currently on display.

Welcome to Canberra!

For the next four weeks I will be writing from Canberra, Australia, where I will be working at the National Film and Sound Archive. These blog posts will give you chance to follow along as I meet the staff of the archive, as well as take a closer look at their film collection.

Please join me on my journey through this great collection of Australian Heritage!

THE PRISONER OF ZENDA (1937) directed by John Cromwell and starring Ronald Coleman, Madeleine Carroll, and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. is based on the 1894 novel The Prisoner of Zenda: Being the History of Three Months in the Life of an English Gentleman by Anthony Hope.  It is the story of King Rudolf V (Ronald Coleman) who, the night before his coronation, meets a man who is identical to himself.  

As they toast their shared ancestors, the king falls ill, and the look-alike takes his place on the throne until he recovers.  Along the way, the look-alike falls for the lovely Princess Flavia (Madeleine Carroll), the king’s intended.  She finds the “new king” much kinder and begins to love him in return.

Watching the film, some in the audience may think to themselves “Hey, this sounds a lot like the movie DAVE (1993) starring Kevin Kline and Sigourney Weaver” and you would be right-up to a point.  Here the plot changes and THE PRISONER OF ZENDA becomes more of an adventure story with sword fights, castles, and dungeons.

THE PRISONER OF ZENDA was a box office hit when released, giving producer David O. Selznick his second hit that year (the first was A STAR IS BORN with Janet Gaynor and Frederic March.)               

Accepted by the acquisitions committee, these elements make up a complete nitrate print, with material created in 1937 and 1945.  While the material is brittle due to the age, the shrinkage is very low, and the image quality is good.  Long term cold storage will ensure this print will last for years to come.

I love how turquoise Eastman House used to be!

The heart of this event is the international reviews: three days in which more than 30 curators, publishers, gallerists and critics representing ten different countries meet one-on-one with twelve artists a day to see and discuss new work. It’s a remarkable experience; the energy level is high, as is the quality of work. I thought our readers might like to see some of the variety of work that caught my eye.

Kurt Tong is a young British artist from Hong Kong who has photographed the marvelous paper objects representing such things as cars, fountain pens and ipods that are traditionally burned at Chinese funerals. He uses the simplest photographic style imagineable, but the theoretical implications of photographing simulacra are not lost on him or the viewer.

Edmund Clark is a well known British photojournalist who has just returned from Guantanamo. He documents both the prison and the navy base that supports it, giving us solid visual images by which to understand this dark and mysterious American place.

James Morris’s recent work in Iran is a study of both landscape and people, like Ed Clark, giving us a picture of a place we now barely know.

I loved Marko Dutka’s Portrait of Genius, photos of striking eighty-something artist’s model Daphne Self after self-portraits by Titian, Dürer, Rembrandt and others. Dutka’s comments on gender and power are brilliantly embedded in his strong and beautifully lit images.

As we concluded in our panel, photography is alive and well. I think anyone looking at these photographs would agree.

Both students have been given the opportunity to work for one month in a film lab, preparing, printing, and preserving the films from the George Eastman House Collection as an extension to their studies in the field of film archiving.

Sabrina will be heading to Haghefilm laboratory in Amsterdam, Netherlands this August, where she will begin preservation on “Kodachrome Two-Color Test Shots No. III,” (1922) an early color test made by Kodak in their quest to find a marketable method of creating color motion picture film.  Once the project is complete, she will present her work at the Pordenone Silent Film Festival in Italy this October.

Elizabeth will be spending her time at Technicolor Lab in Los Angeles, California where she will be inspecting, printing and preserving “His Baby Doll” (1917), an early slapstick comedy short starring Malcolm St. Clair.  The story concerns a young man who is ready to be married.  Finding himself in charge of a small baby during his bachelor party, he is caught in hilarious circumstances of confusion and mayhem with his fiancée and his future father-in-law.

The Motion Picture Department staff is looking forward to both of these preservation projects and wishes both Sabrina and Elisabeth their warmest wishes in their future careers in film archiving.

In 1885 it was not possible to make detailed photographs of the Moon so the fabulous illustrations in this book are actually plaster models that Nasmyth and Carpenter fabricated  based on their observations of the  satellite. For a few more Eastman House photographs of the Moon visit our online collections.  

Archivist Joe Struble practices his new Fire Fighting skills.

A cloud of white smoke could be seen rising from the parking lot at George Eastman House, however this was not smoke. Don Ezard, Head of Security, had been saving up old fire extinguishers so that staff could practice using a fire extinguisher, providing a hands-on experience with this safety tool and demystifying the device. About ten staff members were on hand for Don’s demonstration of the devices, and then each took turns emptying one from the pile. The smallest extinguishers only provided a few seconds of blast, and would be great for small fires, but some of the larger cans would have allowed for extended use.

So what did I take away?

1. The most important part of fire safety is making sure that people are safe. If the fire is too big, leave it to the professionals.
2. To Use a Fire Extinguisher
   1. Operate the Extinguisher from a safe distance.
   2. Pull the Pin: It is actually really easy to pull out, even if it has a plastic safety ring wrapped around it.
   3. Aim at the base of the fire, not at the flames!
   4. Squeeze the lever/handle slowly.
   5. Sweep from side to side while still aiming at the base of the fire.
3. Know where your fire extinguishers are located: you don’t want to be searching for one when the fire starts.
4. Fire extinguishers have a shelf life: Some of the oldest ones no longer worked or the hoses leaked when they were used.
5. The chemicals in the fire extinguisher can make a big mess and leave a residue behind, so thanks to those who cleaned up ours yesterday!

 For more photos click here.