Harvard Film Archive Collections

Karen Aqua (1954-2011) started working in animation at the Rhode Island School of Design in the 1970s, and spent much of her career based in Somerville making short films exploring the themes of ritual, journeys, transformation, and the human spirit, as well as regularly contributing animated segments to Sesame Street.  In addition, she taught at a number of local universities, and worked with elementary schools and community groups around New England and beyond teaching animation to children. 

still image from HEAVENLY BODIES

Upon her death from ovarion cancer in 2011, she left a large legacy of award-winning animated films.  This collection, consisting of over 300 film and video items, arrived at the Harvard Film Archive in 2011 and we’ve been working to process the collection since late last year.  For the film, this involves first testing each film for acid deterioration, next inspecting each reel on the film bench and rehousing into archival cans, sending the cans to our climate controlled storage facility, and finally cataloging each item in our local database as well as creating records for Harvard’s online public access database.  We hope to have the collection fully processed by the end of February, with the finding aid appearing in OASIS not long after.  Stay tuned!

an animation test reel from VIS-A-VIS, on the bench ready to be inspected

I’m excited to share the news that The Criterion Collection will be releasing a long-awaited collection of Hollis Frampton’s films in April:  A Hollis Frampton Odyssey.  In addition to all 24 of Frampton’s films, the set also includes some lovely special features.  Among them are audio excerpts of Frampton discussing his work and his performance piece A Lecture, recorded in 1968 with the voice of artist Michael Snow, both from the HFA’s Hollis Frampton Collection.

We’re eagerly awaiting the arrival of our copy in a few months!

We’ve been working on a number of great collections from local filmmakers here at the conservation center in the past few months.  Today I’ll tell you about one in particular:  Aldo Tambellini. 

scan from Aldo Tambellini's BLACKOUT (1966)

The films of Aldo Tambellini represent only a small portion of his creative output.  He is also a sculptor, poet, painter, and video artist who has been creating since the 1960s.  Back in 2010 the Harvard Film Archive presented The Black Films of Aldo Tambellini in our cinematheque and in January 2012 Aldo was the focus of a six program retrospective at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, which included many unseen or rarely-seen works.  In preparation for his most recent show, we worked with Aldo, his partner Anna, and Pia Bolognesi and Giulio Bursi, two Italian film scholars and curators based in Udine, Italy, to unearth and identify films from Aldo’s archive, many of which had no titles and existed in many varying versions.  A number of the films screening in the retrospective were digitized by technicians at La Camera Ottica Film and Video Restoration Laboratory (University of Udine- DAMS Gorizia), who worked for months especially on the hand-painted works by Tambellini.  The entirety of Aldo’s collection stored at Harvard was fully processed in late 2011, and many of the titles are already searchable in Harvard’s HOLLIS catalog, with an online finding aid to guide researchers through the collection forthcoming in 2012. 

A double DVD released by the Italian label VON is now available in Europe, including hours of video experiments by Tambellini from the years 1966 to 1976.  Another DVD compiling Tambellini’s ‘Black Film’ series will be published by French label Re:voir later this year.  The former arrived at the HFA this week, and will be available at the Fine Arts Library for viewing in February, and the latter should be available from the Harvard libraries in 2012.

Stay tuned for more collection updates:  next time, the films of Karen Aqua!

Season’s Greetings!

One of our largest projects of the past few years is nearing completion.  The Lothar and Eva Just Film Stills Collection is in the final stages of processing.  It has been handled in two main batches, the first of which is now search-able through Harvard’s finding aid database, OASIS.

To view the finding aids, search Lothar and Eva Just Film Stills Collection and limit by repository Harvard Film Archive.

If, for instance, you are looking for material for films directed by Frank Capra, you may search by typing Frank Capra into the search field and limit by repository Harvard Film Archive.  One of the results will be the Lothar and Eva Just Film Stills Collection, and you will see there is material for eight of his films and one miscellaneous item.

Due to its large size, the finding aid is split into five parts, organized alphabetically by director’s last name.   The finding aid will be updated again in June when the second and final section of the processing has been completed.  The second portion of the finding aid will list only a director, and not each of the films represented.

The material listed in the finding aid is available for research at Harvard.

Posters from this collection will have their own finding aid.

Kaspers Reise zu den Zwergen, (Hella Mora, 1954, hand colored lobby card, from the Lothar and Eva Just Film Stills Collection)

Kaspers Reise zu den Zwergen, (Hella Mora, 1954, hand colored lobby card, from the Lothar and Eva Just Film Stills Collection)

Kaspers Reise zu den Zwergen, (Hella Mora, 1954, lobby card, from the Lothar and Eva Just Film Stills Collection)

We have a number of home movie collections at the HFA and we are always adding more.  Every year we host Home Movie Day, helping the public watch home movies on formats they may not be able to watch at home.

A problem we have come across time and again in these collections is film stored on grey plastic reels that have white stuff on them.  The white stuff can be light or heavy.  It occurs on grey plastic reels, some of which are labeled TENITE.  Tenite is  a wood-based plastic made by Eastman, first developed in 1929.

The white stuff isn’t mold; it’s the result of the plastic decomposing.

Above: decomposing Super 8 and 16mm film reels by Kodak

The decomposing reels smell “like vomit,” a technical description in the wonderful world of plastics.  Weissman Preservation Center staff member Zach Long tested the super 8 reels (which were not marked Tenite), and determined the reels are most likely made of cellulose acetate butyrate.

Above: actively decaying super 8 reels

Above: In early stages of decomposition, the reels have only a small amount of white on them and do not smell.

If you find you have film on grey plastic reels or reels labeled TENITE, we recommend putting them on different reels and throwing the old reels away.

* We recommend wearing plastic gloves when handling these reels! *

Even if the reels are not yet decaying, they are good candidates for this problem.  It is safer to store your films on a different type of reel.  For 8mm or Super 8 we use polystyrene reels, which are not ideal but are better than metal or cellulose acetate butyrate.  Your film will thank you!

From the Just Collection, some images from Zdenek Miler’s Puppy films. This Czech animator is best known for his character the animated mole ‘Krtek’. Miler made over 70 films.

Jak slunícko vrátilo stenátku vodu (1960) AKA How the Sun Returned Water to the Puppy

Jak stenátko chtelo malé pejsky (1960) AKA How the Puppy Wanted Little Dogs

Dawn of the Mummy (Frank Agrama, 1981, USA/Egypt/Italy) lobby card

Please enjoy these scary images, and then go watch some horror movies.  ‘Tis the season!

El jorobado de la Morgue AKA Hunchback of the Morgue (Javier Aguirre, 1973, Spain) lobby card

Monster on Campus (Jack Arnold, 1958, USA) film still

Queen Kong (Frank Agrama, 1976, UK / France / West Germany / Italy) lobby card

Today we had a colleague from another part of Harvard come by with some donors and their 1930s & 1940s 8mm films.

While we generally utilize the Steenbeck or the KEM editing tables for viewing 16mm or 35mm prints, when it comes to the small gauge formats, the choices are different.  Shrunken, brittle 8mm and super 8 films that won’t stand the stress of projector gears are viewed on tabletop viewers that are very gentle on the perforations.  The image, however, is never as bright as we would like, and the image area is small.   When the film is in good shape, we like to be able to project it, especially on occasion when there is more than one person who needs to see it.

I inspected & cleaned the films, repaired some splices,  added leader & determined the films were project-able.  We gathered in the Conservation Center’s little theatre, where I laced up our 8mm projector (I call it the Cadillac of 8mm projectors), the Bolex-Palliard M8.

There were 6 films to view, and the first was the most exciting for most of the audience.  B&W, from the late 1930s, the film was a record of an archaeological dig.  Highlights for the HFA staff included a shot of a prairie dog running out of a ditch with several babies attached to its teats!  It looked like a mammal with too many legs.

The screening was successful.  We were able to provide a great service – access to a format not easy to work with.  We also provided conservation services.  The donors were able to watch the films, see people long dead and places long changed.  The Harvard staff were afforded an opportunity to view the material with the donors and hear their reactions to the pictures moving on the screen.

Altogether a pleasant way to spend an afternoon.

We are very sad to report filmmaker & friend George Kuchar has passed away.  George and his twin brother Mike just celebrated their 69th birthday last week.

George and Mike started making films in the Bronx when they were kids.  Inspired by the melodrama of Hollywood, by the weather, aliens, interesting looking people, etc., the brothers created fantastical, hilarious, beautiful works on 8mm and later on 16mm.  They became involved with the NYC avant garde scene in the 1960s.  When small format video became a viable alternative to the more expensive 16mm, the brothers switched formats and didn’t look back.  Both have continued to regularly produce personal pictures.

George taught a film-making course at the San Francisco Art Institute from 1971 until this past semester, producing a  film with his students for each course.  These collaborations are fascinating time capsules, as well as terrific documents of how the imagination of an inspiring professor can really drive the creativity of a course.  The HFA has many of these student films in its collection, and recently acquired the video work associated with the class.

Asphalt Ribbon (student collaboration, 1977) opening credit sequence

George Kuchar visited the Boston area several times over the years, and his generosity and affability are well known here.  He was an extremely inspiring filmmaker, advising students and other interested parties that all that was needed to become a filmmaker was to get your mits on a camera, read the instruction manual, and make a picture.  During his 2010 visit to the HFA, George shot some video that later wound up in his diary movie ZEALOTS OF THE ZINC ZONE.  We are honored to be documented by the great George Kuchar himself and hope to preserve his memory the way he has preserved ours.

George in Boston's Chinatown, shooting material for ZEALOTS OF THE ZINC ZONE (George Kuchar, 2010)

Anthology Film Archives has restored the Kuchars’ teenage 8mm offerings as well as some of the brothers’ later works.  The Pacific Film Archive has preserved several of George’s titles, including the famed I, AN ACTRESS.  The Harvard Film Archive, which also houses some of George’s work, has been working to preserve some films he made with his students, some of which showed in a program here last year, and all three institutions continue to collaborate on Kuchar preservation projects.

The HFA was pleased to show some of George’s WEATHER DIARIES last month, including his last film, HOTSPELL, which documents his annual weather-chasing trip to Oklahoma this past May.  George, who was too sick to make the trip to the East coast, offered to do an introduction and Q&A via Skype, which was a really moving experience.  We recorded the event and hope to put it online soon.  Stay tuned!

The HFA recently acquired George’s video masters, which includes his student collaboration movies, The Weather Diaries, and other diary videos.  We are honored to have expanded our collection of George’s work, which is available for rental to screening venues through such institutions as Canyon Cinema and Video Data Bank.  We hope to present more of George’s work at our cinematheque next summer, including new 16mm preservation prints of student films THE CARNAL BIPEDS (1973) and CLUB VATICAN (1984).

George will be missed by friends, students, and archivists.  Our heart goes out to Mike.

There is a lot of information about the Kuchars on the web.  In memory of George, read more about him and watch some of his pictures.  He was a unique person whose like will not be seen again.

Hold Me While I'm Naked (George Kuchar, 1966)

One of our fabulous summer interns recently finished processing a very interesting new collection of educational science films that were donated to the HFA in 2010 by the Harvard Science Center Media Services Department.  The Harvard Science Center Film Collection features educational science films from 1933 to 1998 focusing on a variety of scientific subject matter including physics, chemistry, biology and astronomy. The intended audiences for most of these films were high school students, though some were produced for military training or general audiences.

Take a peek at the finding aid for more info on the collection and how to access individual titles!

still from "Powers of Ten"