Anthology honors Leaders of Film Preservation
On February 2, 1993 Anthology celebrated the contributions to film preservation of Eastman Kodak Company, the National Center for Jewish Film, Pioneer LDCA Inc., Stan Brakhage, Lewis Jacobs, and Leonard Maltin at a gala dinner at Tavern on the Green in New York City. 190 friends of film and film-preservation attended the dinner and applauded the honorees, who were introduced by actress Claire Bloom, Mary Lea Bandy of the Museum of Modern Art, George Gund of Anthology's Board, actor Eddie Bracken, Anthology President Jonas Mekas, historian Tom Gunning, television correspondent Richard Valeriani, and others. (For more on this event see the Variety story on the evening.) The next such dinner (the third) will be on February 22, 1994. The honorees will be announced in the fall.
Jim Davis Collection
Three years ago the family of abstract film-maker Jim Davis (1901-74) donated to Anthology all of his film materials (approx. 70 films, most 10-15 minutes long), several hundred photographs, about 50 plastic light sculptures, and selected paintings and drawings. In November 1992 the first result of this donation was the restoration of nine films, the publication of a book, Jim Davis: The flow of energy, and the premiere of a traveling exhibition of Davis films, light sculpture, and paintings. The exhibition opened at Anthology, then moved to two West Virginia university galleries, and will be at SUNY/Buffalo and the Harvard Film Archives in the fall of 1993.
The book Jim Davis: The flow of energy ($8.95) includes Davis' 1953 manifesto "The Only Dynamic Art", three essays about him (by Robert Haller, P. Adams Sitney, and Stan Brakhage) and extensive excerpts from Davis' journal where he discusses his encounters with art and artists and film-making over the years 1930-1970.
Anthology is currently preparing for publication (Winter 1993) a second volume of Davis' writings - these about his making of films about architect Frank Lloyd Wright and Painter John Marin.
In June, Anthology also released a video-cassette containing four Jim Davis' films: Impulses, Pertaining to Marin, Like a Breeze, and Energies. Impulses, Mekas and Haller discovered, is the sound version of Processes, the "lost" film that Jim Davis regarded as his best work.
This VHS, NTSC video-cassette costs $40.
Found Footage Survey and Book
In May, Anthology presented a 162 film/viveo survey of found footage motion pictures. Accompanying that series was the book Recycled Images by William C. Wees of McGill University in Montréal. This book was the first extensive discussion, in English, of the burgeoning genre of found footage films. At the mid-point of the series there was a panel discussion about the films;
Recycled Images (pp. 125, $10), like Jim Davis: The flow of energy (pp. 128, £8.95), and the 1993 Preservation Week Journal (pp. 32, $10), are available from Anthology for the cover price, plus $5 (each) for international postage. The Davis video-cassette also has a $5 international postage charge.