Cyrus Pinkham Collection draws scholarly attention 7:54 AM

Last summer (August 2010), our first William S. O'Farrell Fellow Caitlin McGrath came to the archives in Bucksport to research NHF's holdings of amateur films shot at the New York World's Fair. During her exploratory phase she commented to me that a reel shot by Cyrus Pinkham stood out from the group as a high quality film, and that it exemplified the concept of looking at the individual's experience at the fair through the filmmaker's lens. Well, I was thrilled to hear Caitlin's enthusiasm for Pinkham's work as I have been excited about all of the material in that collection since it came in as a technical services transfer job in 2009. So, I suggested that she take a look at the rest of that collection, and she was immediately taken by it.

Two weeks ago, on March 11th, we screened a compilation of materials from the Cyrus Pinkham Collection at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies conference in New Orleans to a small group of scholars and researchers. I introduced the screening and Caitlin spoke over the silent films, narrating about the people, places and history of the filmmaker that she had learned about from talking with the donor. The screening was very well received, and noted for Pinkham's sophisticated use of industry filming and editing techniques and high quality cinematography skills.

The following day Caitlin chaired a panel called "Alternative Film Histories: Hollywood and the Amateur Revisited," in which she presented a paper analyzing Pinkham's Collection, and specifically his short film Be Beautiful (ca. 1938). Her interpretation of the film included an in depth analysis of the techniques used in creating the films and their potential for exposing possible relationships between amateur filmmakers and industrial filmmaking. She also explored the sociological revelations that can be possible when background information is available for amateur films.

The Cyrus Pinkham Collection is slated for cataloging this year as part of the "Moving Images 1938-1939: Amateur Filmmakers Record The New York World's Fair and Its Period" project. We are also seeking preservation funding to create new 16mm film negatives and prints for 2 reels from the collection. For more information about the Cyrus Pinkham Collection please contact us! (nhf@oldfilm.org)

Happy Spring! Gemma

MPLP Thoughts 8:04 PM

My name is Aimee Dus, and I am interning at Northeast Historic Film while finishing up my degree at Simmons Graduate School of Library and Information Science. I’m excited to be working with film for the first time, and I’m interested in seeing how topics from my coursework on paper based archives relate to film. For example, can, and should, "More Product, Less Process" techniques apply to collections of film and other media? Discussion of MPLP* started with the necessity of dealing with backlogs of huge modern manuscript collections. MPLP guidelines typically discourage processing at the item level, but this practice may not be desirable for film collections. A film reel is not really analogous to an individual document in a set of records, and vital information is not discoverable when individual reels are not described. Another option then, is to focus on making description of each reel more efficient. A cataloger could, for example, abandon shot by shot description of a reel, and instead compose a short summary of the reel's overall content and theme.

Another area where streamlined processing techniques could be applied to film collections is using the accessioning process to complete basic descriptive work. Christine Weideman, in her article “Accessioning as Processing,” discusses practices she established at Yale to alleviate a processing backlog. Having established minimum level descriptive standards for the Yale repository, staff now complete basic finding aids for all collections on accession. A critical step in this process is engaging donors at the beginning of the process so they are aware of limited processing and can give insight into the materials. Weideman even sometimes enlists donors to help with writing series level description. Involving interested donors in the initial processing of a collection could be especially useful for amateur film archives since so many of the films are home movies that donors know well through years of viewing. While these steps do complicate the accessioning process and may not work for every institution, taking advantage of donor knowledge could prevent a collection from entering a processing backlog and make its content immediately available for researchers.

* “More Product, Less Process: Revamping Traditional Archival Processing” by Mark A. Greene and Dennis Meissner, 2005.

Intro to Partners / 1939-40 NYWF 7:09 AM

The National Building Museum's exhibition, Designing Tomorrow: America's World's Fairs of the 1930s, is entirely worth a visit, or several. I had the pleasure of a tour on February 4 by Deborah Sorensen, co-curator, who was responsible--among much more--for the audiovisual component of the exhibition. There are nine screens incorporated in the galleries, including moving images of the construction of the New York World's Fair and exhibits at the fair (with Northeast Historic Film footage from the Robert Decker and Wilbur Senter Collections).

I met with Sorensen, Cathy Frankel, VP for Exhibitions and Collections, and Brett Rodgers, Online Marketing and Communications Manager, to discuss our project planning. When Designing Tomorrow leaves the National Building Museum on July 10, 2011, for its two-year tour we hope to have a portion of 1938-1940 amateur film content described for public viewing and would like to work with exhibition sites and to perhaps provide continuing content for the Designing Tomorrow blog.

As the project team begins to learn about the period of 1938-1940 and about the Fair we will develop keywords through discussions among subject experts, catalogers, curators, and researchers. From their saturation with the 1930s fairs, what are the National Building Museum team members thinking? In the exhibition there were clear themes relating to industrial design, domestic consumption, the corporations, the buildings, travel to the fairs, buses, trains, and most certainly the automobile. From this we may be on the lookout for amateur film coverage of travel from and to the Fair and to engagement with the city and coverage of home life.

Delightfully, Brett asked that we consider tagging camera information when possible. We discussed visual evidence of tripod use, of static shots and of the "garden hose" vertiginous pan. Film gauge will of course be recorded, and specific camera models may be tagged through donor information and use of "Identification Marks Used In Substandard Motion Picture Cameras," coding on the film frame edge left by specific makes and models of cameras. See Alan Kattelle's Home Movies: A History of the American Industry, 1897-1979, Appendix 11.

On Monday, February 7, I visited Louise Weinberg and Jodi Hanel at the Queens Museum of Art with a tour by Louise of Luis Márquez in the World of Tomorrow: Mexican Identity and the 1939-40 New York World’s Fair. The Queens Museum of Art is steeped in the Fair, being located in the New York City Pavilion of the 1939-1940 Fair, currently under expansion for opening in 2013. Several 8 mm. cans were on site and we discussed approaches to obtaining information on the creators.

Work Life Content Overview 6:25 AM

Moving Images of Work Life, 1916-1960

Consistent with the characteristics of the region, the work life in the hidden collections represents a range of largely rural content with some industrial documents. One of the surprises was the strength of the scientific expedition coverage, which would otherwise have been unknown and thus unlikely to attract use without this identification.

Luther Holbrook Collection 1934 scientific voyage by Admiral Donald MacMillan, schooner Bowdoin to Labrador and Newfoundland. Dr. Alfred Gross of Bowdoin College, ornithologist, and Dr. David Potter of Clark University, botanist.

Irving Forbes Collection 1931 expedition by Alexander Forbes to survey the northern third of the Labrador coast. The expedition included the Ramah, and two airplanes, a Fairchild cabin monoplane and a smaller Waco biplane, Reel here.

Charles S. Houston Collection Mountain climber and expert in the effects of high altitudes on human physiology; mountaineering footage in Alaska, Nepal, and Pakistan.

Attracting scholarly attention presently, the itinerant women filmmakers who worked for the Amateur Theatre Guild, Boston, shooting Movie Queen films. The Moving Image (Univ. of Minnesota Press journal) in its most recent issue featured itinerant films and filmmakers. Evidence of itinerant filmmakers’ practices and the businesses they recorded has been recently discussed at the Association of Moving Image Archivists annual meeting, among the students at The L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation at George Eastman House, and at our archives.

Belfast Historical Society Collection 1935 footage from Belfast, Maine, Movie Queen

John Bruner Collection 1939 Movie Queen by Margaret Showalter, shot in Groton, Mass.

Norwood Historical Society Collection 1935 Movie Queen shot in Norwood, Mass.

Daniel Lapointe Collection 1936 Movie Queen filmed in Van Buren, Maine, on the Canadian border.

Industrialization and mechanization is represented in several strong pieces depicting factory work with close attention by creators with ties to the industries in question. The themes include transition from handwork, pre-industrial processes, innovation, use of automobiles and internal combustion engines.

Charles B. Hinds Collection 1925 processes at Hinds Laboratory, manufacturing cosmetics in Portland, Maine.

Leadbetter Collection ca. 1932 from white pine lumber to spools for sewing thread at John MacGregor Corporation spool mill in South Lincoln, Maine.

Ernest Groth Collection 1926 ice harvesting and distribution, Spring Brook, Connecticut.

Edwin Bienick Collection, ca. 1929 American Writing Paper Company in Holyoke, Massachusetts, in a bilingual sales film.

Electrical generation, hydropower, the community and environmental impact.

Central Maine Power Collection 1920 to 1938 Central Maine Power Company and E.H. Maxcy. Bucksport, Maine. Paper mill and Wyman Dam in Bingham, Maine, corporate and community life.

Milford Baker Collection, 1930-1932 Wyman Dam in Bingham, Maine, construction details with laborers and equipment such as turbines, generation units.

Roger Lincoln Collection, 1915-1916 film from Enfield, Mass., which was destroyed when flooded by the creation of the Quabbin Reservoir in 1939.

Agriculture, fisheries and pre-industrial work, with extraordinary aesthetic qualities to the film in many cases. Traditional and persistent economic areas (tourism, summer camps, and forestry) are well represented.

Palermo Historical Society 1930-1960, Milton Dowe amateur film of haying, alewife fish run, documentation of wooden fences in agricultural fields, and other rural activities.

Irving Forbes Collection 1915 sheep herding on Naushon Island, Mass.

Pierce Pearmain Collection 1926 Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market, Boston, and the suppliers of agricultural products the the market. By Philip Davis, a significant figure in sponsored films with a background in the union movement.

Philippe Beaudry Collection 1927 Cary Maple Sugar Company of St. Johnsbury, Vermont, and Lennoxville, Quebec, the world’s largest maple sugar company.

Moving Images of Work Life Screening 4:56 AM

Catalogers Katrina Dixon, Karen Wyatt, and Tim Rohe curated a public screening, Work Life Revealed, on January 20 at Northeast Historic Film's cinema.

The audience included community members and scholars. Among the viewers were artists, graduate student Sarah Ruddy, University of Maine art historian Justin Wolff, long-time and new members of Northeast Historic Film, and board members. Staff support by Jessica Hosford, Jane Donnell, and Barbara Manning.

Special guests from Palermo, Maine, introduced the work of Milton Dowe from the Palermo Historical Society Collection. In the center above Gary Dyer, who said that the moving images were important for understanding both the nature place and the creativity of individuals. Dyer spoke movingly of his sense of patriotism and the human bonds the film represents.

Joe Gardner and Audrey Young were responsible for the transfers on the screen, with Phil Yates and Gemma Perretta projecting. Simmons GSLIS intern Tim Rohe, who received his degree this month, traveled from Boston to present excerpts from two collections he cataloged: the Charles S. Houston Collection, and Everett Greaton Collection. See program below.

Audience members spoke up during the screening; we noted particular interest in ice harvesting, hay baling, and the mayhem of landscape architect's Sidney Shurcliff's Motormaulers Club film. The evening was also a thank you to media cataloger Katrina Dixon, who--sadly for us--leaves Northeast Historic Film this week.

Movie Queen Collections excerpts

Boston Amateur Theatre Guild productions, 1936

Maine Sea Coast Mission Collection

Launching of Sunbeam III, 1939

Charles S. Houston Collection

Excerpt from Navy-sponsored film

Operation Everest, 1946

Irving S. Forbes Collection

Sheep on Naushon Island, MA, 1915

Ernest Groth Collection

Excerpt from Harvesting Ice, Spring Brook

Ice Company, New Britain, CT, 1926

Palermo Historical Society Collection

Hay baling, 1938

Remote control breakfast, ca. 1937

Everett Greaton Collection

Seaweed harvesting in Maine, ca. 1946

Hiram Historical Society Collection

Hiram Fire Department’s first fire engine, 1937

Charles B. Hinds Collection

Interior of the A.S. Hinds Laboratory, 1925

Sally Johnston Collection

Summer stock actors at Lakewood Theatre

in Skowhegan, ca. 1936

Alan Bemis Collection

Excerpt from the Motormaulers Club film

Junkman's Holiday, 1932

Metadata LIVE 4:53 PM

50 Collections of Work Life finding aids written using the DACS content standards with film reels in PBCore are now up on the project page here.

These and more Northeast Historic Film finding aids are here.

Work Life Revealed Screening Jan 20 4:03 PM

Northeast Historic Film's cinema at the Alamo Theatre, Bucksport, Maine, will host a free screening of moving images of work life on Thursday, January 20 at 7 p.m. The event highlights a year of exploring the moving image archives to describe collections not previously known to the public. The cataloging was supported by funding from the Council on Library and Information Resources Cataloging Hidden Special Collections and Archives program. Teachers and scholars are invited to inquire about the collections for research and use.

Catalogers Katrina Dixon, Karen Wyatt, and Tim Rohe will be on hand to introduce the screening and share their year of discoveries. Among other surprises, the team found a glimpse of actor Humphrey Bogart taken by another theater professional working at Lakewood Theatre near Skowhegan in the 1930s. On screen will be footage from the Charles B. Hinds Collection, 1925 footage of workers manufacturing Hinds Honey and Almond Hand Cream. Other selections will include Maine Sea Coast Mission's Bar Harbor-based service vessel Sunbeam, and Movie Queen, Belfast, one of a series of itinerant productions. There will also be an example of the work of Everett Greaton, who documented Maine in personal and promotional films as the first head of the Maine Development Commission, as well as clips showing the comedic antics of the Motormaulers Club and a breakfast-making robot.

This screening is the first in a series celebrating the 25th anniversary of NHF's founding, with screenings highlighting different aspects of its collections through 2011. A wine and cheese reception for Northeast Historic Film members will be held at 6 p.m. To become a member, call Jessica Hosford, Northeast Historic Film's external affairs director, 207 469-0924, extension 107. Or email jessica@oldfilm.org